NEW YORK TIMES: While she emphasized its trailblazing nature as she exited the race, her campaign also represented a back-to-the-future effort to restore the Democratic dynasty of the 1990s that could never quite escape the past. Although Mrs. Clinton proved a more agile candidate than many had expected, she built a campaign that was suffused in overconfidence, riven by acrimony and weighted by the emotional baggage of a marriage between former and would-be presidents.
As she flew from town halls to rallies on the road, she did little to stop the infighting back home among advisers who nursed grudges from their White House days. The aides grew distracted from battling Senator Barack Obama while they hurled expletives at one another, stormed out of meetings and schemed to get one another fired.
The Clintons struggled to adapt their successful formula to a new era against a new kind of opponent. They found their message of hope and change co-opted, and they found it hard to break out of the news media’s old image of them. Mrs. Clinton variously tried presenting herself as the friend having conversations with the American people, then the experienced hand and tough warrior before settling on heroine of the working class. MORE