Posted by Jed Lewison on Sun Jun 8, 2008 at 1:35 PM Pacific

The reason why Hillary Clinton lost

Now that Hillary Clinton has lost, the post-mortems have begun (including this hilarious "it wasn't me" from Mark Penn). The one thing that most seem to ignore is the pose she adopted on the Iraq war.

In my view, the single most important reason why Hillary Clinton lost is Iraq -- not that she voted for the war, but rather that she took on an arrogant, blustering approach towards defending her vote. It was that approach that secured her defeat; the only question was whether it would be Barack Obama or John Edwards who defeated her.

Instead of admitting she made a mistake (something that she eventually did, but not until it was too late), Hillary Clinton defended her vote, telling voters who disagreed with it to take a hike in mid-February 2007:

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from.”

Translation: if you're really pissed off about the Iraq War, vote for Barack Obama or John Edwards, because I'm not your candidate. It doesn't get much dumber than that.

At the time, her campaign understood the stakes:

Her decision not to apologize is regarded so seriously within her campaign that some advisers believe it will be remembered as a turning point in the race: either ultimately galvanizing voters against her (if she loses the nomination), or highlighting her resolve and her willingness to buck Democratic conventional wisdom (if she wins).

It was a big deal in the media -- even Paul Krugman took her to task. Here's a CNN report from the time:

People point to her failure to compete in caucus states as the reason why she was defeated, but it's important to remember that this is why there was so much passion against her caucus states. She literally told people not to vote for her.

It is perhaps the stupidest thing a political candidate can say, especially when all she had to do was say: I screwed up.

One final point: Barack didn't just beat Hillary Clinton, he also beat John Edwards, and explaining Hillary Clinton's defeat does not explain his victory. In many ways, I think his defeat of John Edwards in Iowa was the most important moment of the campaign for him; had Edwards won Iowa, and Barack faded, I think Edwards would have beaten Clinton. I just don't think there was any way that Hillary Clinton was going to win this nomination, and I think it all goes back to they way she approached Iraq.