There’s an obvious response to charges that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in trouble, as evidenced by the decision to replace campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with another longtime aide, Maggie Williams — Clinton is hardly the first to make this kind of change.
Last summer, with his campaign faltering badly, John McCain replaced more of his senior staff, but he went on to benefit from the reorganization and is now the presumptive GOP nominee. Four years ago, not long before the Iowa caucuses, John Kerry changed campaign managers, and went on to win the Democratic nomination. In the spring of 2003, Howard Dean dropped his first campaign manager to hire Joe Trippi, who went on to help propel Dean into the top tier of Democratic candidates.
The point is, plenty of campaigns have made these kinds of changes, and gone on to do very well. It need not be seen as a sign of disaster. There is, however, one big difference — major staffing changes by McCain, Kerry, and Dean all came very early on in the nominating process. They were struggling before voters were weighing in and while there was still plenty of time to correct flaws in the campaign’s strategy.
The Clinton campaign’s switch, then, is qualitatively different — swapping campaign managers after 32 states have already hosted primaries or caucuses is harder to dismiss.
At the same time, [Solis Doyle] suffered a setback over money, and though in recent days the campaign has boasted of a $10 million month and many new donors, it never built the online donor base that Ms. Doyle had promised. Nor did it adapt to Mr. Obama’s message of inspiration as his campaign grew in strength, prolonging the battle long past the point when Mrs. Clinton was expected by her strategists to have clinched the nomination.
The replacement of Ms. Doyle was in part a signal to donors and other supporters that the campaign was regrouping and was poised to right itself, even as Mrs. Clinton faces uncertain prospects Tuesday in contests in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
It seems Solis Doyle bought into the notion that the contest would be effectively over on Feb. 5, and had built a campaign strategy around this assumption. It proved to be a mistake.
Apparently, there was quite a bit of drama behind the scenes.
I found this, for example, quite surprising.
Initially, Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, Maggie Williams, was brought in to run the campaign even though Solis Doyle was still there. The result was confusion and awkwardness for the staff, who weren’t sure who was really in charge.
But even more problematic was the campaign’s money crunch. Over the last seven years, Clinton had raised $175 million for her reelection and her presidential campaign. But Solis Doyle didn’t tell Clinton that there was next to no cash on hand until after the New Hampshire primary.
“We were lying about money,” a source said. “The cash on hand was nothing.”
In turn, Clinton didn’t tell Solis Doyle that she was lending her own money to keep the campaign afloat. Solis Doyle found out third-hand. And when she asked Clinton about it, the senator told her she couldn’t understand how the campaign had gotten to such a point.
I’ve never seen the inner workings of the Clinton campaign up close, but I’ve always pictured an extremely efficient, professional operation, run by some of the most experienced Democratic staffers in the business. What I didn’t imagine was a campaign manager who didn’t tell the candidate they were running out of money, and a candidate who didn’t tell the campaign manager about a $5 million personal loan.
Also, one report suggested the campaign’s finances were just part of the problem.
One senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about the campaign’s inner workings, said, “The dissatisfaction — to the extent there has been — has not been about money.” Asked what the source of dissatisfaction was, this adviser replied, “There is a sense that this is a fatiguing campaign and some new energy primarily was useful.”
It’s worth keeping in mind that it would probably be foolish to see a staffing change like this as tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Indeed, my hunch is Obama supporters might look at the Clinton staffing change as proof that Obama has the upper hand.
Clearly, the fact that a change like this was necessary proves that the Clinton campaign is not where it wants to be, but don’t underestimate it. This is a team that’s gone pretty far, and has had quite a bit of success, despite a flawed strategy and internal dysfunction. A fresh perspective and a renewed approach may very well give this campaign a boost.