As happened in the West Virginia primary Hillary Clinton soundly won today's Kentucky democratic primary with 65% of the vote to Obama's 30%. Clinton must be thinking "oh what a difference an Iowa makes" as she contemplates a strategy that now appears to have failed to gain enough support early in the primaries to carry her on to victory. Although it is not clear that Obama's 11 consecutive victories before Pennsylvania were the key factor in his probably primary victory, I think a combination of strategic errors cost Clinton an election she would have won with a different approach. The key mistakes:
1) Waiting *far* too long to gripe about Florida and Michigan's missing primary votes. Clinton's point is very valid that these states have been disenfranchised. In fact to any clear thinker this is an outrage. Yet I think the Clinton strategy was very foolish, waiting until she was the underdog to complain about this. Now the question is one of fairness to the states who had their votes voided vs fairness to the process of electing which was also seriously compromised here. A revote is the answer, and the Democratic party should fund a new vote unless it can be shown that the outcome would be very unlikely to have an effect on the outcome of the race.
2) Failing to name Obama as her choice for VP after Edwards dropped out of the race. This would have won her superdelegate support and might have turned the tide in some states - most importantly it would have stolen Obama's momentum at a critical time.
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