Why Hillary Lost

None of the Clinton Campaign Postmortems in the media have mentioned the two crucial reasons Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination. Sure, they should have paid attention to the caucuses. And ignoring everything after February 5th was a mistake. I probably wouldn't have relied so much on a corporate shark like Mark Penn. Sexism, while not a problem at the voting booth, may have tainted media coverage. Bill might have chosen his words more carefully a couple of times. She should have focused on Obama in the beginning instead of Edwards. She should have run for something, as opposed to just a Clinton Restoration. Any of the reasons that people have mentioned might have influenced the election in minor ways, and she would have fared far worse without her enormous starting advantages. But there were two crucial reasons she lost, the first has been talked about on blogs but hardly anywhere else, and the second is barely mentioned at all (except, for perhaps, a read-between-the-lines interpretation of Kerrey's op-ed).

1. SHE VOTED FOR THE GODDAMN WAR.

Not only did she vote for the war, but she supported the war in the most transparently political ways possible. And then, during the course of the primary, she repeatedly lied about that vote. And then she went and voted for Kyl-Lieberman, which many activists interpreted as a vote to go to war with Iran (it wasn't, but it was needless saber-rattling that showed she'd had no conversion on topics of war and peace). A better candidate could have finessed the issue better, like John Edwards did with his public mea culpa (I Was Wrong) after the 2004 election. Which leads us to...

2. SHE WAS A BAD CANDIDATE.

Despite Clinton's ridiculous "experience" argument, Hillary was actually the least qualified person seeking the Democratic nomination this year, with a mere 8 years in government (Obama, by contrast, won his first election in 1996). She'd never run a race against a real opponent, and she'd never lost a race.* The primary field for the 2000 Senate race was cleared for her, she beat a token right-wing congressman, and didn't even have an opponent for re-election in 2006.

An early clue to her vulnerability is the election results in 2000. Despite the fact that Gore didn't even bother to campaign in New York, she ran 5 points lower than him. Think about that. Of people voting in New York that year, with Hillary campaigning non-stop, she scored 5 points less than "Generic Democrat". And so, despite the fact that she started out with a huge lead in money, and a huge lead in the polls, she just wasn't a good enough campaigner to pull off as close to a sure thing as there is in politics.

And if people have an emotional need to blame the campaign instead of the candidate, well, I'm sorry, but The Cossacks Work for the Czar. Clinton's campaign wasn't as good as Obama's, or BushCo's 2000 and 2004 efforts, but it was pretty good (it was basically an upgraded version of Clinton 1996); she certainly had a better campaign than any of the Republicans this year. And the litany of mistakes, poor judgment, bad advice taken, and personnel infighting can all be traced back to a bad management style at the top.


*This is an often-ignored fact. People who've never lost aren't prepared for and don't know how to react to a loss. This was a bigger problem for Dean in 2004 (after Iowa) than it was for Clinton, but it was still a problem for her.