Home / News /

Has The Clinton Campaign Collapsed?

February 8, 2008 — Few pundits wrote off New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination before this year.  Fewer still expected that she’d fall behind in the money race with her opponent, Illinois Senator Barack Obama.  And I don’t think anyone said that she’d need to loan herself money to stay afloat.  But that’s what was reported in the news today.  

Of course the Clintons are still personally loaded, with assets in the seven-figure range.  But a $5 million self-loan seems more like a Romney move than one who was not only once the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nod, but for the Presidency as well.  Rumors that staffers are working without pay sounds like a campaign in decay.

The money woes are only likely to get worse.  People know that Obama’s haul last month was 2.5 times bigger than that of Clinton.  As the Campaign Finance Institute reported, Obama’s tapped into a vein of donors who have only made a “down payment” on a donation, contributing only a small amount.  While only 1/3^rd of his donors have contributed the legal limit, another third has given $200 or less.  At the same time, half of Clinton’s donors can’t contribute another penny.  Only 14 percent of her donors have coughed up the $200 or less, according to Jim Kuhnhenn and Beth Fouhy of the Associated Press in the story “Obama bullish; Clinton looks to March.”

The media has seemed to catch on to the fact that the upcoming state primaries don’t look too promising for the Clinton camp.  Most have sizeable African-American populations, liberal progressives that Obama appeals to, or are small states, where the New York Senator hasn’t fared as well this year.

The big state strategy that Hillary employed to capture that narrow delegate lead doesn’t seem like such a smart idea, given that the calendar shows very few large states on the horizon.  Sure Pennsylvania looks good for her, but Ohio and Texas are more likely to be wild cards.  Senator Obama’s ability to appeal simultaneously to party liberals and red state Democrats puts these states in play.   What’s more, those states are sure to be expensive to blanket with ads, mailings and robo-calls, making that campaign cash deficit all the more glaring.  And camping out in the Buckeye and Lone Star State sounds more like the idea hatched by fellow New Yorker Rudy Giuliani, who lost momentum in early races by ignoring them and living in Florida.  Each victory in a Wisconsin, a Hawaii, or Louisiana will be magnified by the media, disheartening the Clinton base.

It seems that Senator Clinton must do well among superdelegates, and get those lost delegates from the Michigan and Florida “beauty contests.”  But that means that the Clinton team must get much better at good ol’ fashioned caucusing, something they haven’t done well at, as Iowa demonstrated.

The once invincible Clinton Juggernaut may be brought to its knees not so much by Bill Clinton, or Hillary’s negatives, or an endorsement by Ted Kennedy.  It might come from a source once considered unthinkable: campaign cash.