The Wall Street Journal-20080122-Campaign -08- Same as She Never Was- Clinton Is Running Now as the Underdog
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Campaign '08: Same as She Never Was: Clinton Is Running Now as the Underdog
Voters love a good comeback story. But as the tight Democratic race moves into South Carolina and beyond, Democrat Hillary Clinton faces a conundrum: How to maintain her come-from-behind status while racking up the victories.
Before her third-place finish in Iowa, many voters saw Mrs. Clinton as an entitled front-runner. She hardly spoke about her opponents and took few audience questions. But ever since the Iowa caucus, the New York senator has campaigned as the underdog. This has allowed her to effectively turn her image around and use the defeat to present herself as a softer, more personable candidate. At the same time, rival Barack Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois, has emerged as a tougher, well-funded politician and less of a Washington outsider.
"We had a little role reversal in New Hampshire. Hillary started running more of an insurgent campaign, an underdog campaign, and we like it that way," Sen. Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, said as he shook hands with casino workers in the staff quarters of the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas hours before the Democratic caucus this past Saturday. "That's how it ought to be. We've been running as the underdog most of our lives."
This insurgent approach paid off in New Hampshire and Nevada, where voters related to Mrs. Clinton's more grass-roots style. During the Democratic debate in New Hampshire, viewers perceived Mr. Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards to be ganging up on Mrs. Clinton and in turn sympathized with the candidate. A teary moment with voters in a Portsmouth, N.H., coffee shop two days later reinforced this sentiment.
Now that Mrs. Clinton has racked up two consecutive victories, the question remains whether she can carry this image into South Carolina, which holds its Democratic primary on Saturday, and beyond to the nearly two dozen states that hold primaries on Feb. 5, "Super Tuesday."
Estimates vary in the race for delegates due to the complexities of both parties' rules but by most counts Mrs. Clinton is significantly ahead in the early tally, followed by Mr. Obama, with Mr. Edwards a distant third.
In Nevada, the New York senator picked up 51% of the popular vote, compared with 45% for Mr. Obama and 4% for Mr. Edwards. The Obama campaign said it received 13 out of the 25 national delegates elected at each Nevada caucus site, ahead of Mrs. Clinton's 12 delegates.
Despite the recent win, the Clinton campaign is tempering expectations in South Carolina largely because of the African-American vote. Nevada exit polls showed that 83% of the state's black voters supported Mr. Obama. That could bode well for the African-American candidate in South Carolina, where half of all likely Democratic voters are black.
Mr. Obama strongly defeated Mrs. Clinton in Iowa and currently leads in South Carolina with 46% of likely voters compared with 36% for Mrs. Clinton and 15% for Mr. Edwards, according to a poll conducted by SurveyUSA.
"The name of the game is beating expectations, and the more expectations are pushed down, the better you look on Election Day," says Nathaniel Persily, a professor of political science at Columbia University School of Law.
The expectations game worked for the Clinton camp in Nevada, where the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union endorsed Mr. Obama, giving him a perceived edge.
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign dismisses this sentiment and maintains that it is the true underdog. "We came from more than 25 points behind to win more national convention delegates [in Nevada] than Hillary Clinton," Mr. Obama said in a statement.
