by Michael Daunt - February 21, 2008
Why is Hillary Clinton losing so badly?
One obvious reason is the surge of support for Barack Obama.
A less obvious reason is Senator Clinton's poor performance as a candidate.
We're not talking about her speeches here. For the most part, her speeches are fine. She doesn't fill stadiums like Obama, but that's not because of the content of her speeches. It is not because she lacks the money to rent stadiums. It is because she lacks the organization to fill stadiums.
The Clinton campaign has been completely out-organized by the Obama campaign. When you see big disparities between polls and results, one of the main reasons is usually that one candidate has an organization that gets its supporters to the polls in large numbers while the other one does not. The last poll before the Wisconsin primary had Obama leading by 7% - yet he won by 17%. His supporters knew where to go to vote, and there were plenty of volunteers to help them get to the polls.
This gives Clinton a very big problem. She is fond of saying that she will be ready to be President "on Day One". But, what does that mean? It means having a competent, trusted team in place - it does not mean a candidate who has memorized every subparagraph in every policy statement. Hillary does not have that team now, but Obama does. He has shown that he can find competent people and assign them to appropriate roles. Clinton has shown that she can stick with a failed strategy until it's nearly too late.
That's a bad, bad thing.
Michael Daunt is the Publisher of Quiblit Magazine