Another flameout for Clinton and Huckabee

An interesting thing happened to Hillary Clinton on the road to the Democratic party nomination. After taking a substantial lead in delegates after Super Tuesday on February 5th, she forgot that there was still an election going on, and failed to try and win every state, as opposed to the big states. In Wisconsin, a state that should have been tailor made for Hillary Clinton to win, no major African-American block of voters to write off as voting for Obama because of race, losing even larger sections of her major constituencies in terms of demographics as well. Obama over the weeks since February 5th has consistently improved in white male voters, white female voters, age category voters (except for 65+), lower income level voters. Wisconsin was an absolute “no excuses” loss for Clinton, except that she didn’t campaign as hard as Obama, and she continued to use the same speech that has not been resonating with voters for some time now.

There is a consistent theme that Hillary Clinton has been using as her foil against Obama, and that is her experience is greater than his. What Clinton has failed to realize, and what I believe the McCain camp is also failing to realize, is that there is a growing segment of the American people that are tired of the experience in Washington D.C. continuing to be polarizing and stagnant. Another point that I think both Clinton and McCain are missing, is that there is a growing segment of the American people are tired of being told that they must be fearful of every shadow that is propagated by our politicians to get us to vote for them, and Obama’s theme of hope and broad support resonates with those who are looking for more change than just switching which party holds the White House.

There is still a ways to go in this campaign and there is a real possibility that Hillary Clinton could win the nomination in the end. But something she has been promoting is change, to win the nomination, she will have to change her message, if she can’t change her message to better resonate with the voters, she won’t ever get the chance to change things from within the White House.

On the Republican side, McCain easily defeated Mike Huckabee in Wisconsin and Washington, further extending his delegate lead and clearly establishing himself as the Republican nominee. The exit polling still shows McCain having trouble bringing core conservatives to his camp. The only reason I can imagine that Mike Huckabee is still running is that he really doesn’t have anything to do at the moment.