Clinton Era Ends

Much speculation about Hillary as Obama's VP. I doubt it. Who would want to become president and have a former president -- let alone Bill Clinton -- roaming the hallways with nothing to do? Some comedian predicted that Obama would come to work one day and find Billy Jeff's tricked out El Camino in the Presidential parking space.

It will be interesting to read all the post mortems about how Hillary managed to lose to a neophyte like Obama. A case could be made that Bill deserves a big chunk of blame, although there will be plenty to go around. I think the Clinton campaign failed on two levels.

First, they thought they had a lock on the nomination based on a basically party-insider, top-down approach. That led them to blow a lot of money early, on the presumption that the decision would come early; that caused money problems later when things didn't go as planned. The same over-confidence also led them to kiss off the caucus states, which is where Obama got his delegate lead and his momentum. The final firewall was supposed to be the insider Super Delegates, but, wishing to remain insiders, they'd drifted toward the New Guy by the time they could have made a difference; what made it worse was that those Super Delegates did not have to depend on being lucky in their guess about the nominee, because they could determine it themselves.

Second, the Clinton campaign underestimated the singularly race-based character of the black vote, and that caused them huge problems in Southern states with large black voting populations. In terms of identity politics, race turned out to be far more potent than gender, and all the credits the Clintons thought they had safely banked among blacks didn't amount to much, after all. A few ill-chosen remarks by Bill was all it took to turn a tide that was looking for any excuse to turn.

Byron