The Magic Fades
Ouch. The New York Times reports that the rock star of the Hillary Clinton campaign, Bill Clinton, is not packing in the crowds in New Hampshire. In fact, he is drawing less-than-capacity crowds of mostly unenthusiastic people at his stops there.
Former President Bill Clinton has been drawing sleepy and sometimes smallish crowds at big venues in the state that revived his presidential campaign in 1992. He entered to polite applause and rows of empty seats at the University of New Hampshire on Friday. Several people filed out midspeech, and the room was largely quiet as he spoke, with few interruptions for laughter or applause. He talked about his administration, his foundation work and some about his wife.
“Hillary’s got good plans,” Mr. Clinton kept saying as he worked through a hoarse-voiced litany of why his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is a “world-class change agent.” He urged his audience to “caucus” on Tuesday for Mrs. Clinton, before correcting himself (“vote”). He took questions, quickly worked a rope line and left.
Maybe the sluggish day was a blip. It was, in fairness, the day after Mrs. Clinton finished third in the Iowa caucuses, behind Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards of North Carolina. Mr. Clinton was working on 30 minutes’ sleep. He traveled to New Hampshire from Iowa in the wee hours, and the university was on winter break.
But there was a similarly listless aura at the previous stop, in Rochester. And again, on Saturday in Bow, at just the sort of high school gym that the master campaigner used to blow out. Only about 225 showed up in Bow — about one-third the capacity of the room — to hear Mr. Clinton hit his bullet points on the subprime lending crisis, $100 barrels of oil and how “10 of Hillary’s fellow senators have endorsed her.”
“The crowd seemed very passive,” Arthur Cunningham of Bow said after the speech. “Maybe they were tired.”
Maybe they are finally tired – tired of the Clintons, that is. Maybe they really have worn out their political welcome. That Bill Clinton is not packing every campaign stop is probably the surest sign yet that things are really heading south for the campaign. That he is now increasingly trying to tinker with how the campaign is run indicates that some folks in the current organization might be unemployed soon.
By feeblemind, January 7, 2008 @ 9:25 am
Drudge has a FLASH. She is considering quitting the race!
By Maggie, January 7, 2008 @ 10:30 am
Maybe Bill should dust off the old sax, eh?
By martian, January 7, 2008 @ 3:06 pm
I think hindsight has also tarnished his image somewhat. People look back at the “accomplishments” of his administration and find that they were actually few and far between and that the liabilities were huge.