Hillary's Lame Campaign

I want to start by making clear that this is just about the campaign, and not about who should be President or the Democratic nominee.  If you like Hillary Clinton's positions, or Hillary, or think it is important to nominate a woman, by all means vote for Hillary.  If you like Bernie Sanders' positions, or Bernie, or think it is important to nominate a Jewish social democrat, vote for Bernie.  If you like Martin O'Malley (and he is still in the race when you vote), vote for Martin.  (The Republicans are a whole different story...)

What is odd about about Hillary Clinton's campaign is how bad it is.  This is not the first time this has happened - she had the inside track in 2008, but fell apart in the face of the Obama campaign (which admittedly was brilliant, but more on that later).

Facing a surprisingly strong challenge from the left in the person of Bernie Sanders, Clinton's campaign appears to be freaking out, and at a loss as how to counter Sanders' seemingly growing momentum.  (We still have to see how well a Jewish Yankee will play in the Bible Belt.)  In fact, Clinton's campaign seems to mostly be confirming Sanders' criticisms.

Sanders argues that Clinton is the Establishment candidate, and that if you want to change things, you should vote for Sanders, not Clinton, and he has staked out clear and ambitious (and quite possibly unattainable) positions, like single-payer health care and publicly-subsidized college tuition.  He has been critical of Wall Street, and opposed the disastrous war in Iraq.  As a result, he has attracted a following of potential voters who agree with those positions, and who want change.  Sanders excites people with his passion and boldness, and his willingness to take on the powerful entities that seem to have bought control of our political process.

Clinton got to where she is by playing the conventional insider political game, and doing it well.  She built her resume, gained experience and qualifications and name recognition, cultivated the key players in the Democratic party, raised money for the party (and herself), and avoided taking potentially controversial positions.  She maneuvered herself to be the clear party choice, and her positions mirror those of the mainstream party.  So one problem she faces is that when Sanders accuses her of being an Establishment candidate, he is basically correct.

But the bigger problem she faces is how she has responded to Sanders' campaign.  When Sanders makes bold promises of single-payer health plans and free college tuition, Clinton's response is to say, "No, that is not realistic, you are not going to get those things.  I will get you something else. It won't be as nice, but I can get it for you.  No, I can't tell you what it will be."  That simply does not excite people. 

And it also raises a few questions: 1) If you truly believe in those things, why won't you even try to get them?  Do you really believe in those things?  2) If you don't ask for them, you will never get them.  The Republicans will likely oppose anything that a Democratic President proposes, no matter how moderate it is.  Why start off by compromising your real position when the Republicans will oppose it anyway?  You might as well go after what you really want. 3) What will you actually ask for?  What kind of bargaining leverage will you have, particularly if you have already given up the moral high ground?

Another approach that Clinton has taken is to try to discredit Sanders.  First, she built on the above line of reasoning by essentially accusing him of being naive and unsophisticated on how Washington D.C. really works. This one would make sense against someone like Obama in 2008, or maybe Bobby Jindal or Carly Fiorina, but it is simply weird to make that accusation against someone who was in the House of Representatives from 1990 to 2006 and in the Senate since 2006.

She doubled down on this by focusing on foreign policy, which she considers a strength of hers from being Secretary of State.  But she did this by invoking the name of Henry Kissinger, one of the most Establishment figures there is.  In other words, she just confirmed again what Sanders was accusing her of.  Sanders response was simple: "I don't like Kissinger and his policies, and I am going to do something different."

She tried a light version of the Swift Boat attack, by having John Lewis say he never saw Sanders during the civil rights movement.  Again, Lewis is now part of the Democratic Party Establishment, so that again confirmed Sanders' position. And then, given that Sanders' participation in the civil rights movement was pretty clear, Lewis backed down from the implications of his statement.  And this came just after another Establishment figure, Madeleine Albright, had to back down from her statement in support of Clinton (in which she basically said that women who vote for Sanders would burn in hell).

Clinton's response to Sanders has been: "Look, all the really important people, the people you should listen to, the Establishment people, say you should support me."  Not only does this just confirm what Sanders has been saying, the way that Clinton used them has been incredibly inept.  Albright, Lewis and Gloria Steinem (who I think may be sort of part of the Establishment now, but I'm not sure) all seemed to annoy potential Sanders voters more than persuade them to switch to Clinton, and all of them issued apologies or "clarifications" of their remarks.  So that did not work well for Clinton.

Clinton has run a strong conventional campaign, and simply deterred or buried all of the potential conventional opponents, but Sanders is not a conventional opponent, and she seems to be at a loss how to deal with him effectively.  This raises some concerns about how she would do in the general election, depending on who the Republicans eventually nominate.  Clinton may be okay against a conventional opponent, like Jeb Bush.  But given her flailing response to Sanders, how well she could deal with the unconventional but media-savvy Donald Trump is unclear. 

Obama managed to excite people with his soaring rhetoric and inspirational message, while simultaneously not scaring Wall Street and the Democratic Establishment.  That is a difficult maneuver to pull off, and Clinton has not managed to do it.  (Neither did Al Gore or John Kerry, despite their qualifications.) Sanders has not done it either, but he isn't trying to. 

If Clinton wants to solidly win the nomination (without resorting to things like pre-pledged "superdelegates" that will turn off many potential voters), she is going to have to step up the quality of her campaign. So far, her attempts to make Sanders look bad have largely backfired on her.  She should stop those, and focus on making herself look good.