What Went Wrong?
June 6, 2008
With Hillary Clinton’s long, tough battle at an end, the questions swirl: What, if anything, did she do wrong? What was it that made her competitor more appealing in the end? And how will history remember her? Daria Roithmayr of the USC Gould School, an expert on feminist issues and the role of race in politics, offers her analysis.
Q: Does Clinton’s presidential run have an impact in terms of the women’s movement?
A: Of course it does. I think the fact that we had such a strong female candidate in the Democratic primary demonstrates that women can be quite formidable competitors in politics.
Q: Clinton took a lot of heat for continuing her campaign into the summer. Will this affect the historic legacy of her run?
A: I don’t think so. The Clintons have always been known for fighting a very hard fight, and the fact that she didn’t get out and that she hasn’t conceded is consistent with that.
I think there are other things that might diminish her image: some of her strategic choices in the primaries, the way in which she played race, the reference to Robert Kennedy, the decision to go back on her agreement with regard to Florida and Michigan.
But I actually think that people who support Hillary Clinton aren’t going to change their minds; they’re going to see this as further evidence of her being a hard fighter. And those who didn’t like her will continue to not like her. Maybe there will be some change at the margins, but I don’t think so.
Q: Are there ways Clinton could or should have reached out to female voters? Did she make mistakes in strategy?
A: She should have learned to play the caucus game. Barack Obama beat her in caucus states, and he beat her in states that Democrats don’t traditionally have a strong voter turnout in. I don’t know that she could have improved her “get out the vote” campaign, because she didn’t have the charisma to increase the vote that he did. But she definitely could have done better in caucus states.
She could have chosen to run at a different time. I don’t think being an experienced candidate had the cachet in this race that it might have had in many other races.
And then, finally, she rested too much on the sense that this was her turn and that she was entitled, and as a result she didn’t make the case as effectively as she might have. The way she played the experience card was, “I’ve earned it, it’s my turn,” instead of showing her experience as an insider and how it could have paid off. The “three o’clock in the morning” ad was as good as she got. She needed more message than that, and she didn’t have it.
Q: Why didn’t the “experience” message work in this particular election year? Why didn’t the electorate respond to it?
A: This election is about change. Even John McCain is trying to push the message about change now, because he recognized that people are pretty fed up with the Bush administration, and the war is a big part of that.
Experience doesn’t play in quite the same way it normally would, especially because the country’s experience with the Clintons was of a fairly divisive, adversarial White House. You can imagine circumstances in which that would have played well. But the country seems hungry for a unifier and a fresh voice. So Obama is the right messenger at the right time.