It is really hard to imagine that a candidate with the last name of Clinton would have trouble raising money for a major, national political campaign. However, according to Mark Penn, who was a top adviser for the Clinton campaign, money may have been the primary factor in Hillary Clinton’s loss.

While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.

One of the biggest mistakes that I believe the Clinton campaign made was not organizing enough in the states that they deemed “not critical.” Even right before Super Tuesday, Feb 5th, the Clinton campaign did not even have offices and staff in many states that have now proved to be decisive states in the Obama victory.

I don’t necessarily agree with Penn that money was the cause of the loss, simply because I believe they thought it would truly be over right after Super Tuesday.

I tend to place the blame a little more on the lack of organization, which by the time they realized the mistake, it was too late to rebound from it. Obviously, having great organization in a campaign takes loads of money to do right, but I don’t think it was the money so much as it was the utter avoidance of such organization.

I can see how the Clinton’s may have overlooked the need to build a campaign that would last almost 15 months, as Barack Obama was clearly a major underdog in this race. However, if anybody should know the “anything can happen” mantra, it is the Clinton’s and somewhere in the back of somebody’s mind, that though should have been swimming around.

Ultimately, I think the loss can be attributed to several factors, and money may very well be one of those.

Share This Post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • NewsVine
  • Technorati
  • bodytext
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Reddit