Could Elizabeth Warren topple Hillary Clinton? Probably not.

by Brian Mann on January 31st, 2015

Can Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren topple Hillary Rodham Clinton?

In 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton was almost as sure a bet as she is going into 2016. The former first lady, US Senator, and later Secretary of State was beloved among rank-and-file Democrats. Unlike Al Gore, who edged away from the legacy of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton was happy to embrace his popularity and his centrist politics.

But in the end, she lost to Barack Obama. And as we build toward the Democratic primary next year, a lot of progressives are suggesting that the same thing could happen again. A candidate from the party’s left flank – Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders – could step in with a powerful populist message and claim the nomination.

I think that’s unlikely for a lot of reasons. But the biggest flaw in that political calculation is that it badly misremembers what actually happened in 2008. It gets wrong why Hillary lost to Barack. And it turns out that fixing her clumsy strategy – her losing strategy – isn’t all that difficult.

Translation? Hillary Clinton isn’t likely to fumble the ball on the goal line a second time.

What people remember, what actually happened

The memory that most people have of 2008 is of hope and change and Barack Obama’s soaring speeches. And he did turn out to be a strong, powerful campaigner. But that’s not how he won. He won because early in the primary, Hillary Clinton’s team made a fatal strategic error.

She launched herself into the Democratic primary confident that she had built a solid team in the big Democratic states. New York, her adopted home state, was a lock. So was California. She had also built a solid ground game in Florida, a state that Democrats dearly hoped to win in the general election.

And that all worked pretty much as planned. Look at the map of Clinton’s eventual wins and it pretty much looks like a map of Democratic Party politics in the 21^st century. Massachusetts? Check. Michigan? Check. Pennsylvania? Check. Ohio? Check.

It’s not that Obama didn’t win some Democratic states. He did. In every primary, the frontrunner drops a handful of states. But what gave Obama the margin overall was a brilliant stealth campaign designed to pick up low-cost, often uncontested delegates in red-hot conservative states.

Obama’s red state strategy

As the primary results began to roll in through 2008, it became clearer and clearer that Obama was winning fewer popular votes from Democrats than Clinton, particularly in the states that would actually vote Democratic in November.

But by racking up small, chip-shot victories in places like Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, the still largely-

This chart from Wikipedia illustrates how Obama won the Democratic primary, by capturing lots of small, red states and battling strategically for a handful of actual Democratic states. Source: Wikipedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Northwest-historian

unknown Senator from Illinois was socking away enough delegates to keep him in the game.

He also brilliantly deployed activists in states that used caucuses rather than actual primary votes to assign their delegates. That meant he could pick up disproportionate numbers of delegates, when compared to his popularity, while spending relatively few campaign dollars.

A great illustration of how this worked came in Texas. Clinton actually won that state’s primary pretty handily, by roughly a 51% to 47% margin. But after the complex mechanics of that state’s Democratic Party process had churned (Texas has a primary and caucuses), Obama actually emerged with more delegates, 99 to Clinton’s 94.

Click the graph at the right and you’ll get a visual sense of just how badly Clinton’s team was outplayed over and over.

It was a contest where Clinton’s strategists did everything right according to the old Democratic playbook, winning plenty of votes and winning the biggest states. But they still couldn’t deliver a knock-out punch.

Obama’s plan eventually forced Clinton to campaign more and more aggressively. She scrambled, belatedly, to try to win more small, conservative states. She began making mistakes on the stump as the math turned against her.

The loss that finally forced her to concede? It came in Montana, a state that Obama won handily in the primary, but which hasn’t voted for a Democratic president since 1992.

Brilliant politics, but could it happen again?

It’s important to point out that Barack Obama didn’t cheat his way into the White House. Rather, he exploited a muddly, byzantine Democratic primary system brilliantly, developing a ground game that was perfectly designed to squeeze as much advantage as possible from wins in states that most Democrats neglected, like Alaska and Oklahoma.

Meanwhile, his team focused their scant resources in a calculated bid to pick off a few actual Democratic states. It was, in political terms, pure genius.

Even so, this long march strategy probably would have been impossible if Obama himself weren’t rooted in two significant Democratic states, Hawaii and Illinois, which he won without much effort. And it’s important to note that even with this “I’m playing chess and you’re playing checkers” ground game, Obama barely won. It was a near thing.

So what does this say about Hillary in 2016?

It says that fixing her losing primary strategy is actually fairly easy. There is no evidence that she had a flawed message or a broken political brand, or that she was an inadequate candidate on the stump. Those are things that politicians struggle mightily to repair.

Clinton’s task is much easier. Her team simply needs to organize a stronger primary effort – caucus supporters, local campaign staff, etc. – in half a dozen small, red states. That will allow her to build on near-certain wins in California and New York in a way that won’t leave plenty of fertile territory in the Heartland for a well-organized insurgent.

Can someone beat Hillary in a head-to-head match-up?

SOURCE: US STATE DEPARTMENT

Without being able to borrow from Barack Obama’s ingenious red-state playbook, a progressive like Warren or Sanders will have to fight Hillary head-to-head.

They’ll have to battle to win at least one or two monster blue states like California, Illinois, Ohio or Pennsylvania. (Warren might be able to count on a win in her home state of Massachusetts, but it’s hardly a sure thing.)

That kind of straight-up mano a mano strategy is far more expensive and complex and confrontational. It’s also a fight that will be far more difficult to sustain after one or two big losses. And there will be far less time for an insurgent to hone a working message and develop a sense of momentum.

Sanders or Warren will have to get it right almost from the outset. That’s a big contrast from Obama’s method, which allowed him months in which to build his war chest and grown his brand and name recognition.

The bottom line is that Hillary Rodham’s team was badly outsmarted eight years ago. They were wildly over-confident. If Clinton runs again, she’ll certainly be more wary, more thorough. She won’t leave lots of poker chips lying on the table unclaimed.

Unless her opponents come up with a new edge, a cunning new Obama-style strategy, they’ll actually have win straight. That means convincing a majority of Democrats that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s time has passed. The party faithful will have to reject her outright.

Obama’s virtuoso campaign essentially allowed him to go around Clinton. Her next challenger will have to go straight through her. That kind of attack message will be painfully tricky, given Clinton’s deep roots and loyalty in the party’s base.