What Clinton Did Right

Excellent articles like Time’s recent piece on what Hillary Clinton did wrong are why there is still a place for in-depth news magazines like Time, but let me take a sec in the postpartum to actually praise Clinton for something she did right.

Namely, her 180-degree turn towards the outreaching of rural voters that probably kept her in the race, or at least gave her the appearance of doing so to the general public.

All you have to do is look at the difference between the January caucus here in my home state of Nevada versus the recent primaries in Indiana and Pennsylvania.

If you look at one of the John King-style maps from the Jan. 19 Nevada caucus, you’ll see that it was Obama who was winning the rural, low-population counties in this purple state that’s blue at the bottom and bloody red at the top. It was Obama who was getting the blue-collar endorsements and support.

Meanwhile, Clinton took the big population centers, including my hometown of Las Vegas, on the way to winning a slight majority of the state’s delegates overall.

What followed was the moment when Clinton who abandoned her pervious strategy of “vote for me because I’m me” into “vote for me because I’m you.” While many of us didn’t see through her $100 million account and lobbyist donations, it was still a very effective strategy -- even though it was reminiscent of a GOP campaign where they say they want to give you help, but then pick your pocket when your back is turned.

The result was what we saw in the last three months of the primary campaign where the primary cities were colored by Hillary, with small, but well-populated, specks of Barack.

For the general election, Obama needs to adopt a similar strategy of reaching out to the rural voter that would pay even bigger dividends in a general election. And perhaps, in her first moment of humility in this entire campaign, Clinton may even help.

Obama will be in no danger of losing his big city vote against McCain. One can argue that the cities have been hurt the most by the last seven years. People in big cities are paying more for gas, dealing with homeland security snafus, watching their infrastructure crumble and watching their stock portfolios dwindle. They’re not going to be as willing to keep the White House Republican for another four years.

It’s the rural voter that Obama will need to win over, and he can take a lesson from the thing that Clinton did right.

And as we mark the end of the primary campaign, we might as well give Clinton credit for something. Because for a lot of people in the Democratic Party, it may take some marriage counseling before they’re willing to get back in a relationship with the Clintons again.