Special to the BusinessMirror

Let’s be blunt about it. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton had bungled her campaign to lose to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Clinton is the loser in three aspects of a political campaign: issue management (or message development and sustenance), fundraising and field operations.

While Obama had a simpler and sustainable message from the very start of the political campaign, Clinton had flip-flopping messages that tended more to confuse than illuminate the issues confronting the presidency.

Conveying the new politics of hope, Obama had talked about the message of change, of uniting the various racial strains to bring about political, economic and social changes in the United States.

He had spoken about an end to the Iraq War and bringing home the US forces there, an equally simpler and sustainable universal health care and ridding Washington of lobby groups, which, he believed, have been largely responsible for setting a different agenda in governance and policymaking.

While she and Obama have the same basic stand on major issues (they are both Democrats, anyway), Clinton, in contrast, had taken a different path in message development, choosing experience as her initial core message. She would be the chief executive and commander in chief, who would be ready since day one in office and would answer the phone at 3 a.m.

But this message and the ensuing persona her campaign had wanted to cultivate had disastrous effects, as the American public was led to believe that she was the establishment candidate.

Obama took an easy time to debunk Clinton’s message and said: “As the first lady, she only had tea with the leading dignitaries of the world and she has called it experience.” The electorate did not bite her message, as shown by her reverses in the Iowa and North Carolina primaries and the virtual deadlock after the February 5 “Super Tuesday,” where 27 states had simultaneous primaries and caucuses.

She was forced to change her core message and persona. Initially, she was the “fighter” in the mode of British leader Margaret Thatcher, a leader who exuded so much determination, courage and fortitude amid all odds. Later, she was the “champion of the working class” who drank beer and whisky with blue-collar workers, while Obama was the “elitist.”

Clinton had successes with those messages and personas, as shown by the support of blue-collar workers, the least educated and the elderly in several swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the hillbillies, too, in West Virginia and Kentucky, but it was too late.

Obama was ahead in pledged delegates, when, after the Super Tuesday, he had posted 12 consecutive victories, especially in the caucus states, which Clinton earlier ignored. Although she had won in several states in the later stages of the five-month political campaign, she did not have much chance to catch up with him.

In sum, Clinton had misjudged the temper of the times, the undergoing undercurrent, where millions of Americans were clamoring for change. Obama had a much better calculation and understanding of the current ferment, as he had crafted messages that the American public had long wanted to hear. In brief, Obama has much better political sense than Clinton.

In fundraising, the two presidential contenders had shown deeply contrasting styles. Clinton had the support of traditional and big-time party donors, who had flocked to her since the start of the campaign in the belief that her nomination would be a walk in the park, an inevitable consequence of her entitlement as the spouse of a former president. She typified the traditional way to fund a political campaign.

But Obama had shown better imagination in this area. Using the Internet, he had tapped the grassroots—the millions of supporters who had believed in his message of change and hope, asking them to contribute at least $25 each, which is the minimum amount under the federal law. His supporters had responded positively, providing him with a campaign kitty of at least $250 million, which matched Hillary’s in every state.

In the war of attrition that followed Super Tuesday, Obama’s fundraising prowess did him well. With huge cash, his campaign was outspending Hillary’s in every state. Clinton had ended her campaign flat broke with at least $30 million in debts to settle. In contrast, Obama is now preparing to engage John McCain, the Republican presumptive candidate, in the political campaign that will lead to the November 4 general elections.

In field operations, Clinton was dismal in every aspect of strategy and tactics. Her campaign was characterized by infighting among her key advisers and strategists. They could not settle on a single message or approach.

Mark Penn, the lobbyist who was the initial chief campaign strategist, was more of a carpetbagger than a knowledgeable strategist. Clinton had to fire him after discovering he was lobbying for a US treaty with Colombia, a treaty that Clinton herself opposes.

Penn was said to have been ignorant of the fact that the political campaign was not a winner-take-all situation but a proportion game, where every candidate gets a proportional number of pledged delegates on the basis of the number of votes he/she gets in every state.

Clinton did not have a sustainable post-Super Tuesday strategy. Believing that she would win after February 5, her campaign did not prepare for the long haul. Broke and limping, her campaign could not handle the 12 consecutive victories posted by Obama. This had allowed Obama to pad his lead in pledged delegates over Clinton, an eventuality that had telling effects later in the campaign.

Her insistence that she was the better candidate against McCain, as shown by what she considered a greater number of popular votes than Obama’s, did not merit positive response from the party “superdelegates,” or elected Democratic officials and party insiders, who later decided the nomination process by voting largely for Obama.

Her erratic mathematics to show she was leading Obama in popular votes had shown a dysfunctional campaign, which would twist facts and figures just to win the nomination. Democratic leaders were quick enough to remind Clinton that the nomination was not based on popular votes but on the number of pledged delegates a contender had.

Clinton’s handling of Michigan and Florida, the two states that held earlier primaries than scheduled and later punished by the Democratic leadership, was dismal. When she sensed she would have a hard time catching up with Obama, she pushed hard for the inclusion of the votes in the two rogue states, arguing that their voters should not be disenfranchised.

But Democratic superdelegates did not buy her arguments, as they had declared their support for Obama. They were turned off by her pesky persistence that no vote should be counted for Obama in Michigan because he did not enter his name in the ballot there. She was rebuffed when the party rules committee decided it would be inconceivable that no one in Michigan would vote for Obama. It was another case of error in judgment on Clinton’s part.

Had the Clinton campaign showed diligence and discovered earlier the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “Damned America” sermon, Obama would have been doomed—or finished—at the very start of the political campaign. But Clinton’s strategists, who were described as a bunch of “lazy, arrogant and cocky” officials who believed the nomination was hers for the taking, did not know Wright’s sermon until March, although it was posted on YouTube earlier.

This goes to the show the whole world of difference in the attitude of the two camps. The Clinton campaign was basically traditional, establishment-oriented and reactive, or even uncreative. Clinton had typified this attitude, as shown by her combative and ruthless style, slash-and-burn concept of politics, and scorched earth or fight-to-the-end mentality.

In contrast, Obama had demonstrated the lofty side of a political campaign. He has negated the classical and textbook approach, opting for the creative, unconventional and uncharted ways, and shown a deeper predilection for a noncombative approach. His was calmness before a storm.

He didn’t go to the extent of presenting himself as the better and more electable candidate against McCain, as what Clinton had done in vain. For him, the American public and the superdelegates knew better. In short, he is the better candidate, as reflected by his victory.

Despite Clinton’s initial advantages, Obama had defeated her in the long haul. His campaign was prescient enough to know and understand that the political campaign could last longer and they had prepared every inch for it. Clinton did not.

Obama is the giant slayer.

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