Clinton Ends Campaign with Forceful Endorsement of Obama

Most important for Obama, she told her supporters not to ask ‘what if?’ about her candidacy.

“Please don’t go there,” she said. “Every moment wasted looking back, keeps us from moving forward.”

What’s Next?

Clinton committed herself, as she had during the primary campaign, to do whatever is necessary to help elect a Democratic president. That is likely to include pushing her donors to give to Obama, campaigning for him when asked and helping to carry the fight to McCain as a surrogate.

Many of her most ardent supporters want Obama to select her as his running mate. He made clear this week that he would undertake a deliberative process, naming a three-member selection committee. His campaign had pushed back against a Clinton effort to force his hand.

She told supporters that she would be open to the second slot on the ticket and even encouraged them to make the case to Obama’s camp in a series of conference calls.

With 18 million ballots cast for her and a fundraising network second only to Obama’s in Democratic politics, Clinton will certainly continue to be a major force within the party and in national politics.

If there was any doubt in Democratic circles that she was willing or able to be an effective and powerful surrogate for Obama, it was likely erased by her forceful endorsement. But whether that is enough to make her the second woman to appear on a major party’s national ticket -- Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro was the first, in 1984 -- remains to be seen.

Re-living History

Even in defeat, Clinton claimed a slice of history by becoming the first woman to run a viable campaign for the presidency.

Early on, she was the prohibitive favorite for her party’s nomination. Her advisers, led by pollster Mark Penn, positioned her as the inevitable nominee based on her experience as first lady and as a second-term senator.

That was her first major miscalculation.

Clinton Ends Campaign with Forceful Endorsement of Obama

Clinton’s positives always have been counterbalanced by high negative ratings, and there was clearly an opening for another candidate to galvanize her critics and Democrats who did not want to see her or her husband, former President Bill Clinton, return to the White House with her.

Obama capitalized on so-called Clinton fatigue and voter frustration with the status quo, with a mantra of “change” that he embodied as a relative newcomer to the national political stage and as the biracial son of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother.

Obama and Clinton had few substantive policy differences, but many Democratic voters saw a very significant gap on foreign policy. Obama spoke against the Iraq war in 2002, when Clinton voted to authorize the president to use military force. There were other, smaller policy differences that cast Clinton as the hawk and Obama as the dove.

He built steam in advance of the Iowa caucuses with a rousing speech at the state party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in November 2007, and it was clear that there would be a three-way battle among Obama, Clinton and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards to win the all-important first nominating contest in January.

Obama won, a victory without which he probably could not have won the nomination. Clinton rebounded in the nation’s first primary less than a week later in New Hampshire, pulling out a narrow win despite polling that showed Obama with a significant lead before the polls opened.

The image of Clinton choking back tears on the campaign trail was credited by some for her late surge and enraged Obama supporters.

“Those tears also have to be analyzed,” Obama campaign national co-chairman Jesse L. Jackson Jr. said on MSNBC. “They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of [Hurricane] Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45 percent of African-Americans will participate in the Democratic contest, and they see real hope in Barack Obama .”

The weeks between the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary and the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary, the first with a significant proportion of black voters, became powerfully tinged with charges of racism.

Bill Clinton, long well-received in the black community, was accused of insensitivity by top African American leaders for calling Obama’s narrative on his position on the Iraq war a “fairy tale.” Hillary Clinton was slammed after an exchange in which she was perceived to be diminishing Martin Luther King Jr.’s role in the Civil Rights movement by saying of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that it “took a president to get it done.”

Then, when Obama won by a large margin in South Carolina, Bill Clinton dismissed the accomplishment by saying it was not a surprising victory given that another black candidate, Jesse L. Jackson Sr., had won the state in the past. That comment made even some of Clinton’s strongest supporters cringe.

Clinton’s second irreversible miscalculation was believing that she would have the nomination wrapped up after the “Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses on Feb. 5, when voters in nearly two dozen states cast ballots. Clinton won the biggest prizes, New York and California, but Obama’s strategy for winning delegates in states he lost and demolishing Clinton in small states in which she did not really compete gave him momentum in the determinative battle for delegates.

He swept through the rest of February, winning primaries in Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin and elsewhere, totaling 11 straight victories. In many of those states, Clinton’s camp had not bothered to build a field organization, a failure that ceded scores of delegates to Obama. His victories prompted calls for Clinton to exit the race, but her campaign still saw a path to the nomination. She closed strong, winning the popular vote in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, Kentucky and South Dakota down the stretch, while Obama lumbered across the finish line with wins in North Carolina, Oregon and Montana.

But Clinton’s flawed strategies on message and field organization, shaped by Penn and Campaign Manager Patti Solis Doyle, both of whom were later deposed from their top positions in the campaign, proved insurmountable.

Clinton Ends Campaign with Forceful Endorsement of Obama

In the last phase of the campaign, she faced increasing pressure to yield. That dynamic seemed to calcify her support, particularly among working-class white women, who formed one leg of her base.

Many of them perceived sexism on the part of Obama, his campaign and the media, pointing to calls for her exit the race and off-color remarks that underscored her gender.

On Saturday, Clinton expressed a commitment to equality, both on gender terms and otherwise.

“There are no acceptable limits and there are no acceptable prejudices in the 21st century in our country,” she said.

Throughout the course of the campaign, Clinton transformed herself from a frontrunner with a wonkish and robotic speaking style into an underdog who fought for votes with gritty resolve and an ability to connect with the emotions of underprivileged voters. A fundraising operation that once focused exclusively on well-heeled, high-dollar donors sputtered and became surprisingly adept at gathering small contributions over the Internet.