Right now on the front page of MyDD, one can read the host of this site opining:
"One RCB [sic*] vote changed everything."
This analysis can only be described as either willfully ignorant or deliberately inflammatory -- because no single vote or event changed the outcome of this Democratic contest.
Such unitary theories are by nature reductive and misleading. As far as I can see, the only point of making such a statement is to generate false pity for the losing candidate, and to instigate phony theories that the election was somehow stolen from the candidate who once held all the advantages and all the cards.
That contest was won fair and square by Barack Obama -- with a lot of help from the inept Clinton campaign. So let me try to list just a few of the votes and other events which collectively "changed everything" for Hillary Clinton -- changed her candidacy from one of inevitability, to one that has embarrassed many who once supported both her and her husband's political careers...
1) Hillary voting to give Bush the power to wage a falsely-justified war;
2) Hillary relying on tired establishment figures such as Mark Penn, Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe and Howard Wolfson to steer her strategy and message;
3) Hillary deciding to neglect the Iowa caucuses, until it was too late, giving Obama a huge national burst of publicity and momentum;
More after the jump...
3) Hillary failing to prepare for the possibility that the contest would not be decided by the votes cast on Super Tuesday;
4) Hillary failing to comprehend the new nature of campaign fundraising in the internet era, until it was too late;
5) Hillary losing eleven straight votes in states after Super Tuesday;
6) Hillary failing, despite her decades in politics, to understand the importance of a robust 50-state grassroots strategy;
7) Hillary refusing to recognize that caucus voters send delegates to the Democratic National Convention, too;
8) Hillary committing gaffe after gaffe (from Tuzla to RFK) which made Obama's job much easier than it needed to be;
9) Hillary going negative on Obama early and often, causing even some of her own supporters (such as the editorial board at the New York Times, which endorsed her) to call on her to cool her rhetoric -- calls she ignored, further alienating core voters;
10) Hillary using divisive code words and faux-populist posturing in an attempt to divide the Democratic party against itself for her own gain, thus alienating superdelegates, including those on the Rules committee;
11) Hillary losing two out of three contests to an opponent she wrongly underestimated;
12) And most importantly, the millions and millions of votes cast for Barack Obama "changed everything" -- more, by any rational and unbiased measure, than were received by Clinton.
One could go on and on with such examples. Bottom line: No "one vote" changed everything. A parade of miscalculations, gaffes, divisive actions, coupled with an laurel-sitting overconfidence, combined with millions of votes to "change everything."
It stuns me, as someone who bought an early copy of Crashing the Gates, that anyone could believe that any one event could singlehandedly bring down the Clinton juggernaut. It required two-plus years of missteps by Clinton, and a brilliant campaign by Obama, to come to this ending.
It's one which leaves this lifelong Democrat perfectly satisfied with our candidate for November, and confident that the better and more popular candidate prevailed.
--- --- ---UPDATE: Oh, and I'll add one more factor, #13: Hillary trashing "activists" (not sure if that includes people who advocate gate-crashing or not).
--- --- ---* It's RBC -- Rules and Bylaws Committee -- not RCB.
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