The Day Hillary Lost

It's hard to stay out of political waters when they are so inviting...

Much is being said today about the reasons why Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination for president.  In a just-published campaign obit that posits Clinton will quit the race on Friday (really, so soon?), ABC News suggests that all was smooth sailing for HRC until October 31 of last year, a date they label "The Turning Point":

"Clinton had survived nearly the entire year as the Democratic frontrunner and none of her opponents seemed to be gaining major traction.  But that trend was about to change.

At a Halloween debate, chinks in Clinton's armor appeared.

Challenged sharply by Obama and Edwards on Iraq, free trade and illegal immigration, Clinton said a New York State proposal supported by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants "makes a lot of sense".

Critics and the other candidates pounced and Clinton later admitted she "wasn't at (her) best during the debate."

This is a common narrative for Hillary's doomed campaign, that all had gone well until that debate.  In truth, Hillary lost her race months earlier, on February 17, 2007, when she gave scores of Democratic voters the finger.  From the NY Times, the day after:

"One of the most important decisions that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton made about her bid for the presidency came late last year when she ended a debate in her camp over whether she should repudiate her 2002 vote authorizing military action in Iraq.

Several advisers, friends and donors said in interviews that they had urged her to call her vote a mistake in order to appease antiwar Democrats, who play a critical role in the nominating process. Yet Mrs. Clinton herself, backed by another faction, never wanted to apologize — even if she viewed the war as a mistake — arguing that an apology would be a gimmick.

In the end, she settled on language that was similar to Senator John Kerry’s when he was the Democratic nominee in 2004: that if she had known in 2002 what she knows now about Iraqi weaponry, she would never have voted for the Senate resolution authorizing force.

Yet antiwar anger has festered, and yesterday morning Mrs. Clinton rolled out a new response to those demanding contrition: She said she was willing to lose support from voters rather than make an apology she did not believe in.

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” (emphasis mine) Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Her decision not to apologize is regarded so seriously within her campaign that some advisers believe it will be remembered as a turning point in the race: either ultimately galvanizing voters against her (if she loses the nomination), or highlighting her resolve and her willingness to buck Democratic conventional wisdom (if she wins)."

Mark Penn and the Clintons believed that a woman had to constantly project strength in order to be taken seriously for the job of Commander in Chief.  They decided that the nomination was such a lock that they could have a "Sister Souljah" moment with the party's anti-war base.  They miscalculated many times in this campaign, from blowing off caucuses to not thinking past Super Tuesday, but the day they decided to tell Democrats who believed strongly that the authorization vote was a tragic mistake that they should find another candidate was the day Hillary lost the race.

It just took nearly 16 months to make it official.

Comments

[Chris]

I think you're absolutely correct, AJ. Of all the reasons I found her campaign unappealing, it was her refusal to apologize for that vote that soured me the most. By the way, you meant Feb. 17, 2007, right?

[AJ Schnack]

Ah, yes, duly changed. Thanks!