2/21/2008

The Maginot Line

...in Paris, Texas, presumably.
The ineptitude of the Clinton campaign reaches the Grauniad, which itself has a less than perfect record at interfering in U.S. elections.
I like this extract:
Why have the Clintons campaigned so poorly in this election? It may just be that they were out-organised - and the story then is how a solitary junior senator from Illinois managed to put together such an accomplished political organisation from scratch. But another reason is that the Clintons have never fought a primary like this one. Hillary barely faced a contest in the primary for her New York senate seat in 2000. For Bill, 1992 was a long time ago - and Paul Tsongas was no Barack Obama.
There's more:

The spin coming from the Clinton campaign last night was that she was out-spent by Obama in Wisconsin. Well, duh. They are kidding themselves if they think it was about money - although the fact that Obama has more money is in his favour.

What get's me is that this is worse than Rudolf Giuliani's catastrophic decision not to campaign in New Hampshire and stake everything on winner-takes-all Florida. For one thing, the lesson ought to be fresh in everyone's mind.
Under Soviet occupation, the secret police in places like Czechoslovakia didn't need to be subtle when following people around. They just got a couple of heavies to loom menacingly. It seems that something like this has been going through the group-think minds of the Clinton campaign, living in their bubble for the past year.
They assumed that no one could outspend them, or counter the "it's time for a woman!" card. They assumed that the dirty tricks would work. They ignored the lessons, which to be fair even the mainstream media appears to have learned from the Swiftboat veterans affair and Rathergate in 2004.
Zugswang!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You'd better be right about this. It really would be awful if Clinton wins.

Zugswang, heh.