|
Atlanta: Hillary - what happened?
Hillary Clinton was supposed to be the easy, obvious choice at this stage of the presidential election, enjoying a cakewalk instead of a campaign.
After seven years of Republican rule, the US is stuck in two wars, and sitting on the edge of recession; the American people want change.
Clinton represents not only historic change - as potentially the first woman president - she's an accomplished senator and former first lady, so she represents the comforts of continuity too.
She is also a detail-oriented, carefully planned candidate who seems to have an answer for every question, a policy for every problem.
In short, she seemed to have it all sewn up. But it's come unstitched. Because of Barack Obama.
Obama radiates sincerity and passion, with a wide smile and a kind of warmth that even projects over the airwaves.
He always generated more excitement, but as the weeks went by, he started drawing bigger crowds and raising a lot more money too.
Most important, he is winning primaries and lately winning a lot - now it's eight in a row.
Clinton is hardly out of the race.
But last week, she was forced to lend the campaign $5 million (Dh18.3 million) of her own money. Over the weekend, she fired her campaign manager and on Tuesday her deputy campaign manager resigned. She also lost her lead in the contest for the delegates who will ultimately choose the Democrats' nominee for president.
Clinton's own advisers are telling reporters that she isn't likely to win many of the primaries coming up this month and may not win any of them at all. She will continue to get a lot of votes and accumulate a lot of delegates, but over the next few weeks she may see herself declared the loser, time after time.
Her campaign is banking on big victories next month, in important heavily populated states like Ohio and Texas on March 4.
But will she win them? and even if she does, will it be too late?
The basic maths of the primary system suggests that neither Obama nor Clinton will have a decisive lead in the delegate count by the time of the nominating convention.
But Hillary is already failing the expectation that her victory was inevitable.
Now, it's an endurance test for a campaign that was supposed to be easy.
And Hillary's hurting.
Jonathan Mann is an anchor and reporter for CNN International
|
