» Sanders rout has Clinton scrambling to retool,
Campaign started to retool message prior to big defeat.
After her unexpected victory in the New Hampshire primary in 2008, Hillary Clinton said she “found my own voice.” She left New Hampshire Tuesday night, after a double-digit defeat, still searching for it.
Bernie Sanders’ nearly 22-point victory came after Clinton’s advisers had worked hard to lower expectations, but privately, many people close to Clinton, including her husband, believed the state would once again serve as a lifeline.
They had hoped that women and working-class voters, who had resuscitated Clinton’s 2008 campaign and rescued Bill Clinton’s in 1992, would at least narrow the gap with Sanders. Instead, Sanders won among nearly every demographic, including women, young voters and those who make less than $50,000 a year. In the end, the only demographic Hillary Clinton held onto from 2008 was voters over the age of 65.
The rout rocked the Clinton campaign. As the results rolled in Tuesday, Clinton’s advisers took a somber assessment of the exit polls, recognizing early missteps that had allowed an insurgent challenger to gain the momentum, and their failure to capture the imaginations of young voters and young women, in particular.
A rethinking of the campaign’s strategy and message was already underway, with aides and outside advisers grappling with how to best position a former first lady, senator and secretary of state for an electorate disillusioned by the Washington status quo.
For the Sanders campaign, the resounding victory Tuesday was generating a windfall of Internet donations — the campaign said it raised $5.2 million after the polls closed Tuesday — to help it build a broader national structure, expanding in Nevada and South Carolina and the 11 states that hold contests on Super Tuesday on March 1. One of the more remarkable developments of the Sanders challenge has been the insurgent’s ability to compete financially with the Clinton money-raising machine, which has dominated Democratic politics for decades.
The Sanders campaign has already spent nearly $3.6 million on TV ads in Nevada, including $1 million for the coming week, roughly twice what the Clinton campaign has spent, according to Ralston Reports, a local news website that tracks political spending.
“I’m not going to New York City to hold a fundraiser on Wall Street,” Sanders said at his victory rally in Concord, N.H. “Instead, I’m going to hold a fundraiser right here, right now, all across America.”
In the days leading up to Tuesday’s primary, as the polls showed Sanders maintaining a sizable lead, Clinton had grown increasingly frustrated that her opponent’s broad message of political revolution had somehow eclipsed her careful attention to policy details to improve people’s lives.
She turned to old friends and advisers from the White House years and previous campaigns to help her better frame her candidacy to address voters’ discontent. And she received additional media training after criticism that she “shouts,” as The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward put it on MSNBC last week, said several people briefed on the campaign’s approach who could discuss internal planning only without attribution.
By the weekend, the changes began to take shape.
“I know that it’s maybe not the most appealing or charismatic message to say, ‘Hey, guys, be angry, and then let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work,’ ” Clinton said at a forum with students from New England College on Saturday. “Anger is a powerful emotion,” she added, “but it’s not a plan.”
That town hall-style meeting became the framework for Clinton’s concession speech Tuesday, held in the same field house at Southern New Hampshire University where she delivered her victory speech — and found her voice — eight years ago.
“People have a right to be angry,” she said to a rowdy crowd that tried to lift Clinton after the steeper-than-expected loss. “But they’re also hungry, they’re hungry for solutions,” she said.
“Who is the best change maker?” Clinton asked the crowd. “You are!” a woman yelled.
Before she took the stage Tuesday night, Clinton sent an email blast to donors that said, “Keep in mind, most of the country casts their primary ballots by the middle of March.”
Nevada, with its sizable Latino population, will serve as a test of whether the Vermont senator’s message can connect beyond the largely white, liberal states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Polls in the state have tightened, and the Sanders operation has caught up with the Clinton campaign in dispersing organizers to the state.