Webloggin » Clinton Post Loss Photo Says Much About Third Place Finish in Iowa

The Politco is running a story on Hillary Clinton’s defeat in Iowa along side this accompanying picture that pretty much says it all. She looks stunned as if she had walked face first into a pole. A former Clinton administration official called the results in Iowa a conflagration, which basically means they really got burned, bad, by not fully seeing and reacting to the fire brewing ahead of them.

The final tally was Senator Barack Obama at 37.58%, Senator John Edwards at 29.75% and Senator Hillary Clinton at 29.47%.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) heads out of Iowa as the biggest news story in the world and a force that strategists for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) are uncertain how to stop.

With the New Hampshire primary just four days away, Clinton and her team now must convince voters that choosing Obama would be risky for the party and the country — but they must do it in a way that doesn’t make her look small or desperate.

“Everyone underestimated this conflagration,” said a former Clinton administration official.

“If people think he’s electable, they’ll vote with their hearts and not their minds.”

Obama beat Clinton as the polls said he would, with independent voters making his day. This puts the light on the many spins of Clinton pollster Mark Penn who earlier rebuffed a Des Moines Register poll
that showed Obama winning among independents. The Edwards campaign also disparaged the poll with a 1-2 effort trying to bring down Obama as a candidate flying high on the vote of “non-Democrats”.

The Register’s poll showed Obama, an Illinois senator, leading among likely Democratic caucusgoers with support from 32 percent, followed by New York Sen. Hillary Clinton with 25 percent and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards with 24 percent.

Obama had more support in the poll from independents than any of his Democratic opponents.

Clinton fared better than her rivals among voters who identified themselves as Democrats.

The proportion of non-Democrats in the poll, including 5 percent who described themselves as Republicans, sparked a quick repudiation of the poll by Clinton’s campaign.

Clinton pollster Mark Penn referred to Democratic caucuses in 2000 and 2004, when roughly 20 percent who attended were independents.

“So we do not see this poll as accurately reflecting the trends we are seeing in other polls, or on our nightly canvasses or in our own polls,” Penn wrote in a memo distributed Tuesday morning.

Edwards’ pollster Harrison Hickman echoed Penn, saying the findings were “at odds with known tenets of partisan caucus participation.”

“This matters because the entirety of Obama’s ‘lead’ is due to his advantage among non-Democrats,” Hickman wrote in a memo. (src)

I think third place was a bit hard for Senator Clinton to swallow but I’m not ready to count her out just yet. Be ready for people to underplay the hype that surrounded Iowa. Truth be told, it is what it is, not perfect but very telling. The candidates really have nobody but themselves to blame because they campaigned for so long. This event was a very long time coming and the outcome is a reflection of how well the candidates got the message out.

Clinton’s issue is now two fold. The experience claim obviously fell flat. But worse than that she needs to overcome her huge negatives, the biggest of which are trust and likability at a time when voters are calling for change; i.e. someone who is real, sincere and honest. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your perspective, that is not going to be easy for Hillary Clinton. She is saddled by her negatives for a reason. On the one hand Clinton would like to play up her claims of experience but that flies in the face of both reality and what independents are looking for which is a refreshing new face of change. This is a catch-22 for many of the candidates but especially for Clinton who has put herself out there for so long. How can she convince the voting independent that she is both experienced and that such experience will somehow bring about change? Tall order.

(Update, fixed typo)