The fall of the House of Clinton

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: Penn.

This chaos left Mrs Clinton without a compelling story to sell to the Democratic electorate. She tried fitfully to co-opt Mr Obama’s “change” message. She alternated between being an iron lady, ready on day one, and a put-upon woman, bullied by mean boys. She reinvented herself as a working-class hero, Rocky in a pantsuit. But this created an impression of slipperiness and opportunism. In some states half of the voters said that Mrs Clinton was not honest.

The chaos also gave the Democratic establishment a chance to ditch the party’s first family. Many Democratic politicians had always disliked the Clintons for handing Congress to the Republicans in 1994 and triangulating their way out of trouble. They were only willing to stick with them as long as they looked like winners. Ted Kennedy’s decision to anoint Mr Obama as the heir to the legacy of Camelot was an important symbolic moment (“this election is about the future, not the past”, he said pointedly.) But even before that a striking number of superdelegates had been unwilling to endorse a woman who was supposed to be the inevitable candidate. The silence of Al Gore, Mr Clinton’s vice-president, spoke volumes.

A near-run thing

The Clinton campaign might well reply that this catalogue of failures ignores the fact that it was a very close run result. Mrs Clinton won almost exactly the same number of votes as Mr Obama (and claims to have won slightly more, though on a fair count she won fractionally less). She won most of the big states. She improved hugely as a campaigner after the reverses of February, and pulled off big victories in the final weeks of the campaign.

But given the scale of her advantages a year ago there is no doubt that the Clinton campaign comprehensively blew it. Mr Obama will now go on to fight the general election with his primary strategy vindicated and his campaign staff intact. Mrs Clinton has big debts and a brand that is badly tarnished.