'She Could Accept Losing. She Could Not Accept Quitting.'

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The Twists and Turns of The Clinton Campaign

The Post's Dan Balz assesses the final months of Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign.

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But they also knew that the topic was radioactive, particularly for a team that had been accused of injecting race into the nomination battle. "Our track record of dealing with race vis-à-vis his campaign is dismal," one official said.

Raising the issue publicly was so sensitive that when Harold Ickes, a senior strategist overseeing the delegate operation, mentioned in one interview that Wright had been raised in conversations by superdelegates, he was admonished by Maggie Williams, the campaign's new manager.

Clinton's team showed no such reluctance to engage after the next Obama misstep, after the Huffington Post Web site reported in April that Obama, at a San Francisco fundraiser, had described small-town Pennsylvanians as "bitter" over their economic situation and said that, as a result, they tend to "cling" to religion and guns.

"We thought that this was a legitimate and important conversation about who the Democratic Party stands for and how it stands for them," Garin said.

The Clinton high command treated the "bitter comment" as, in the words of one adviser, a "full-court, full-throated, no-holds-barred" opportunity. "It was a moment tied to the particular state where we were competing and where we needed a big victory. There was a recognition that it was something we needed to drive very hard, and we did."

Five days later, in the final debate of the primaries, ABC News moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos grilled Obama relentlessly over Wright, his association with 1960s radical William Ayers and even why he did not wear an American-flag pin on his lapel.

Clinton emerged from Pennsylvania with a victory that nearly matched her 10-point margin in Ohio. Her campaign responded with the message "The tide is turning."

Lifting spirits further still was a new campaign apparatus. Gone was Patti Solis Doyle, the less-experienced loyalist, replaced by the older and firmer Williams -- a professional management consultant who knew, in the words of one adviser, "how to say no."

Williams and another longtime confidante, Cheryl Mills, closed ranks around the candidate -- demanding an end to the backstabbing that had poisoned the campaign early on, returning phone calls and running meetings on time, making decisions that had lingered. Not everyone was happy. But for the first time, the office seemed to run relatively smoothly.

Gone, too -- or at least moved to the side -- was Mark Penn, the irascible chief strategist who had provoked so much ire during the early days of the race. Replaced by Garin, an affable and well-liked pollster, Penn took on a new role as the outside consigliore advising the Clintons to remain aggressive in the face of doubts about the campaign.

With Penn out of the top leadership, staff members felt that some of the dysfunction had been removed. Some even expressed warm feelings toward Penn, saying they could hear his advice in a more neutral way. "He is still sending in edits, but we can ignore them" was how one adviser put it.

The Clinton team still split along familiar lines, with some (including Wolfson and Mandy Grunwald) arguing for softer, more positive rhetoric, and others (including Penn) taking a hard line, encouraging the candidate to attack Obama. Penn also thought a far more aggressive strategy was needed in the effort to corral superdelegates. "Brute force" was his recommendation.