{"id":14741,"date":"2008-02-29T14:20:32","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T19:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14741.html"},"modified":"2008-02-29T14:20:32","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T19:20:32","slug":"a-novel-approach-to-the-expectations-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-novel-approach-to-the-expectations-game\/","title":{"rendered":"A novel approach to the expectations game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back on Feb. 12, the day Barack Obama cruised to easy victories in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was already busy building up firewalls. Indeed, that afternoon, Clinton’s travel schedule didn’t include stops in any of the states voting that day, or in any state voting in February, but rather, saw three stops in Texas.<\/p>\n

Clinton campaign advisors privately conceded that big wins in Ohio and Texas were absolutely necessary to keep the campaign going. Alan Patricof, one of Clinton\u2019s national finance chairmen, added, \u201c[W]e can\u2019t wait to get to March 4<\/a>.\u201d More recently, Bill Clinton was surprisingly candid, conceding that his wife needed to win both Texas and Ohio to have a shot.<\/p>\n

Apparently, however, that’s the old Clinton spin. The new Clinton spin is that all four of the March 4 contests — Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island — are must-wins for Obama<\/i><\/a>. Here’s the latest memo from Clinton HQ:<\/p>\n

With an eleven state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. […]<\/p>\n

Senator Obama has campaigned hard in these states. He has spent time meeting editorial boards, courting endorsers, holding rallies, and — of course — making speeches. If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there’s a problem. <\/p>\n

Should Senator Obama fail to score decisive victories with all of the resources and effort he is bringing to bear, the message will be clear: <\/p>\n

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, if Obama doesn’t win Clinton’s firewall states, it means he’s in big trouble? Really?
\n
\nIndeed, Mark Penn went on to insist that Obama had to win Clinton’s firewall states “decisively<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Yglesias responded<\/a>:<\/p>\n

So if the candidate who’s leading in delegates, national polls, fundraising, and states won can’t sweep<\/i> the March 4 primaries, then Clinton is the real winner? Maybe they should just go back to arguing that Texas doesn’t count.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is a rather odd spin. Clinton picked Ohio and Texas as firewall states, she began campaigning there while Obama concentrated on February contests, and she started with double-digit poll leads in both states less than two weeks ago. This, after Obama won 11 consecutive contests, seized a large lead among delegates, and the Clinton campaign started looking for some way to slow down the avalanche.<\/p>\n

Turning this dynamic around, and suggesting that Clinton no longer has to view March 4 contests as must-win states, is awfully tricky, and frankly, not especially persuasive.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid expectations are already set. If Clinton comes up short on Tuesday, the campaign will probably be out of spin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Way back on Feb. 12, the day Barack Obama cruised to easy victories in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was already busy building up firewalls. Indeed, that afternoon, Clinton’s travel schedule didn’t include stops in any of the states voting that day, or in any state voting in February, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14741\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}