I was reading this from Christy at FDL:
Where have the strategists inside the Clinton campaign been on the issue of delegates? It's long been apparent that the math is not trending in their direction. Which makes these reports on flubbing in Texas and Pennsylvania all the more troubling. And makes the reported snippy Mark Penn accusations above seem like a lot of CYA hot air. (More here from MyDD on the delegate issue.)
So much for the Penn power point mystique, I suppose.
One of the biggest gripes about the Kerry campaign, aside from the failure to immediately pushback against the myriad lies from Bush and his allies, was that there were far too many people calling the shots but with no real shots being taken. With the biggest error of all of these being the failure to put real efforts into the grassrots organizing on the ground in every battleground location early on, and to work at building those connections into a strong network of grassroots operations from there outward.
Which reminds me that one of my complaints about Bill Clinton was that for all his political skills, he didn't do nearly enough to build up the D party from the bottom up. And after Reagan/Bush, well that was something that needed to happen. Granted, he was busy fending off what really did amount to a coup attempt. But still.
It strikes me therefore as a bit ironic that HRC is in her present straits. Suppose there had been the concerted effort at party organizing that didn't really happen in the 1990s. That infrastructure would have been there, now, right when she needs it. She would not have had to build it.
Don't get me wrong: I like HRC and think shed be a great president -- on her merits and not just as an alternative to McCain, who is nuts. But you know, if she does lose, I think one of the lessons that we should take from it is about the grassroots (& netroots) & rebuilding the party from the ground up. No more Penns, no more high-level advising. We'll win in the trenches, as they say, by giving 110%.
Besides, the thing which has annoyed me the most about the internetty primary sniping is that politics really should be a lot less about individual personalities -- as attractive as these might be -- and more about building the pressure to move these personalities in a solidly liberal direction, or at least a "no stupid wars" direction. This is a problem built into the entire American system, though, where every 4 years we all have to go dig ourselves up a rock star. But we should recognize this as a structural issue, stop with the Blur vs Oasis shit, and concentrate instead on making the candidates pander to us. In the "no more stupid wars" direction, especially.
Anyway. I was a Gus Hall guy from the beginning, so what the hell do I know. (Except that I find the subject of "superdelegates" tedious as hell, I do confess.)