Clinton's Post-Mortem

It's perhaps a bit premature to write Hillary Clinton's political obituary, but that hasn't stopped members of the media from doing so. Yesterday Time magazine's Karen Tumulty published a pretty thorough list of "The Five Mistakes Clinton Made."

Analyses like Tumulty's tend to focus on the tactical errors committed by camp Clinton: they didn't devote enough resources to caucus states, didn't plan beyond Super Tuesday, didn't build a small donor fundraising base. All true, but focusing on the tactical errors alone obscures the substantive reasons why many Democrats turned away from Clinton's campaign.

The biggest factor that doomed Clinton, from day one, was Iraq. Her vote for the war and subsequent lack of apology cost her the support of a huge segment of the party that flocked to Obama (and, early on, Edwards) and tarnished her brand from the very beginning. That vote, more than any other, reflected the hawkishness, caution and calculation that soured many Democrats on Clinton and hurt her with young voters, new voters, independent voters, etc.

Her vote for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution on Iran, back in late September, further complicated matters for Clinton and redirected attention toward her original war vote. Obama was able to convincingly argue, "When I'm your nominee, my opponent won't be able to say that I supported this war in Iraq; or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran." In Iowa, in particular, that line frequently drew the loudest cheers during Obama's stump speech. Even as the election turned primarily to domestic issues, Iraq remained an albatross around Clinton's neck.

We still don't know quite why she voted the way she did. Like many in the Clinton Administration, she may have really believed that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs and posed a clear and present danger that only military force could right. But no doubt there was an element of politics at play as well. Mark Penn and others believed that, as a woman, Clinton needed to look "tough" in order to pass the commander-in-chief threshold. In the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Clinton positioned herself as a "quasi-Margaret Thatcher." As the war grew ever more unpopular, foreign policy advisers like Richard Holbrooke bizarrely claimed that Clinton had voted to "to empower the President to avoid war."

The reasons for the vote kept changing. But the net effect remained the same. Had she broken with the political tide and opposed the war from the beginning--as Obama did--Clinton would very likely be the Democratic nominee.

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