Her first steps set stage for fall

Campaign wasted momentum, money, analysts say

WASHINGTON - At a social event last spring at the home of Mark Penn, then Hillary Clinton's chief strategist and one of the most prominent and well-compensated Democratic consultants in the business, a fellow Democrat wondered aloud if freshman Senator Barack Obama might wrest the nomination from the well-connected New York senator.

Penn, the dinner guest said, waved his hand dismissively. "Flash in the pan," Penn said, adding that the Clinton campaign saw former North Carolina senator John Edwards as her biggest challenge.

Indeed, few at that time expected that Obama would overcome the political and financial head start the wife of the former president appeared to have at that phase of the campaign, even though Obama had already drawn exuberant crowds in early primary states. But Penn's offhand remark reveals the mistakes made by a Clinton campaign that failed to take Obama's candidacy - or his supporters - seriously enough at the outset, and did not prepare for the long-haul fight Obama was ready to wage for the nomination, according to political specialists.

Last night, Clinton hinted that her campaign had come far but not far enough. Still, she remained reso lute, declaring her pride in the broad support she had won among Democratic voters across the country. She said she wanted to ponder her next step, and appealed to her supporters to let her know what they want her to do.

Yet it was a far cry from the beginning of the campaign, when Clinton and her campaign staff were portraying her as the inevitable choice for Democrats. The decision to stress her experience and stature in the party played directly into Obama's plan to portray her as too tied to the system.

Meanwhile, her decision to spend most of her war chest early, hoping to knock out rivals in the first primaries, left her ill prepared for a long campaign.

"They never saw this coming," said Steve Rabinowitz, a veteran of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign who was sympathetic to Hillary Clinton's candidacy. Certain that the nomination would be virtually sewn up early, "they literally ignored everything except New Hampshire, and to a tiny extent, South Carolina. There was never any catching up," Rabinowitz said.

She spent heavily on a paid staff of more than 350 people last summer and doled out more than $1.3 million to 10 types of consultants to guide her on such campaign tasks as media relations, fund-raising, and voter outreach. Her campaign staff deluged media in-boxes with lopsided polling numbers showing an easy path to the nomination, creating sky-high expectations that were quickly dashed when the voting started.

Campaigning in New Hampshire in February 2007, the New York senator exuded confidence - laying out clearly her plans for the country but failing to end her sessions by asking Granite State residents for their votes, as back-of-the-pack candidates humbly do. She did little to dispel the idea put forward by many media organizations that she was the front-runner, even though many months remained before a single caucus or primary vote would be cast.

African-American voters, loyal to former President Bill Clinton and wary of backing a black candidate they liked but weren't sure could win, also gave Hillary Clinton high marks in polls, cementing the impression that she was unstoppable.

But as Clinton was reveling in the excitement surrounding her historic candidacy, Obama, too, was hard at work. He drew equally large crowds in New Hampshire - especially from young people, who would become not only a critical part of Obama's expanding base but a key source of the party's growing registration numbers.

And while the Clinton campaign was brushing off Obama's rock-star reception as a temporary flirtation among a minority of Democrats attracted to a new face in politics, Obama was using the Internet to build networks of staff and volunteers across the country. He anticipated contests well beyond the first few primaries and caucuses that Clinton supporters believed would settle the nomination early.

In effect, her strategy was built on the premise that the nomination was hers to lose. "The entire process was set up with the expectation that Hillary was going to be the nominee," said Jamal Simmons, an Obama supporter who also worked on the 1992 Clinton campaign.

The plan backfired - badly.

Clinton placed third in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, upending the central premise of her campaign strategy and making her appear weaker. Scrambling for a comeback in New Hampshire the following week, Clinton scored a narrow, 2-percentage-point win there - but she had lost her aura of invincibility.

African-Americans in South Carolina, convinced by Obama's victory in overwhelmingly white Iowa that he could indeed win the nomination, moved to him in droves, delivering a resounding defeat to Clinton there on Jan. 26.

Suddenly, the New York senator was faced with the prospect of a much longer battle.

It was a fight, analysts say, Clinton was not well prepared to wage. Her campaign had not set up grass-roots organizations in states that came after the initial four contests, analysts said, and was counting on her superior name recognition to carry her to victory in the Super Tuesday contests.

On Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, while Obama concentrated on building support in smaller states with caucus systems, where he could take advantage of his more enthusiastic backers, Clinton set her sights on the big, traditionally Democratic states. She won most of the biggest voting that day - including California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts - but ended up no better than even with Obama in delegates.

The Democrats' proportional system of awarding delegates gives special advantages to candidates who win states by large margins - and Obama cleaned up in the smaller states that Clinton had ignored while remaining close enough in the larger ones to minimize her gains in delegates there.

Super Tuesday was followed by a string of primaries in states with favorable conditions for Obama - from large black populations to upscale white liberals. His victories in those states not only gave him a lead in pledged delegates that he did not relinquish, but also shattered the aura of inevitability that Clinton had tried to create.

Too late, Clinton sought to change her image from presumptive nominee to underdog, but her campaign staff, heavy with a seasoned professional staff, found it hard to shift course, political specialists said.

Her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, resigned, and Penn, too, was eventually pushed aside. But they were replaced by similar figures - party activists with decades-long ties to the Clintons.

"There was a lot of weight," Simmons said. "It was like a battleship. It would roll over everything in its path, but when it had to change direction, it was pretty tough to push over."

More damaging, critics say, is that the veteran staff was operating from an old playbook, misreading the mood of the country and the new makeup of a 21st-century Democratic electorate.

With her promises to wage war on the enemy - be it Republicans, pharmaceutical companies, or oil interests - Clinton made a textbook appeal to the Democratic Party of old: working-class white Americans, union members, and senior citizens. Obama, however, picked up on the physical and emotional exhaustion many Americans felt after the bitterly partisan Bush and Clinton years, and built a new Democratic coalition among young, educated, and independent voters.

Obama had been to 30 states to campaign for fellow Democrats in 2006, and developed a keen sense of the country's mood, analysts said. Clinton, who was obliged to concentrate on her own reelection in New York, traveled to only 14 states to campaign for fellow Democrats in 2006, and did not pick up on the direction the country was headed politically, they said.

"They didn't understand how much politics has changed since the 1990s. They were slow to use the Internet and the new media. Their understanding of the new coalition was imperfect," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network and a veteran of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.

Clinton had assumed that her status as a woman running against a field of men would automatically install her as the agent of change in the race. But instead, her repeated references to her husband's administration - and the presence of an African-American in the race - made her look at times like a fixture of the old Washington that Obama derided daily on the campaign trail.

"It's a curse and a blessing at the same time to be so connected to several administrations in the White House, especially if you just happen to be the wife of that former president," said Lamell McMorris, a Democratic strategist who backed Obama in the primaries. "If there was a calculated mistake, it was that she did not effectively present herself as fresh and new. The thing that's resonating with the American people right now is freshness, a new approach."

Rabinowitz agrees.

The moment Obama became viable, he said, "I couldn't help thinking about the irony that she had become the establishment candidate. All kinds of women of her generation still can't believe it."