Clinton Campaign Goes on Tilt as a Result of Dead Heat With Sanders in Iowa [View all]

[ErisDiscordia]

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/clinton-campaign-goes-on-tilt-as-a-result-of-dead-heat-with-sanders-in-iowa.html

The New York Times, despite its fealty to the Clinton camp, caught its operatives at a vulnerable moment as the Iowa caucus results rolled in. And the picture that emerges is consistent with that of Hillary herself: elitist, out of touch with the needs of actual voters and presumptuous about what it ought to take to win them over.

The story, Hillary Clinton Campaign, Unnerved by Iowa, Braces for New Hampshire, at points reads like self-parody. And you can see similarly rattled nerves elsewhere. Brookings, which likes to depict itself as detached, had as its lead story in its AM email, “How Hillary Can Move Past Iowa,” with the subhead, “After Iowa, Hillary should take advice from the “West Wing” and skip New Hampshire.” Sounds a tad desperate, no?

We’ll go through the New York Times story in detail. The opening paragraphs depict Clinton staff and supporters expecting a comfortable win of several percentage points and Clinton having prepared only a victory speech that focused on Republicans. As the results streamed in, the mood darkened:

The outcome in Iowa — which at least until Tuesday afternoon appeared to be effectively a tie with a far left senator from a small New England state — dealt a jolting psychological blow to the Clinton campaign, leaving volunteers, donors and aides confused throughout the night, and then crestfallen. They had hoped that the former secretary of state would garner a decisive victory here and put to rest any doubts about her strength as a candidate.

You can see the Clinton blind spots on display. The “former secretary of state” isn’t merely elegant variation in drafting. The Clinton machine has been unwilling to see Sanders as more than an upstart, even as his gains in polling have been showing otherwise. They are invested in the SS Clinton: Hillary as national, indeed international figure for over two decades, versus Sanders as a pol from a the frosty hinterlands. And “far left” translates into “unsound” and “unable to get big corporate backing.”

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