In the wake of yesterday’s New Hampshire primary, I think we all heard that Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook issued a 3 page memo outlining the campaign’s strategy for retooling their efforts and going more aggressively after Sanders in Nevada and South Carolina.
But what most of us didn’t see was an internal analysis the campaign also did of precisely why they lost in New Hampshire. But an old friend who works on the Clinton campaign shared the internal memo that Mook sent out to key staffers and donors explaining exactly what went wrong on Tuesday.
I thought it was worth passing along.
10. Most people don’t realize it, but New Hampshire is actually part of the state of Vermont.
Because Sanders is from Vermont, that means he has a huge home state advantage since he already represents them in the US Senate. (Shh… don’t tell Jeanne Shaheen, she will be very upset if she finds out).
This is a repeat of what happened in 2004 — Howard Dean’s 26% and 57,000 votes in the New Hampshire primary was virtually identical to the 61% and 152,000 votes that Sanders received this year.
We’re still working on the analysis, but we’re pretty certain that we can show that every last one of Sanders’ votes came solely from the two counties that are in the 12% of the NH population located in the Vermont media market.
In the end, we all known that New Hampshire is an evil socialist dictatorship just like Vermont – don’t be fooled by the lack of income tax, sales tax or any significant state government services.
9. Hillary didn’t lose, she actually won
If you look closely at the numbers, it is clear that we really beat expectations and that means we won!
After all, there was ONE pre-election poll that showed a 26% lead for Sanders -— yet he only won by a very narrow 22%. How embarrassing for Sanders to see his numbers crumble like that!
(Ignore all those so-called “polling averages” and our insistence that the race was really tightening.)
Clearly Bernie badly underperformed expectations , and that makes Hillary this year’s “Comeback Kid”!!!!!!
(Just to be clear, this doesn’t change the fact that our 0.25% victory in estimated “state delegate equivalents” in Iowa is a smashing landslide win that totally humiliated the Sanders campaign.
8. Of course Bernie won, he was promising free college tuition.
Bernie bought the votes of young people by promising them free tuition at public universities and that they wouldn’t spend their entire working lives burdened with massive loans. How dare he!
But we know that voters always vote for the guy promising them more – just like Obamaphones and food stamps.
7. Most women in New Hampshire actually do want to go to hell.
Madeleine Albright was absolutely right – any woman who doesn’t vote for Hillary is certainly going to go to a very special place in Hell. But when she said that, we thought that it would work because we believed New Hampshire women cared about saving their eternal souls from the fire and brimstone in the furnaces of Hell.
Unfortunately what our pre-primary polling failed to detect was something that we only learned in the exit polls – 55% of New Hampshire Democratic women are actually practicing Satanists. Albright’s comments produced in a massive surge for Bernie among those women.
6. Bernie was always going to win in New Hampshire, we never had a chance
We always knew we were going to lose in New Hampshire, we never ever had a chance in the state.
Clearly all those polls back in the spring and early summer showing Clinton leading Sanders by margins like 58% to 6% and 60% to 7% laid out exactly what an uphill climb it always was for Clinton in the state.
We should have looked at those numbers and understood the state was a lock for Bernie.
Hillary’s win here in 2008 was obviously a fluke (I think it may even have been a counting error — I’m going to demand a recount of the 2008 primary.)
And we always knew that the endorsements of popular elected officials like Shaheen and Hassan and most of the party establishment would inevitably drive voters to Bernie.
New Hampshire was a state tailor-made for Sanders… surely there is no doubt that a curmudgeonly 74 year socialist from Brooklyn is exactly the right match for a state dominated by French-Canadian Catholics, old school New England Yankees, and small towns in the woods.
We never had a chance in New Hampshire…. I don’t know why we even bothered to show up in the first place.
I swear to god I’m never stepping foot in this goddamn sorry excuse for a state for the rest of my fucking life.
As soon as Hillary is inaugurated, we’re giving them to Canada.
5. Too many independents voted
The exit polls showed that fully 40% of the voters in the Democratic Primary were independents. That is far far too many, and they overwhelmingly supported Sanders.
We all know what a bad thing it would be to have a nominee who appeals to independent voters – that would be a clear ticket to electoral disaster. After all, only 40% of the registered voters in New Hampshire are independents, so we simply don’t need to worry about them in November.
And remember, in 2008, when we won, the independent share of New Hampshire primary vote was a much more reasonable 44%. (oops – pretend I didn’t say that…)
4. New Hampshire isn’t important because it is too white
Let’s be clear, New Hampshire simply doesn’t matter because the voters there are all white – and we all know how much white voters hate to vote for a white candidate like Hillary.
Make no mistake-— in 2008 when Clinton won here, it was a significant victory – we were proud to point out that it proved that Hillary (and not Obama) was the candidate best suited to compete for swing white voters – suburbanites, blue collar Democrats, Catholics, etc.
But a lot has changed in the past 8 years.
New Hampshire was once an important primary whose demographics and swing state status were essential to Democratic chances of winning the White House. But no more – in the past 8 years there has clearly been a massive out-migration of African-American and Latino voters from New Hampshire, leaving only a bunch of clearly racist college kids to vote for the Jewish guy.
3. The “blizzard”
It snowed Monday night – by the time it stopped early Tuesday morning there were a good 3 or 4 inches of light fluffy snow on the ground, absolutely grinding everything in the state to a complete halt.
We all know that New Hampshirites all freak out in the snow because snow in February NEVER happens here. They are all well known to be a bunch of fucking wimps when it comes to snow, panicking at the first flake. They were all huddled inside their homes, afraid to come out because wolves would grab them and bury them in the deep snowdrifts if they did.
I hear the President is about to declare the state a disaster zone because of the massive amount of snow that is piled up everywhere. The Red Cross is now going door to door in a major humanitarian effort to rescue those desperate snow-bound souls.
I sure hope the state will manage to dig out by June, but this nearly record setting blizzard is clearly what cost us a victory in the state.
2. The turnout was far too big
Okay, ignore #3 above. The real problem was that too many people showed up to vote.
Everywhere the polls were packed, often people waiting in long lines. Tens of thousands of new voters were registering for the first time. People were getting excited about the electoral process.
We were swamped with young people voting – I heard in many cases the New Young Panther Party was at the polling places trying to intimidate any voter with grey hair, while young healthy college students were pushing old people out of line. And the new state vote ID requirements hurt us badly – because we all know that our core constituencies (especially those with incomes over $200,000 … which we swept!) don’t have voter ID.
New Hampshire made it far too easy for young people to register and vote. The resulting big turnout was clearly bad for democracy, bad for Democrats, and absolutely unfair and lethal to Hillary’s chances.
1. All the cute smart hot young guys were down at Sanders headquarters
In the end, Gloria Steinem was the one who correctly diagnosed the real problem.
Because all the young male hotties were busy volunteering for Sanders --- that was like catnip for these sex-crazed New Hampshire voters. They all just wanted to get dates with these guys, so they followed them into the polling booth just like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
It wasn’t just the shallow young women doing it (although we all know that young women must be shallow and only concerned about where the boys are) – for some reason it seemed to work with anyone and everyone in New Hampshire.
(Recommended follow-up --- a focus group with old French-Canadian guys in industrial towns like Berlin --- are they secretly gay for the Sanders boys?)