The American Spectator

AmSpecBlog

Re: It's Your Strategists, Stupid

By W. James Antle, III on 2.13.08 @ 2:17PM

While I woudn't count Hillary out yet -- she could certainly still come back and win the nomination -- two things about this "analysis" jump out at me.

The first is just standard campaign boilerplate, but it still says a lot about the Clinton camp's arrogance: "The reason Hillary is so strong in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania is that her message of delivering solutions resonates strongly with voters in those states." Voters in Connecticut, Virginia, Kansas, Utah, Maryland, Nebraska, D.C., Delaware, Montana, Alaska, etc. apparently don't care about solutions. They just care about niiice speeches.

The second is the trip down memory lane about Democratic nomination contests past. It's true that the candidate with the most delegates wins, but it's also worth noting that 1976, 1984, and 1992 were not two-way races while they were still competitive (the closest is 1984, since Jesse Jackson only won two primaries but was a factor in other states). It's interesting that they don't cite the 1988 example as well, as it might make their point even better -- except then the success rate of these Democratic nominees would drop from two out of three to one in two.

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