We Just Weren't That Into You

What I told my beloved friend Mr SB in a text-message the day after the Iowa caucus has proved to be simply the best explanation for 'How Hillary Blew It' :

It just isn't her year or her moment. What she has to offer, no matter how good,
won't be what most people want to buy.

Dovetailing with Chuck Todd's notes below is this from Slate

But evidence that Clinton ran a fairly OK campaign, while Obama ran one that simply got better and better, can be found in a chart reproduced in the Journal story from Real Clear Politics data, which averages the national polls since October.

Here's my two cents, idiosyncratic as they may be: According to the chart, Clinton's national poll average was basically unchanged between the beginning of October and the middle of May, starting at about 41 percent and ending at about 42 percent. Although Clinton verged on 50 percent of the average poll and dipped to just below 40 before the New Hampshire primary, her numbers remained relatively steady. Meanwhile, Obama's numbers started at about 22 percent in October and rose faster than CO2 levels in the atmosphere, breaking 50 percent at the end.

One interpretation of the average poll data—my interpretation—is that as the field of candidates thinned and undecideds got off the pot, they migrated to Obama in huge numbers, first after the Iowa caucuses and then before Super Tuesday. Clinton, on the other hand, was a candidate whose market share was fixed. She never really expanded from her core of support, despite the many style, substance, and personnel changes she made during the campaign and no matter how much money she spent. And even then, she just barely lost the delegate count.

So the real story, which the Post and the Los Angeles Times detail nicely in their separate ways, is that Obama won by winning, not by Clinton losing.