Hillary's Giuliani Strategy

It's strange to tacitly concede primaries that have yet to pass. It's even stranger to think that after doing so you believe you can make up the lost victories with a demonstrative victory in a bigger state. This is the strategy Hillary Clinton's campaign is using. They are silently accepting their non-existent losses in upcoming primaries and banking on a strong showing in Ohio and Texas. But we don't have to wait until March 4th to get a sense of the result. There is a campaign that tested this strategy already. Former Republican front-runner, Rudy Giuliani's.

When Rudy Giuliani was confronted with his first whiff of resistance in Iowa, he immediately retreated to a stronger position. The second wave of resistance came in New Hampshire at which point he quickly pulled back to his most fortified position, thinking his supposed advantages there would not be worn away by the passage of time. In Florida, he was trounced. His eggs in one basket strategy failed to realize that Floridians would not be stuck in a time-warp that froze their opinions in the position they were in two months earlier.

Rudy Giuliani had spent so many months as the de facto front-runner that he assumed his status would carry him to victory in the larger states. There were demographic reasons to believe this to be true. His aggressive stance on national security played well to specific constituencies in Florida. His national exposure and publicity translated well to the broad diversity of people living in Florida. What he failed to account for could maybe be called momentum, but other's momentum, McCain's, Huckabee's, could not fully explain his dramatic loss of support in the state. A more traditional explanation exists. Giuliani supporters did not abandon him because people in other states did not support him. They left him because his Florida strategy weakened the core pillar of his own support. Rudy Giuliani, who had staked his whole campaign on his reputation as a fighter, was not fighting.

Hillary Clinton seems to be falling into this same trap. Clinton has staked her whole campaign on her own reputation as a fighter. Yet at a time when the winds seem to be blowing against her, she seems to be standing down. Waiting, not fighting. This is a mistake and Hillary can look to the other Republican candidates to see how she can fix it.

The fundamental reason Mitt Romney dropped out of the presidential race wasn't his perception that it was good for the party. It was that Mitt Romney did not know how to run a campaign without spending many millions of dollars, far more than he could fund raise. That difference in money had to come from his own pocket and he did not feel comfortable parting with any more of it. On the other hand, it's doubtful Mike Huckabee would know what to do with that much money.

After John McCain's victories, Romney had become an insurgent for the Republican nomination and he had no experience in that role, and apparently none of the will to cultivate it. Hillary Clinton is drifting towards a similar position. Her inevitability has been removed, her vast resources exceeded by her opponent. Does she have the will that Romney did not? Does she have the fight of a Mike Huckabee?

If anything, Mike Huckabee's campaign is proving that it's not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. That is how people perceive what he's doing. They think he'll lose, but they perceive him as a fighter. He is a fighter. He concedes no voters before they've voted. He concedes no elections before they've been held. He pays no attention to polls. He debates with media pundits and uses every opportunity to break out of the boxes in which they place him. He's made no assumptions about the electorate and has made fools out of people who have. He works overtime to tell people that he is there and that he is fighting for their vote. His strategy is based on the belief that he can win. Her strategy it seems is still based on the belief that she can't lose.

Rudy Giuliani believed he couldn't lose. Americans don't like people who can't lose. They like winners. Hillary Clinton needs to start believing she can win. She needs to put the Arkansas back into her New York, she needs to go down swinging. People need to see her working tirelessly to gather support in the upcoming states where the public thinks she won't win. If she doesn't start fighting now, a month from now, after Texas and Ohio, she may have more in common with Rudy Giuliani than just being from the same state.