How to Beat Hillary Clinton (by Barak Obama’s staff)
The conventional wisdom is that he inspired voters with an uplifting message and out-organized Clinton in Iowa and elsewhere. And while it’s true that Obama had a superior organization and an optimistic message, the real beginning of the end for Hillary Clinton was when Obama attacked her greatest vulnerability: her character.
.. Obama’s strategists argued that the “key premise” of the campaign was that 2008 would be a change election, and that while Hillary was trying to “define this as change from George Bush,” Obama had a broader definition, one that emphasized her weaknesses:
.. everything in Obama’s campaign, including his slogan—“Change you can believe in”—was meant to provide a contrast with Hillary, not on policy, but on character:
“Change you can believe in” was intended to frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight. We cannot let Clinton especially blur the lines on who is the genuine agent of change in this election.• The reason Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change is that she represents, to a great degree, the three sources of discontent formulated in our premise.
• She’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions on issues ranging from war, to Social Security, to trade, to reform.
• She embodies trench warfare vs. Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done.
• She prides herself on working the system, not changing it—rebuffing reforms on everything from lobbyist donations to budget earmarks... Hillary learned a lot of lessons from the 2007-2008 battle with Obama. In fact, one of the first decisions she made this time around was to hire Joel Benenson, the pollster who helped write the memo on how to beat her.