Clinton is increasingly choosing the denial strategy. Losing, Hillary style

McALLEN, Texas – Hillary Clinton has had a lot of experience dealing with setbacks in the last five days, losing two of her top campaign aides and eight consecutive contests to Barack Obama in their battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But she hasn’t gotten any better at acknowledging defeats.


In speeches to supporters in Texas Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, she ignored Obama’s convincing Tuesday wins in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Only in a press conference after a Wednesday morning rally in this dusty border town did Clinton acknowledge the results of the Potomac primary. Even then, she said everything was going according to plan.

“I want to congratulate Sen. Obama on his recent victories and tell him to meet me in Texas. We’re ready,” she said, before brushing off questions about her apparent struggles by saying, “that’s what I always thought would happen. So we are very well positioned to compete in these big states and that’s what I intend to do. This is a long journey to the nomination. Some weeks one of us is up and the other is down, and then we reverse it . . . It’s a long and winding road.”

Clinton also said she wasn’t concerned that Obama on Tuesday cut into her base of Hispanics and white women, and she denied reports that her campaign is in turmoil. “From my perspective this is the exciting part of the campaign,” she said.

Still, the unprompted recognition of Obama’s success was rare for Clinton, who in her speeches neither congratulates Obama on his wins, nor acknowledges her losses, even if only to predict she’d soon turn things around in her March 4 firewall states of Texas and Ohio. And when directly confronted about defeats and stumbles, she normally makes it sound as if everything is going precisely to plan.

All campaigns spin setbacks.

But for Clinton, it’s an especially tricky question – and one polls suggest she may have to answer again Tuesday when Hawaii and Wisconsin vote. Should she gracefully concede defeats, as she did when she came in third in the Iowa caucuses? Or ignore losses for fear of drawing more attention to them and to her slide from the frontrunner status she held just two months ago?

She’s increasingly choosing the denial strategy.

And it was on full display Tuesday night at a rally in a basketball arena on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso.

Unless they had listened to the news on the way to the event, the estimated 12,000 people who turned out wouldn’t have had a clue that, by the time Clinton took the stage, it was clear Obama was going to sweep the day’s primaries.

In El Paso, where Clinton made a dramatic entrance into the darkened arena while supporters waved light sticks, she basically stuck to her standard stump speech, throwing in some local issues and shortening it a bit to get to a nearby fundraiser.

"I am so excited to be making this campaign, but I can’t do it without all of you. I need you here in El Paso and across Texas to stand up for me,” she said to thundering, prolonged applause. “Because if we stand up together, if we work together, if we fight together, we will take back America and we will make history together.”

It almost had the feel of a victory speech, complete with confetti sprinkling the hall at the end.

Asked why Clinton didn’t take the opportunity to congratulate Obama, spokesman Doug Hattaway said there are too many contests bunched close together to discuss the results of each during speeches.

“I don’t know that there’s any protocol at this stage,” Hattaway said.

But on Jan. 3, in a speech after Obama and John Edwards finished ahead of Clinton in that day’s Iowa caucuses, she congratulated both men as well as the four candidates whom she beat.

“I am so proud to have run with such exceptional candidates,” she told supporters.

Likewise, when she beat Obama five days later in the New Hampshire primary, he congratulated her “on a hard-fought victory here in New Hampshire. She did an outstanding job. Give her a big round of applause.”

But by last Saturday, when Obama shut-out Clinton in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington State and the Virgin Islands, the congratulatory rhetoric seemed like ancient history.

That evening, with exit polls showing Obama cruising to big wins, Clinton stuck to Democratic red meat in a speech to Virginia Democrats in Richmond. She ripped President Bush and likely GOP nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona and celebrated the historic significance of the Democratic contest being between a woman and a black man.

At a press conference two days later, she was confronted about the four Saturday losses – plus another in Maine on Sunday – combined with the resignation of her campaign manager and the news that she had loaned her campaign $5 million to help it through a cash flow crunch.

What do you say to folks who say your campaign doesn’t look like a winner, a reporter asked.

“Well, to the contrary, I think it exactly is. We had a great night on Super Tuesday,” she said of her split decision with Obama in the 22 states that voted Feb. 5. “I commend Senator Obama on his recent victories, but I believe if you look at the states that are upcoming, I am very confident. … This is an ongoing contest and I feel very good about it.”

After the El Paso speech, supporters who were aware of the results of the Chesapeake primary were divided over whether Clinton should have congratulated Obama.

“I don’t know that she’s ignoring (Obama’s wins),” said Richard Blancas, a 46-year-old Clinton supporter on disability leave. “She knew what the votes were going to be. She needs to go full force with (the states) she knows are her strengths.”

But Kirstie Beard, an 18-year old high school student, said she “would have liked to hear” Clinton congratulate Obama. Maybe she forgot, Beard suggested. “She gets caught up in the moment.”