Clinton Keeps Sinking

Hillary Clinton's trek to the White House was supposed to be an easy one. Raise a lot of money to scare off the serious challengers and then sit on her lead until her party handed her the presidential nomination.

In reality, it's proving a lot harder for her to win this time than it was eight years ago when she lost the nomination to Barack Obama. Clinton got more votes in the 2008 primaries but Obama got more delegates – which is what it's all about.

This time Clinton's being outclassed and outgunned by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a guy who caucuses with the Democrats in Washington but was repeatedly elected mayor of his state's largest city as a self-described socialist.

Sanders rise has been shocking – and not just to Clinton. The political press doesn't much understand it either. Clinton was supposed to be so strong as to be virtually unbeatable. Well, she isn't.

According to the YouGov/CBS Battleground Poll Tracker released Sunday the former first lady is now running 20 points behind Sanders in New Hampshire and trails him by 10 in Iowa. Meanwhile Vice President Joe Biden, who isn't in the race and if he's smart won't be unless Clinton is out (lest they destroy each other and the party's hopes of winning in November), continues to see his support grow.

Ask the people who are supposed to know about these things and they will tell you it's early, that the pasting Clinton is getting from the GOP is helping to drive up her negatives, and that her mishandling of the controversy regarding her private email server is creating doubt about her fitness for the presidency that she will be able to overcome later in the campaign.

In truth, that's all whistling past the graveyard. She can still win the nomination and the presidency but only if her opponents experience unexpected meltdowns like what happened to the Democrats who dared challenge Richard Nixon when he ran for re-election.

What Clinton and the people around her fail to understand is how flawed a candidate she is. Her dislike of people, of the grip and grab that is so necessary in the early states, is obvious. She may excel at policy – a debatable point – but when it comes to retail politics she appears to have learned nothing from watching her husband show the rest of the world how it is done.

The Clinton plan was designed to fail because it relied on her sitting on her lead and not making any mistakes. Very few candidates can pull off this strategy, even in the best of circumstances. The real pathway to victory is to win votes, to grow your margin while beating down the opposition. Define your opponents and deflate them before they can get traction. Don't rely on the prevent defense – be bold, take chances, go for broke when you have to in order to stand out as a leader with the best interests of the country at heart.

If people think you are for them they will overlook whatever suspicions they may have about your personal flaws. This is why Nixon and the He Clinton made it to the White House twice. They made every election they contested about the other guy and then beat them from pillar to post. They were always on the attack – even when circumstances forced them to be on the defensive over issues like Vietnam, Watergate, Madison Guaranty, Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky.

Clinton and her people are trying to make the election about her. They want the significance of electing the first woman president to be foremost in the minds of the electorate. They're so playing identity politics, and not well, that they are missing out on what the base in her party wants: more of what they've gotten from Obama. Unfortunately for her, Clinton represents the fat cats in the Democratic Party, the well-to-do and Wall Streeters who think having her in the Oval Office means the gravy train gets back on track.

People underestimate the importance of likability, especially now when most politicians are so unlikeable. This probably also explains the rise of Trump, Carson and Fiorina on the Republican side: The base is fed up with empty promises left undelivered by the Washington crowd and would toss them all out on their collective ears if they could – except that would put the Democrats back in power. This, to be clear, would be a bad thing – even to the tea party types who are ready to toss House Speaker John Boehner overboard and hang Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell from the nearest yardarm. Better them than Pelosi and Reid almost any day of the week.

Back to Clinton: She's not hitting her opponents, she not framing issues and she's not growing her vote. Her lead going in was strong but she was foolish if she believed it would last. Every candidate experiences a downturn in the campaign at least once – and if they're not prepared to pivot and go back on the attack then they're just going to keep sinking. If she and her campaign insiders had put as much thought into how they would run the race as she and her other intimates put into how she was going to get her emails, things would be quite different right now. Instead her campaign is going into a tailspin without a pilot at the controls experienced, skillful and strong enough to pull out in time.

It is almost inevitable that Sanders will fade once the electability question begins to take root as Biden slowly, quietly and carefully goes about building his coalition, calling in favors, developing a compelling narrative, growing his vote, and doing the other things one does when one wants to win.