The fall of the House of Clinton

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: chief fund-raiser, Howard Wolfson (one of the least helpful spokesmen this newspaper has ever encountered) and, of course, her husband. But these people were all deeply enmeshed in a Washington establishment that most voters despised.

Mr Penn, one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists, continued to lobby for a free-trade deal even as Mrs Clinton was trying to appeal to blue-collar voters by denouncing free trade. These people also summoned up uncomfortable memories from the 1990s. Did America really want to spend another four, or eight, years watching Mr McAuliffe et al catching flack on behalf of the Clintons? “Everybody in politics lies”, David Geffen, a Hollywood mogul, said last year. But the Clintons “do it with such ease, it’s troubling”.

Bill Clinton was the very embodiment of the Clinton paradox: a huge asset who was also a huge liability. Mr Clinton is a political superstar—a man who left office with a 60% approval rating and a claim to have delivered eight years of peace and prosperity. Most Democrats love him. But he is also a cad and a narcissist.

His presence on the campaign trail reminded voters that Mrs Clinton is hardly a self-made woman—she rose to power on his coat-tails and endured repeated humiliations in the process. It also undercut her claim to executive experience. Mrs Clinton had made a mess of the health-care portfolio that her husband had handed her in 1993. And it raised the question of what Mr Clinton would do in the White House. Would he be an unelected vice-president? And would he re-establish the dysfunctional politics that had characterised the presidency in the 1990s?

You’re out of time

The Clinton machine was too stuck in the 1990s to grasp how the internet was revolutionising political fund-raising. Mrs Clinton built the best fund-raising machine of the 20th century—persuading Democratic fat cats to make the maximum contributions allowable and accumulating a vast treasure trove of money. But Mr Obama trumped her by building the best fund-raising machine of the 21st century.