May 23, 2007
On Hillary, The Memo, And Iowa
Some thoughts, after a deep breath:
1. "Skipping Iowa:" It's not an absurd strategy. HRC is strong in NH and SC; her support seems to be deep enough in those two states. John Edwards has lived in Iowa since the last campaign. (Yes, that's a trademarked sentence by now, but it's true). Hard to see Iowans deserting him en masse. The war is so key.
2 But it's not good strategy. The verb "skip" is especially egregious. You never skip states, even when you're skipping states. Just bad form to say it. The point of memo, which we haven't seen and which the Clinton team would not make available, was to suggest that Clinton not spend as much time or money in Iowa as in the other early states.
3. The question of who leaked this to the AP is important and not small. Memos like this are equivalent to top-secret military planning orders. The distribution lists are very, very small, and memos like this never fall into the hands of reporters by accident.
4. Did someone close to Clinton leak the memo in order to embarass Mike Henry? To embarass the campaign? To force the campaign to participate in Iowa? Did a donor get a hold of it and leak it to the AP?
5. This is a one-week story at most. Votes permitting, HRC is headed to Iowa this weekend. She'll probably have a joke ready about the memo. (She will in Iowa for the next three weekends, in fact.) And then it will be forgotten by everyone except for us national campaign reporters who love to speculate about the inner workings of the Clinton Kremlin.
Posted at 03:12 PM
Comments
It's not so much that Edwards has lived in Iowa since 2004, it's that Edwards' campaign impresses Iowans, even after all this time.
Clinton would lose Iowa regardless of Edwards' presence in the race-- Iowa may not be as diverse as the rest of the nation, but it appears to continue to correctly measure the national pulse of Hillary's campaign: shrill, manipulative, and arrogant.
Who wants more of the same?
Joe Justice | 05.23.07 03:30 PM
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It looks like Clinton's campaign is trying to lower expectations. Already. Which is not something you do when you're in a good position.
Rob Thompson | 05.23.07 03:44 PM
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RE: Point #5, that's all well and good and I look forward to reading all the campaign coverage memoirs, or at least using them as bookends-- but will knowing about the Clinton Kremlin shed any light on how Senator Clinton might govern the country? I remember plenty of stories about the dream team of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes back in 2000, but I doubt that inside-baseball coverage would have helped anyone predict that come 2007 President Bush would be stuck in a bunker defending Alberto Gonzales with no domestic policy achievements and a war that Americans have rejected.
Patience | 05.23.07 04:10 PM
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