Dear Traditional Media,
What do you call a good strategy when it's achieved? You call it a victory. I think we're all in agreement there. But what do you call a bad strategy, successfully achieved?
The answer to that is FAILURE. But to you, dear Traditional Media, it's still apparently a victory.
Let's take a quick general look at Hillary's presidential campaign. Is there one state outcome where she admits failure? Where she openly admits that they really needed a different outcome? I can't think of many, I can't really even think of one. According to her campaign, everything is going exactly to plan. And somehow her "plan" has resulted in her being far behind Barack Obama in elected delegates.
Let's think back to 2004. John Kerry chose a campaign strategy based off of banking on the safe blue states, and then attempting to be as competitive in as many swing states as possible. He didn't try to nationalize the race. Instead, he put himself in a position where he would have had to have won most of the swing states in order to win the election.
Examine that just for a moment. A swing state is by definition a close state. A very close state. Some of these states were darn close to 50/50. What happens when a state is that close? All sorts of other factors start coming into play - fraud, weather, silly stunts that can push it over from one side to another with just a bit of extra leverage. So many of these factors are out of a campaign's control that it's basically like flipping a coin. 50/50.
John Kerry's campaign strategy was to outperform in these swing states. To get more than half of them. To get more than half of a collection of states that you couldn't reasonably expect would go more than 50/50.
As it happened, out of the ten closest states, John Kerry got six of them. Bad strategy achieved. Problem was, he needed seven. John Kerry had a bad strategy and successfully achieved it. Result - failure.
And Hillary's strategy? Right out of Kerry's playbook. She "wins" Super Tuesday by dominating in California, while not really noticing or caring that Barack was basically equalizing her performance by racking up delegates through huge margins in smaller states. She "won" Texas and Ohio, as she said she would - net result out of that week, no gain in delegates. She won Pennsylvania, and made up 10-12 delegates when she needs to make up well over 100.
This is bad strategy. Hillary never had a plan for her campaign that would lead to victory. Why give her accolades for successful achievement of insufficient goals? What does this say about her as a leader?
Here is a test for you:
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I myself have a plan on how to make a million dollars. I shall now go do three jumping jacks, and if I am successful in what I am about to set out to do, I shall have my million dollars. .... Okay, I just did my three jumping jacks. Where the fuck is my million dollars?
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Does that paragraph seem strange to you? Even remotely ridiculous? Is there anything about it that seems a bit off to you? Is your head the size of a pin? Do you know how to put your pants on?
Hillary Clinton's campaign was over weeks ago. Aiming on gaining twelve delegates in Pennsylvania is laughably insufficient. It's time to stop playing with your shiny toys, and put an end to this charade.