Michelle Cottle has a must-read piece over at The New Republic that lays out just what went wrong inside the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2008.

“Bottom line: I just don’t think she was hungry enough for it in the beginning. It wasn’t really until the ten-in-a-row loss that she started doing stuff like Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart.”

I agree totally. From the outset, I believe the Clinton campaign had a “there is no way we can lose” attitude, and it cost her the race. They planned the entire campaign poorly from the start, not focusing on things that Obama did like fundraising, grass-roots organization, and voter mobilization.

Once the campaign realized what was happening, and just how much of a buzz that Obama was creating, it was entirely too late. They never planned to have to combat a campaign like that of Obama’s, all the while thinking her nomination was inevitable. Her staff was not ready, her supporters were not ready, and her funding relied far too much on Democratic big-whigs instead of the American people.

The negative attacks hurt her far more than they helped, and only solidified the fact that she was down and down big. Even a 41 point win in West Virginia immediately got trumped by the John Edwards endorsement and caused an further flood of superdelegates to go against her.

I will admit that when she announced her candidacy, I too thought that she would have no problems winning the nomination. I was well aware of and a supporter of Barack Obama at the time, but I never thought Obama would be able to do the things he is doing.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign have proven that nothing is a sure thing and that you always have to plan for the unexpected, cause it just might come back to haunt you if you don’t.