Newsweek Cover Story on Hillary Clinton

Newsweek is following up its cover story on Barack Obama with a cover story on Hillary Clinton. It is a very interesting article. It contends that a mistake the HRC campaign made was assuming that she was known by voters. It also contends that both HRC and her advisers have learned that she is not that well known and that they have to allow the public to see a more complete picture of her.

When Clinton ran in New York for the US Senate she adopted a strategy of going everywhere to dispel the images that voters had of her. It worked in that she was able to do well enough in upstate New York to counter the Republican vote in the suburbs of New York City. Doing that made sure that the big Democratic vote out of New York City was sufficient to elect her. She followed the same campaign strategy that Charles Schumer had used in 1998.

The problem, though, is the size of the United States makes it hard to do that on a nationwide basis, especially if your campaign is distracted by charges of racism made by other Democrats. The question is can you go around the media and get enough voters to change their opinions about you? Opinions that have been formed not on personal experience by on the basis of media stories.

Well, we are about to see if HRC can pull it off. On the one hand she is an incredibly polarizing figure in American politics. On the other hand she is a very intelligent and very hard working woman. Only a fool would count her out, as the media found out last Tuesday in New Hampshire.