BlueBloggin

You know I don’t feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. No I’m not popping the Champaign cork, it’s too soon and that would be mean. I’ll wait until Super Tuesday. Clinton, her advisers, the MSM, pundits and the elite on both coasts called Clinton the nominee before all the candidates announced that they were running. How stupid do they think we are? Obviously, the Clinton machine thinks they are dealing with the same sleeping, go along to get along, voters that greeted Bush.

Did Clinton actually believe that bringing Mark Penn, the guru of Blackwater, on as her adviser would be a feather in her cap? Did Hillary actually believe that dragging Bill around to talk about Hillary in the Bill White House, is an example of change? Did Hillary actually think that after loosing Iowa, and flanking herself with Bill and Madeline Albright was a statement for change? Hillary, like the elite crowd she runs with, are out of touch with the rest of America.

And now, the Clinton machine is panicking and pointing fingers. That sounds so Bush. They have finally come to the realization that Hillary Clinton is not the inevitable nominee, something that Americans, living between both coasts, have known for months. America wants change and Hillary is not the change agent. I find it insulting to all voters that Clinton says she’s for change.

Change, is a word she learned on the plane ride from Iowa to New Hampshire. Change, is a word that Clinton will use over and over again to pander for future votes. A word that her campaign believes will win primaries, as they blame each other and retool. What change really means for the Clinton machine, is something we all have known for months; Hillary Clinton is not the inevitable democratic nominee.

The excerpts from a Time.com article sum up what the Clinton campaign is now facing as they prepare for New Hampshire and the primaries that follow. Not to mention the distrust between Bill’s team, Hillary’s team and yes Hillary herself.

• The scope of Barack Obama’s victory in Iowa has shaken the Clinton machine down to its bolts. Donors are panicking. The campaign has been making a round of calls to reassure notoriously fickle “superdelegates”

• And internally, a round of recriminations is being aimed at her chief strategist, Mark Penn, as the representative of everything about her pseudo-incumbent campaign that has been too cautious, too arrogant, too conventional and too clueless as to how much the political landscape has shifted since the last Clinton reign. One adviser summed up the biggest challenge that faces the campaign in two words: “Fresh thinking.”

• Bill and Hillary Clinton have put enormous faith in Penn, and given him veto power, aides say, over every word that goes into her television ads and every line in her mailers. “He had her and the President’s trust very deeply,” says one adviser who is close to the campaign.

• Specifically, those inside the campaign and outside advisers fault Penn for failing to see the Iowa defeat coming. They say he was assuring Clinton and her allies right up until the caucuses that they would win it. Says one: “He did not predict in any way, shape or form the tidal wave we saw.” In particular, he had assured them that Clinton’s support among women would carry her through. Yet she managed to win only 30% of the women’s vote, while 35% of them went for Obama.

• How can she retool her message — and her identity as a virtual incumbent — to resonate with an electorate that seems to yearn more for change than any other quality? Says one longtime Democratic strategist, who is close to the Clintons: “Fundamentally, she is who she is; she can’t change who she is, and maybe this is not her time.”

• Hillary’s advisers and Bill’s have never gotten along — and she has been particularly suspicious of his team. “Who they both trust — that’s a very small group,” says one former Clinton aide. “She is going to be very, very resistant to all of the white boys coming back.”

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Posted by nytexan January 6th, 2008 | Category: Clinton, Democrat, Election, Iowa, New Hampshire, Politics, primary | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL