Clinton's Changes Wouldn't Have Won Her The Race

Posted by Ashish on 05.12.2008

Why all of Clinton's recent campaign changes wouldn't have changed the final result...

There is a lot of talk recently that Hillary Clinton became a stronger candidate in the last few weeks, particularly in Pennsylvania, and that had she been that way from the start, she would have won. That's a pretty ridiculous claim.

Clinton did better in states like PA and OH because she played to the right and tried to pander to lower income, uneducated voters with things like her NAFTA position and the gax tax holiday. She also made statements like threatening to "obliterate" Iran to try and get many Republicans, knowing that they were following the Obama/Clinton race too and were already being told to vote for her by Rush Limbaugh, to come out and vote for her. She went to the right on guns, war, and liberalism in general as a final attempt to cast herself as something she wasn't -- a conservative warrior for blue collar America. How would this have gone over in California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, etc.? The proof is in a SurveyUSA poll done last week that showed that had California voted today, Obama would have won by six points. Another poll done last week also showed that Obama would have won New Jersey if that state voted today.

The message she ran on in OH and PA would have lost her states like California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, etc. You can't just change your entire message depending on what state you're in. You can make minor changes here and there, but you have to stick to a central theme. Clinton tried to completely reinvent herself over and over again and it eventually caught up with her. One of the many reasons she lost is because she never stuck with a central message. People pick Presidents based on their overall vision, not their state-by-state specifics. Obama, for better or worse, stuck with the exact same message from pre-Iowa until now. Clinton didn't.