To understand why, we need to take a brief tour of Democratic primary campaigns of the last 35 years. With few exceptions, the front runner stumbles, sometimes fatally, sometimes not. In 1971, Edmund Muskie was the prohibitive favorite for the 1972 nomination. He had the most money and endorsements, but he got beat by that year’s antiwar candidate, George McGovern. In 1975, Henry (Scoop) Jackson was the candidate of the Washington establishment; he went nowhere, and the nomination the next year went to an obscure former governor and peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter. In 1984, former vice president Walter Mondale was the front runner. After being upset by Gary Hart in New Hampshire and elsewhere, he refocused his campaign and went on to win the nomination.
Hillary isn’t an exact replica of any of these Democrats. Her gender makes her fresher. But until now, her campaign has fit the Muskie-Mondale mode. The aim was to crush Obama, John Edwards and any other challenger under the weight of her well-funded machine.
If she had done so with her March 31 filing of campaign contributions, that strategy would still be in place. She would have kept motoring along, cruising for a bruising in Iowa or New Hampshire. But now she has to rethink her strategy, and she still has plenty of time to adjust.
A close adviser to both Clintons told me last fall that the best thing that could happen to Hillary might be for her to fall behind Obama in the polls sometime in 2007. That way, Obama would become the front runner, with all of the scrutiny the pole position entails. Hillary would then be the scrappy underdog, like her husband in New Hampshire in 1992. Democrats might develop some buyers’ remorse (a recurring malady in the party) about Obama, whose lack of experience would be more visible when people started talking about him actually sitting in the Oval Office. Hillary would still be well-funded and in a position to surge past him when the primaries begin.
In Democratic Party politics, when you’re up, there’s usually nowhere to go but down. And when you’re down—if you’ve got the resources and stature—there is often a great chance to go back up.
It’s better for Hillary that she’s no longer inevitable. That was always a fantasy. As Obama told me last summer, before he decided to run, she and any other Democrat would have to win the nomination the old-fashioned way—by earning it.
