The Nappy Cat Chronicles

The post-concession articles that I am looking forward to the most are the inevitable insider accounts of the long collapse of the Clinton campaign. Based upon even a cursory review of Clinton campaign news, you have to believe that there are many bruised egos and, if you believe that those involved in her campaign had them, hurt feelings.

All of the above would have been deemed worthwhile by all involved parties had their candidate obtained the Democratic nomination, which, because of the formidability of the Obama campaign and because of the high odds of a general election win by a Democrat, was the political equivalent of winning the ‘08 Super Bowl.

Today, The New York Times is out of the gate with a 5-internet-page article. Some highlights:

The Clinton campaign called a supporter for help. “I’ve got an angry president here and a candidate who wants to know whether or not she won,” a local campaign representative told the mayor, Thomas McDermott Jr. of Hammond, Ind. Mr. McDermott could hear Mr. Clinton railing in the background. “It’s not very often you basically have a former president yelling at you to get the numbers out,” he recalled.

Backed by Bill Clinton, Mr. Penn pushed for aggressive attacks on Mr. Obama, something other advisers resisted. At one point, Mr. Penn argued that Mrs. Clinton should find subtle ways to exploit what he called Mr. Obama’s “lack of American roots,” referring to his Kenyan father and his childhood years in Indonesia and even the offshore state of Hawaii, the campaign officials said. Mr. Penn recommended that Mrs. Clinton own the word “American” — she should talk about the “American century” and her “American Strategic Energy Fund,” and so forth. She should add flag symbols to her logo, he suggested.

In private, Mr. Clinton was making matters worse. On the night of the South Carolina primary, Mr. Clinton called and Mr. Clyburn said he told him to tone down his rhetoric against Mr. Obama. Mr. Clinton responded by calling him a rude name that Mr. Clyburn would not repeat in an interview. Mr. Clinton called back a few days later for what Mr. 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,” Mr. Clyburn said.

The campaign shifted to a contest for the superdelegates, or party elders and elected officials like Mr. Altmire who can vote at the convention. Mrs. Clinton was too far behind to catch up to Mr. Obama among delegates selected by primaries and caucuses, so she hoped to persuade the superdelegates that she would be the stronger candidate in the fall. Only then did she agree to start calling superdelegates personally, something Mr. Obama had been doing for months.

While Mr. Penn had pushed to go on offense against Mr. Obama, seeing that as the only way to change the dynamics of the race, Mr. Garin steered in the other direction. “There were lots of people who spent a lot of time thinking about what to say about Barack Obama and not enough people waking up every morning thinking about how to make the case for Hillary Clinton,” he said in an interview.

Election night brought home the varied complex personal and political dynamics at play. Mr. Penn, once the most influential voice in the Clinton universe, showed up at campaign headquarters outside Washington to watch the returns but virtually no one would talk with him and he left early.

Joe Andrew, a former Democratic Party chairman who had switched allegiance to Mr. Obama from Mrs. Clinton, faced the wrath of her supporters firsthand when he drove up to the Washington hotel where party officials were meeting last weekend to resolve how to count Florida and Michigan delegates. Protesters shouting “traitor” descended upon his Chrysler minivan, denting it with punches and kicks, he said.