This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on Feb. 22, 2016 It’s been said all too often in recent days that blame for the demise of Jeb Bush’s candidacy lies with his campaign, as if a different strategic approach or different operatives in his campaign and super PAC would have tended a different result. Part of this flawed assumption is the premise that we have political auctions, not elections, and that with plenty of money anyone can be elected to anything. Nothing matters but money, so this thinking goes. For those of us who have watched campaigns closely for decades, every two years we see big-spending campaigns go down the tubes. Money is important, but it is not nearly the determinant that some would have you believe. I would argue that Bush had problems that no amount of money and no campaign could have fixed, that the “blame the campaign” meme is a cop-out. When I look back at the Bush campaign, it becomes clear that we had the confluence of a number of factors that all worked against his
Subscribe Today
Our subscribers have first access to individual race pages for each House, Senate and Governors race, which will include race ratings (each race is rated on a seven-point scale) and a narrative analysis pertaining to that race.