On Feb. 2, the afternoon following Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin win in the Iowa caucuses, campaign manager Robby Mook held an all-staff conference call.

Prepare for a nightmarish few weeks, Mook warned his team, with a lot of second-guessing of strategic decisions, donor hand-wringing and finger-pointing directed at staff. The New Hampshire primary was only going to make things worse, he predicted, according to a source on the call. And don’t pay too much attention to cable news, he warned. Focus on Nevada, South Carolina and the March states, instead.


On Saturday in Nevada, Mook’s stay-the-course approach was validated. Nevada didn’t turn out to be the Western firewall he had originally predicted when he first laid out a strategy that was laser-focused on the first four nominating states. But the solid 5.3-point win over a surging Bernie Sanders, which sapped some of the Vermont senator’s momentum and juiced fundraising, is still being hailed by Clinton allies as a turning point for the campaign’s morale.

“She won Nevada because of the organization,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who managed Clinton’s 2008 campaign and remains plugged into Clinton world. “It totally quieted a lot of the donor angst, and even some of the Clinton angst, about the campaign.”

With the narrow win in Iowa followed by a landslide defeat in New Hampshire, the pressure had been building on Mook in ways he had not shared widely with his troops.

Bill Clinton, sources said, was seething as Sanders launched increasingly personal attacks on him and his presidency and seemed to be riding an unstoppable wave of momentum. The 22-percentage-point wipeout in New Hampshire was worse than many expected, and the days that followed counted as a low point for the campaign, including discussions of a staff shakeup.

The early stages of the March state plan — which Mook had briefed both Clintons on twice — were being called into question as allies on the ground filled the Clintons with fear that the campaign was behind schedule. Staffers who are as loyal to Mook as to Clinton tried to muffle concern about reports of their boss’ possible demotion.

After the victory on Saturday, the campaign staff and outside allies rallied around the campaign manager, suddenly redeemed. “If we hadn’t done Robby’s strategy we would have lost Iowa,” said an outside adviser to the campaign. “We were always going to lose New Hampshire, and he stuck to the game plan in Nevada. This was a turning point. Success is really important in campaigns, but the perception of success is even more important.”

The infamous purple-faced rage of Bill Clinton, the panic of donors, the unflattering comparisons to 2008 and the possibility of a layering over of the campaign manager — all of those issues have receded, at least for now, because of the campaign’s first solid victory and the prospect of another win Saturday in South Carolina, where Clinton currently holds a double-digit lead. The lack of a clear message, however, remains the biggest outstanding issue, according to donors and allies of the campaign. Many young people still can’t recite a clear answer to the simple question of why Clinton is running, insiders said. The campaign is aware of the problem, sources said, and hope Clinton’s message will sharpen as she heads into states with large African-American and Latino populations.

And Hillary Clinton remains frustrated that the original theory of the case — to essentially vanquish Sanders after the first four voting states and then pivot to a general election strategy — didn’t pan out.

The Vermont senator’s ability to carry on through June, as many Clinton allies now expect him to do, means a heavier schedule of fundraisers for Clinton, and fewer hours of vocal rest for a candidate who has had trouble kicking a nagging cough that twice in recent weeks has caused her to lose her voice midspeech.

But the Nevada win has papered over those concerns for now, providing a much-needed morale boost for the wounded Democratic front-runner and her campaign. On Saturday, after the victory, Mook delivered a more uplifting pep talk to his troops than he had on the grim conference call.

“You are literally going to remember this day for the rest of your life,” he told a group of Nevada campaign staffers gathered in the Caesars Palace ballroom after the candidate had left the victory rally. “So just soak up the next few hours. Just soak it up. And then we’re going to get right back at it.”

A smiling Bill Clinton stood in the circle of young T-shirt clad staffers chanting “Hillary! 2016!” taking it all in. The brief pause to relish a happy moment in the long slog of an unrelenting campaign was turned into a short video that the Clinton campaign released online on Sunday night; loyal staffers eager to protect and promote Mook tweeted it out.

Mook himself didn’t heed the pep talk. He boarded a 6 a.m. flight from Houston — where Clinton held a late-night rally Saturday — to Brooklyn on Sunday morning for a full day of meetings at headquarters with senior staffers and analytics director Elan Kriegel to pore over the campaign’s March strategy.

They expect Sanders to make March about how many states he can win on Super Tuesday and beyond, campaign sources said. For Mook, however, the strategy will be about counting delegates. The new goal is to close out the month with a stockpile that will make it virtually impossible for Sanders to win the nomination going forward.

With the Nevada win, Mook now has more breathing room: There’s less second-guessing about his decision to buy television ads in only the cheapest markets in Texas, for instance, and not to keep pace with Sanders in terms of the large numbers of staffers he places on the ground and field offices he opens as the nominating contest rolls through the South and the Midwest.

In a primary process with no winner-take-all contests, Mook’s caucus victory also gained him some leverage for his strategy of staffing up heavy in caucus states, which are expected to favor Sanders — in order to limit the number of delegates Sanders can hope to win.

On Monday, the campaign received another piece of good news — the last unassigned delegate from Nevada was awarded to Clinton, putting her ahead by one delegate in the overall count, 52 to Sanders’ 51. Crowing about the delegate lead — which makes it easier for the campaign to defuse criticism about Clinton’s support among superdelegates — spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted, “not planning on ever giving it back.”

On an all-staff conference call on Sunday, Mook gathered the troops once again. This time, the “soaking it all in” moment was over. Don’t pay too much attention to cable news and the analysis about how Sanders is toast, Mook warned the staffers. Focus on South Carolina and the March states, instead.

