Even before a devastating mid-February loss in Wisconsin extended Hillary Clinton’s winless streak, her campaign had ventured to Ohio in a frenetic search to regain the type of voters she had lost.
Her attempts to find a resonant campaign message proved to be as difficult as trying to deflate the momentum gathered by rival Barack Obama. Lightly regarded by her a year ago, the Illinois senator’s impact and his oratorical and fundraising skills more than matched those of a Clinton campaign once considered invincible.
But with victories in Ohio and Rhode Island and a close race in Texas that broke Obama’s winning streak Tuesday night, Clinton was able to gain success out of struggle and keep her candidacy alive to fight another day.
Even top Clinton advisers had acknowledged that a win in either Ohio, Texas or both would not fundamentally alter the delegate race that favors Obama and raises questions about her ultimate end-game strategy. But the end game didn’t matter Tuesday night.
For her, in taking Ohio, a win was a win.
‘So intense’
In both of the delegate-rich states, Clinton found herself bouncing between a message of benevolent concern and blistering populism to one of negative attacks on Obama’s rhetoric and character that could give any close political watcher a case of whiplash.
“Sometimes I hear people say or read it in the paper, ‘Look, she gets so intense. You know, she gets, all, you know, upset.’ Well, you’re right. I am upset,” Clinton said over cheese-stuffed Coney dogs and chili three-ways, in a blue-collar area of Cincinnati.
But at a Democratic debate in Austin, Texas, her passion turned to conciliation, with heavy overtones of a valedictory speech: “No matter what happens in this contest, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored.”
Back in Cincinnati less than 48 hours later, the fight was on again. Clinton lashed out angrily with, “Shame on you, Barack Obama,” as she assailed him for sending out mailings that criticized her on the twin issues of health care and the North American Free Trade Agreement — two subjects of concern in an economically troubled Ohio.
The Clinton strategy also whipsawed. On Feb. 20, Clinton’s husband, former president Bill Clinton, told an audience in Beaumont, Texas, that “if she wins Texas and Ohio, I think she will be the nominee. If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be.”
Clinton aides also said they were pouring resources into the Texas race.
But only days later, Clinton and her strategists were saying a win in either state was enough for her to go forward, despite the potential of a widening gap in the all-important convention nominating delegate count.
Instead, they sought to spin a tale that the onus was on Obama, as the front-runner, to carry all four states on Tuesday night.
Going for the undecided
Ultimately, after weeks of fearing that her already high negatives among Democratic voters would be aggravated by a direct attack on Obama, her campaign decided those voters were already lost.
Instead, they rationalized that any blows to Obama’s support among undecided, softer voters would help their efforts.
In Ohio, she ratcheted up the blue-collar appeal, courting conservative Democrats in Appalachia and in the manufacturing belt with a change in campaign music to the working-class tastes of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “The House is Rocking,” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
She ran a controversial TV ad that showed children sleeping snugly in their beds at 3 a.m. while she picked up the phone at the White House to show she was better prepared to handle crises.
While trade and blue-collar concerns dominated the Ohio campaign, her efforts in Texas were largely devoted to a holding onto her support among Hispanics, a key demographic, while playing to the state’s sizable military population — calling for improved veterans care and touting her ability to handle issues of national crises and security.
Staying alive
At the same time, Obama was put on the defensive about his dedication to make changes to NAFTA as well as his relationship with his friend and former fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko, whose federal corruption trial began in Chicago on Monday.
All the while, the Clinton campaign kept up a steady drumbeat aimed at what it called a “double standard” of media political coverage, casting her in the martyr’s role of being the victim of more scrutiny than the first-term Illinois senator.
On Tuesday night, the longest night of Clinton’s political life, Ohioans kept her from becoming a political victim.
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