Hillary’s Fall – Lack of Resolve

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Hillary lost the presidency to Donald Trump because of five mistakes she (and her campaign) made, all of which she had full control over.

It’s worth repeating that the discussions of those mistakes here are to simply elaborate on what we already discussed well advance of the general elections. Put differently, if Hillary’s campaign paid a bit of attention to our analysis, the country could have avoided a Trump’ presidency.

Read about Mistake No 1.

Mistake No 2 – Lack of Resolve
Hillary’s credentials have been touted by myself here on the blog throughout the primaries and later by everyone including president Obama as the best there’s ever been of any candidate vying for the presidency. And that’s true. In fact, when she served as Secretary of State of Obama during his first term presidency, the US involvement in removing Gaddafi fell fully on Mrs. Clinton’ shoulder. She was quite hawkish, presumably more so than even some Republican warmongers. That move by Hillary was to put in display her “unwavering” resolve when it comes to making use of the US military power to deal with what the US government considers “rogue” states. It was no surprise that a number of high ranking Republican Military Generals supported Mrs. Clinton over the Demagogue Donald Trump.

Ironically, Hillary displayed no such resolve in regards to the management of her campaign. Her “indecisive” move contributed a great deal to her loss in the general elections. Case in point, after Hillary lost the New Hampshire primary to Bernie Sanders by a margin of 22 (Bernie got 60% of the vote, Hillary 38%), one needs not be a psychic to figure out that the campaign manager would be fired. Not because of the loss; nope, it was because of the loss margin. In any race, one expects to win some, to lose some. Bernie Sanders had just begun to establish himself as someone to pay attention to; Mrs. Clinton on the other hand has been a household name. There was no justification for a loss, much less an excuse for such a wide loss to someone who was then considered more of a pain in the butt than a real challenger. Besides, Mrs. Clinton barely “eked out” a win in Iowa.

Hillary failed miserably to display the kind of resolve one would expect from an aspirant to the presidency, a soon to be commander in chief. To have wavered in critical situation such as the New Hampshire primaries was just a prelude to how conflicting of a president Mrs. Clinton would have been. Though it’s impossible to “pin” her loss specifically to her lack of resolve during the campaign, it’s not difficult to understand the implication when one considers how badly managed her campaign was, which brings me to the next mistake.

Mistake No 3 – Campaign manager Robby Mook Sucks
Hillary’s campaign manager Robby Mook came across more mediocre than even a Corey Lewandoski (Trump’s first campaign manager) who has zero political campaign management skills.

I have not managed a political campaign before but boy did Hillary’s campaign manager suck! I have managed projects, people, tens of hundreds, at times several groups located in different geographies. In both my case and political campaigns there is one common denominator, everyone works towards one common goal. How hard can that be?

After suffering the humiliating loss in the February 2016 New Hampshire primary, I called for Hillary to fire her campaign manager. It was obvious to me the campaign manager didn’t know what he was doing, couldn’t manage the campaign and was in dire need of serious guidance. After posting a tweet to that regard, a number of Hillary’s fans UNFOLLOWED me. I was really hurt.

Joking aside, it baffled me up to today that someone who did such a mediocre job was allowed to continue to manage a campaign facing an unpredictable opponent. Here is how I expressed my shock on the August 20, 2016 article “By now, it should be obvious to anyone who has managed a political campaign before, that Hillary’s campaign manager is doing a mediocre job, the latest was blatantly obvious; as of this writing, Mrs. Clinton has yet to visit Baton Rouge, Louisiana – she is monitoring the situation, seriously? – which has been making headlines for a week now because of the flooding which has already cost the lives of seven people and rendered homeless hundreds of others”.

Although many, too many mistakes were made, the most egregious one was how badly the campaign mismanaged the handling of the FBI emails investigation from the very beginning and how badly it handled the paid speeches Hillary gave as a private citizen. Any rookie politician knows that the best way to deal with bad news is to address it head on. Somehow, the Clinton’s campaign manager believed in the “ignore it, it will go away” strategy. Obviously not! The paid speeches’ issue was brought in early by the Sanders’ campaign; ignored, ignored, ignored, ignored, Sanders did go away but the issue re-emerged during the general elections. See Robby! To ignore bad news is never a strategy in politics. And those mistakes kept piling up, the latest occurred when FBI Director James Comey released a letter to Congress in regards to additional emails found on an unrelated case. What the campaign manager did next was, well, I’ll say it, DUMB. I couldn’t believe that Hillary Clinton got off the plane – sitting on the tarmac in Minnesota – and walked straight to the car (waiting to take her to a campaign rally) without making any statement regarding the just released FBI letter. By then, Trump and all his surrogates had already occupied the airwaves for more than three hours putting their spins on what the letter meant. And even at the rally which occurred later in the day, there was still no word from the Clinton’s campaign regarding the FBI release. Unbelievable!

Everyone can agree that the FBI letter just eleven days before voting was indeed an outrageously bad idea but even I who had not managed a political campaign before would have done a much better job handling the news. Once again in that late stage in the campaign, the manager continued to use the “ignore bad news, it will go away” strategy. Well, it did not work; it could not work. It was so obvious to me, why couldn’t it be to Hillary’s campaign manager?

The Clinton’s campaign sucks; that was a major factor in her loss.

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