The damage Hillary! did to her own campaign at the debate the night before Halloween is even greater than previous thought, and at the time people were saying she choked.
Its always been an established fact: the more Hillary! opens her mouth and people focus on her, and the higher her disapproval ratings and the lower her support. Oddly enough, that was also true of Kerry and Gore (though not Bill Clinton).
Is it because Dems usually pick a stiff, with the exception of Bill, or is it also liberal issues and causes? Or the “solutions” to the problems we’re told we have by Democrats, solutions usually involving government take-over of something or other and the need for more money to do it. These types of things are most dear to the hearts of lefties, and not that important to the American public at large. In fact just the opposite, usually.
If a Democrat stays out of sight and quiet long enough, people forget that and their popularity rises. Conversely, President Bush is most popular when he is most visible and vocal, and it was the same when he was campaigning, with the sole exception of ’06. He is campaigning for Republicans right now and doing well, in fact.
Its probably equal parts condescension and elitism as much as the unpopular stands Democrats take on many issues.
And, as per that theory, Hillary! has dug herself a hole and needs to buy a whole lotta shovels to dig her way deeper out.
Campaign call reveals Clinton debate concern
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) top advisers, doing damage control after the candidate’s debate performance Tuesday, told supporters on a conference call Wednesday that the campaign needed more money to fight back.
Mark Penn, Clinton’s senior strategist and pollster, and Jonathan Mantz, the campaign’s finance director, told the supporters on the call, which The Hill listened to in its entirety, that they expect attacks from Clinton’s rivals to continue, and she will need the financial resources to deflect their attacks.
Clinton came under withering assault in the Philadelphia debate, and some supporters on the call agreed with analysts that she stumbled.
“I wouldn’t say she lost her cool,” one caller said. “But I would say she lost her footing.”
The caller addded that Clinton’s response to questions about records from her time in the White House that have been sealed by the National Archives “made me roll my eyes.”
The criticisms followed Penn’s assertion that Clinton was “unflappable.” He also said criticisms from Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) would backfire and that he was already “detecting some backlash,” particularly among female voters.
Sheesh
At this rate, it would be a break in the bad news cycle if Hillary! DID come out with a sex scandal.
At least it would get the press off her bad policy and debate performances!
I think we’re going to hear a lot of this in the next few days:
While one supporter voiced his concern that the Clinton campaign is not devoting enough money and staff to Iowa, lagging behind Obama, most supporters who commented on the call expressed their displeasure with what they saw as the moderators’ focus on Clinton.
One caller from Oklahoma City said that “the questions … were designed to incite a brawl,” and that Russert’s and Brian Williams’s moderating was “an abdication of journalistic responsibility.”
Another said Russert “should be shot,” before quickly adding that she shouldn’t say that on a conference call.
Penn and Mantz said they were hearing a lot of the same sentiment from other supporters, but they do not plan to engage the media or the debate’s moderators.
“We’re not challenging the media on that, but the sentiment you’ve expressed is obviously one I’ve heard,” Penn said.
Complaints about how the mean men all picked on poor Hillary! The moderators weren’t fair! All the other candidates ganged up on her!
That’s what happens when a campaign gets lop-sided: the underdog barracudas and also-ran pirannas start going after the big fish in a pack, because if she runs away with the race they are all dead. So the hope is to get some of her blood in the water and hope the sharks of unpopularity and negative news stories will bite off huge, fleshy chunks of poll numbers, draining the life blood of campaign cash she can’t replace as her stench of failure dries up donors, leaving her unprotected from the harpoons of attack ads, stabbing into her huge, bloated and slow moving campaign, gasping for the air of good press, but instead drowning in a sea of bad news cycles, each of which decreases her strength exponentially, until she is a torn, bloodied, lifeless corpse decaying on the beach of defeat while the sand-crabs of regret gnaw at her rotting carcass.
Now that’s what I call inevitability.
more at Captain’s Quarters: Hillary Stumbles, Needs More Cash: Advisors