When Desparate Times Call For Desparate Measures, Create a Website

After last night's double-digit loss to Senator Barack Obama in the blue-collar swing state of Wisconsin, the Hillary Clinton campaign has reached a crossroads and is clearly in crisis. Now, I do not believe it is impossible for the former Senator to capture the Democratic nomination, there are still several major state contests and a lot of time before the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Its just indicative to me that the Clinton machine came up with a website, http://www.delegatehub.com, to try to undercut Obama's claims on delegates. Now, PR practitioners usually counsel their clients to have a "dark" website, which in a crisis can be used to effectively direct the press and customers to the relevant information regarding the crisis. On the other hand, this website, with little affiliation to the Clinton campaign besides a small print comment at the bottom, looks rather vague in terms of who sponsors it. It is another veiled political attack, and though it attempts to directly undercut Obama's message, it fails to address the major Clinton campaign problems: lack of a "sticky" message (to borrow Frank Luntz's terminology) and a grassroots campaign organizational structure.

The Clinton campaign has looked fairly poor in adjusting to their new underdog status. A coherent, effective and compelling message seems to be something that her campaign team is still struggling to come up with against Obama's "Yes We Can" message of hope. At this point, reframing the debate to make it less about the actual words and more about accomplishments would be a great success for Hillary, except that this is not a new tactic. She just has been unable to stop the momentum of the Obama machine and convince primary voters that change can only be achieved by someone with experience such as herself.

Delegate Hub fails to adequately address the strategic dilemma for the Hillary team: Its not about superdelegates at this point, it is all about getting a plurality of voters to deliver wins. Until then, Delegate Hub is a nice site with some video but very little substance.