Karen Tumulty of Time detailed The Five Mistakes Clinton Made that included 2. She didn’t master the rules:
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state’s 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified and let Penn know it. “How can it possibly be,” Ickes asked, “that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn’t understand proportional allocation?” And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories.
First reaction: given the croynism of the Bush administration, the notion of another president who picks a “team primarily for their loyalty” should give us all pause (e.g., the Harriet Miers near-debacle, not to mention Alberto Gonzalez and a number of others).
Second reaction:1 if she truly can’t pick top campaign advisers who understand the electoral process, then surely she shouldn’t be picking a cabinet.
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May 11th, 2024 at 6:33 pm
Well, if she does not understand the electoral process, we’ll never get to find out, will we?
May 11th, 2024 at 7:16 pm
May 11th, 2024 at 11:32 pm
[...] Richard T. Cahill Jr. wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt Karen Tumulty of Time detailed The Five Mistakes Clinton Made that included 2. She didn’t master the rules: Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up a [...]