Clinton endorses Obama; Inside a campaign that went off track

WASHINGTON — By the time the campaign tracked down the small-city Indiana mayor, Bill Clinton was in a lather. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had lost the North Carolina primary and was eager to offset it with a win in Indiana. But a vote-counting delay in one county threatened to rob her of a victory speech.

"I've got an angry president here and a candidate who wants to know whether or not she won," a campaign representative told Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott. He could hear Bill Clinton railing in the background.

McDermott said he had no role in the vote count and, in the end, the late results cemented a negative narrative for the evening, with little attention paid to the eventual Indiana victory. May 6 became the moment Hillary Clinton's comeback bid for the Democratic presidential nomination crashed against the unforgiving reality of delegate math. All she'd had left was the perception of momentum, and suddenly that was gone.

Hers had been perceived as the campaign of destiny, a back-to-the-future effort to restore the Democratic dynasty of the 1990s. While Hillary Clinton proved a more agile candidate than many had expected, those close to her campaign describe it as suffused in overconfidence, riven by acrimony and weighted by the emotional baggage of a marriage between former and would-be presidents.

She couldn't stop infighting among advisers who hurled expletives at one another, stormed out of meetings and schemed to have one another fired.

The Clintons struggled to adapt their successful formula to a new era against a new kind of opponent. Sen. Barack Obama co-opted their message of hope and change, and they found it hard to break out of the media's old image of them. Hillary Clinton tried presenting herself as the friend having conversations with the people, then the experienced hand and tough warrior, then the working-class heroine.

While Obama tapped the Internet for funds, it took Clinton a year to do the same. Bill Clinton vented frustrations and, still not one to use e-mail, found his famed instincts inadequate in a blogosphere age that amplified every intemperate outburst.

The Clintons also demanded loyalty from those who once surrounded them and felt betrayed by people they assumed would be with them again.

"What hurt them was their sense of entitlement that the presidency was theirs and all the acolytes should fall in line," said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former Clinton Cabinet officer who endorsed Obama. "... It was their war-room mentality, to attack when something doesn't go their way, and it just reminded me of the old days."

If Gennifer Flowers, Newt Gingrich and Monica Lewinsky taught the Clintons anything, it was never to give in. This time, it was not enough, as Hillary Clinton's three-month effort to salvage her campaign after a series of February defeats fell short.

"Bill and I share a character trait of being determined and committed and not easily deterred or discouraged," she said in the waning days of the race. Asked about one-time friends who had abandoned her, she said, "That happens in politics."

These past three months played out with classic Clintonian drama. Her staff conducted rival polls while debating how much to campaign in North Carolina. Unlike her opponents, Clinton refused to solicit donors and had to be talked into calling superdelegates. Aides blamed one another for strategic mistakes.

By many metrics, she won those three months, beating Obama in the popular vote in nine of the final 16 contests and racking up 509 delegates to his 472.

She found a groove as the populist champion. And she found a deep well of support, particularly among women.

It was politics on the edge. "The gun was to our heads many Tuesdays," said Terry McAuliffe, her campaign chairman. "If we didn't win, we were dead. And we kept winning."

In the end, they were still dead.

THE OLD TEAM

As Clinton assembled her campaign, she brought together much of the old team, led by chief strategist Mark Penn, who had orchestrated her husband's 1996 re-election. As Bill Clinton surveyed the field, he could not believe an inexperienced senator from Illinois could be a serious alternative.

Strategists believed the first four contests would be decisive and Hillary Clinton would wrap up the nomination by Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, when more than 20 states were to hold contests.

Penn shaped a message that Clinton was "ready to lead" and "ready for change," dismissing Obama as a glamorous personality who would not connect with the working class, campaign officials said. "He may be the JFK in the race," Penn told Clinton last year, according to an insider, "but you are the Bobby."

Backed by Bill Clinton, Penn pushed for aggressive attacks on Obama, something other advisers resisted. At one point, Penn said Hillary Clinton should find subtle ways to exploit Obama's "lack of American roots," referring to his Kenyan father and his childhood years in Indonesia, campaign officials said.

But the campaign failed to define Clinton as a change agent, and it hesitated in attacking Obama, who became the one leading a movement. Her strategists underestimated his strength and invested too much money in early states.

In a March 2007 memo, Clinton adviser Harold Ickes wrote that Iowa would be better for Clinton than New Hampshire and projected the campaign would raise $75 million in 2007 with $25 million left heading into the first votes. In reality, she finished third in Iowa and won New Hampshire. The campaign raised $100 million in 2007 but was broke soon after the new year.

The Clinton team arrived at that moment bearing all the resentments of the old days. Penn, a sometimes brusque number cruncher with centrist corporate sensibilities, had few friends inside the campaign other than the Clintons. Ickes, a bare-knuckled liberal friend of labor, had despised Penn since their White House days and did nothing to hide it, at least once engaging in a profanity-laden shouting match with him.

There were other fault lines. Hillary Clinton's aides took umbrage at Bill Clinton's freelancing and deemed his office uncooperative. His aides stewed over what they saw as her staff's disregard for the advice of one of this generation's great political minds.

As for Bill Clinton, he boiled with resentment that a candidate with as little experience as Obama was given what he considered a free pass by the media. Yet his tone struck some as dismissive.

When he referred publicly to Obama as a "kid," Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., recalled that a fellow black congressman said, "I don't know why he didn't just call him 'boy' and get it over with." In private, Bill Clinton was making matters worse. On the night of the South Carolina primary, Clyburn said, he told the former president to tone down his rhetoric. Clinton responded by calling Obama a name Clyburn wouldn't repeat in an interview.

Clinton called back days later for what Clyburn called "a much more pleasant conversation," but the damage was done. "Clinton was using code words that most of us in the South can recognize when we hear that kind of stuff," Clyburn said.

A NEW LANDSCAPE

The accusation of racism wounded Bill Clinton deeply. The Clintons had little experience with caucuses in the 1990s and failed to compete in most of them this year, allowing Obama to rack up a mass of uncontested delegates. Rather than sealing the nomination for Hillary Clinton, the Feb. 5 mass voting led into an 11-contest, monthlong losing streak.

Clinton dumped her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, who had been with her since 1992. Maggie Williams, the first lady's chief of staff in the 1990s, was brought in. Clinton agreed to attack Obama in a more sustained way and won the Ohio and Texas primaries March 4 to keep her bid alive.

Too far behind among elected delegates, she shifted to a contest for superdelegates. Only then did she agree to start calling superdelegates personally, something Obama had been doing for months.

The campaign swung in unpredictable directions during the seven-week campaign in Pennsylvania. Radical sermons by Obama's minister generated days of news coverage, but Clinton's false account of an under-fire trip to Bosnia stalled her momentum. Penn pushed to go after Obama harder for his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but communications director Howard Wolfson, media chief Mandy Grunwald and others resisted.

Rancor within the campaign escalated when Clinton learned Penn had met with Colombian officials as part of a contract to promote a free-trade pact that she opposed. One adviser, Tina Flournoy, walked out of campaign headquarters in anger. Penn's enemies seized on the chance to get him demoted. "People felt like the sun came out a little more," one said. Geoff Garin, another pollster, and Wolfson took over the strategic direction of the campaign, but Penn remained part of the team.

As the race wore on, Bill Clinton played a growing role. He crisscrossed Pennsylvania, hitting small towns and pressing superdelegates.

Election Night in Pennsylvania brought home the varied complex personal and political dynamics at play. Penn showed up at campaign headquarters outside Washington to watch the returns, but virtually no one would talk with him, and he left early.

Hillary Clinton handily won the state, but she couldn't translate that into gains with superdelegates.

LOSING WHILE WINNING

For Clinton and her staff, it was a surreal period. With each win, pundits would tell them to get out. The Clintons' strategists became convinced that the media, suffering from sexism, Clinton fatigue and Obama mania, were unfairly trying to hasten the end of their campaign.

Hillary Clinton recognized the odds but was encouraged by emotional supporters and came to believe she had an obligation to stay in, aides said.

Advisers shied from suggesting she quit. "You're a persona non grata if you bring up getting out," an aide said. "It just wasn't talked about."

If Clinton ever thought about giving up, she seems to have kept it to herself. She never expressed doubt in front of McAuliffe, who's campaign chairman and a close friend. "She never did. Never, never, never."

McAuliffe served as morale officer, taking dejected aides to dinner. His feisty, manic television appearances became so ubiquitous that aides developed "Terry Bingo" with 25 boxes listing his most common lines of spin — "More electable," "Can still win" — and marked the boxes as he uttered them again and again.

The campaign's last real chance to change the race would come in Indiana and North Carolina. She started eight points down in internal polls in Indiana, and it did not help when Joe Andrew, an Indianan who had been made national party chairman by Bill Clinton, abandoned her for Obama. But Indiana would prove to be the first race she would win after trailing.

North Carolina was the question mark. Bill Clinton believed his wife's double-digit deficit could be whittled down and insisted on spending more time there. Garin took polls to see if that was possible. Penn argued it was not, and he took his own poll. North Carolina proved far beyond their grasp.

When Hillary Clinton's aides heard what Tim Russert said on MSNBC, they realized they were losing the perception battle. "She did not get the game-changer she wanted tonight," Russert said.

A BIG SHIFT

Deep in debt and with the nomination slipping away, Clinton stopped attacks on Obama to avoid alienating him or the party. Bill Clinton began focusing on the popular vote. "He wanted to at least put her in the position of being the vice president, and that was one way to do that," an aide said.

The campaign also quietly encouraged supporters to urge Obama to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate if he won the nomination.

Each new victory was stemmed by some painful new setback. Clinton crushed Obama in West Virginia. But he upstaged her the next day with a surprise endorser, John Edwards.

Yet, the disaffection of women about the mounting pressure on Clinton to step aside stiffened her determination to press on. She received a series of angry messages from friends who vented about how the media were unfairly diminishing her victories.

Andrew faced the anger of Clinton supporters firsthand when he drove up to the hotel where party officials were meeting to resolve how to count Florida and Michigan delegates last weekend. Protesters shouting "traitor" descended upon his minivan, denting it with punches and kicks, he said.

THE WITHDRAWAL PLAN

By last week, anger had given way to resignation. Even before the final primaries Tuesday, aides said Clinton knew she could not continue. But she told them she would not concede that evening.

The next day, Clinton asked top advisers to prepare a plan to withdraw. She was, at last, ready to call it quits, two aides recalled. "Let's get on with it," she said.