If Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic presidential nomination, her lumbering dinosaur of a campaign will bear a great deal of the blame. In future it is likely to be studied as an object lesson in how not to run for election.

For a campaign that was described as a formidable, well-oiled machine, it is a humbling verdict, especially for the seasoned staff and consultants who have worked hard – for huge sums, admittedly – and seen every advantage slip away.

Barack Obama, her 46-year-old rival, has produced a nimble and creative operation that has outsmarted her every step of the way and given him increasing credibility as presidential material.

Betsy Myers, Obama’s chief operating officer, was at Har-vard’s Center for Public Leadership last year when she was invited to meet the Illinois senator. She was impressed by his commitment to a new kind of leadership and agreed to join his campaign.

A race like a crackpot Dynasty

The contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton matches any fiction

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• Decay, jobs and guns fall under the spotlight

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“From day one,” she said, using one of Clinton’s favourite catch-phrases with relish, “we were determined to put together an operation that ran like a business, had very efficient procedures and was very tight on spending.”

Obama also insisted that it would reflect the spirit of his campaign. “From the minute I interviewed with Barack, he was very clear about the kind of operation he wanted to put together. He was very concerned about gaining people’s respect and treating them well.”

Myers served in Bill Clinton’s administration and is the sister of Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s former White House press secretary. She is shocked by how poorly Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been managed: “I’m surprised that their operation wasn’t more buttoned up because they had the experience of running twice for president and had access to so many people who had done it before. That staggered me.”

Clinton launched her campaign with “I’m in to win”, but struck an elegiac note during Thursday night’s debate in Texas when she said: “You know, no matter what happens in this contest – and I am honoured, I am honoured to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honoured.

“Whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends.”

Bill Clinton said last week on the campaign stump: “If she wins Texas and Ohio, I think she will be the nominee. If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be. It’s all on you.”

The two key states vote on March 4, giving Clinton just 10 days to pull off a surprise come-back. Even so, it will be impossible to overtake Obama in delegates – 2,025 are needed to clinch the nomination at the Democratic National Convention – unless she wins by a landslide.

Until recently, Clinton’s campaign team failed to notice that Texas has a hybrid caucus and primary system that is likely to benefit Obama, who has triumphed in caucuses – smaller gatherings that attract party activists. The contest is also weighted in such a way that votes in largely black urban areas will yield more delegates than the votes in some Hispanic ones, giving Obama a further advantage.

“I had no idea how bizarre it is,” said Clinton. “We have grown men crying over it.”

The lack of foresight has perplexed leading Clinton donors. New figures for campaign spending in January show that nearly $100,000 went on sandwich platters at a grocery store, $25,000 on luxury rooms at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas and $5m on senior consultants – the very people who neglected to plan for a campaign that has lasted beyond Super Tuesday, when the two candidates emerged neck and neck.

Since then Obama has gone on to win 11 contests in a row.

“We didn’t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now,” a leading Clinton donor told The New York Times. “So much about her campaign needs to change, but it may be too late.”

Tomorrow Clinton is having to take a break from campaigning to hold a fundraiser in Washington, while Bill has been doing the same in Florida. For $500 supporters can have “platinum seating”; for $25 there is “limited availability” – suggesting that she still cannot resist snubbing small donors for the wealthy.

Joe Trippi, who is considered the godfather of internet campaigning for his work on Howard Dean’s presidential bid in 2004, once suggested to the Clinton team that they should seek to raise $100 from a million women to elect the first woman president, but his advice was ignored. After the Iowa caucus in early January it was Trippi, by then an adviser to John Edwards, who was the first to float the idea that the Clinton camp was running out of money.

“There is a good chance they’re on the ropes financially,” he said. “I don’t think anyone is contributing to them.”

It had seemed an incredible claim, but he was right.

After Clinton was obliged to loan her own campaign $5m in January, she finally turned to the internet to drum up support from pensioners and single mothers and anybody else who might have small change to spare. The effort was a huge success, raising a question about why the tactic was not tried earlier.

Although official figures have not been released yet, she is thought to be on track to raise nearly $30m this month at an astonishing rate of $1m a day.

Her team could be forgiven for congratulating themselves for catching up with Obama, who raised $32m in January. This month, however, he is predicted by analysts to haul in the record-shattering sum of $50m.

Nearly 600,000 donors have contributed to his campaign in relatively small sums since the beginning of the year – a pool of supporters that can be tapped again and again before they reach the campaign limit of $2,300 per person.

No matter what Clinton does, she is always one step behind and the strains are showing. Mark Penn, her chief strategist– who collected $3.8m in fees and expenses for his firm in January – has insisted that she keep to her message of “strength and experience” to the increasing frustration of other members of the team, who believe she should show more empathy.

Penn won that argument last week when Clinton emerged from a landslide defeat in Wisconsin to argue that she was better prepared than Obama to be commander-in-chief – but she was booed when she accused him of plagiarism and her best moment came when she reached out to him warmly at the end of the debate.

“Mark did essentially the same job in 2000 [during Clinton’s first senate election campaign], which was a difficult race and we prevailed,” said a close observer. “He also worked for Bill Clinton in 1996 and we prevailed. He worked for Hillary in 2006 and we prevailed. So there is a lot of faith and trust there on behalf of both Clintons.”

When Obama joined the race, barely 10% of the country recognised his name. Myers described his campaign as a “$100m start-up”. She hired very few staff who had worked in a presidential campaign before, although Obama surrounded himself with cool-headed political operatives such as David Plouffe, his campaign manager, and David Axelrod, his chief strategist.

At one stage the campaign had 700 employees either in the field or in its Chicago headquarters, although the staff have shrunk to 250 now that more than half the country has voted.

“We’ve never veered from our strategy. We’ve had a ground game that we’ve moved strategically from state to state,” Myers said.

Myers recruited business people such as chief technology officer Kevin Malover, who previously worked for Orbitz, the internet travel company, and women who had been stay-at-home mothers and were coming back into the workforce with fresh ideas.

Myers recalled that the “low point” was in the early autumn, when Obama was trailing Clinton by 20% in the polls and his donors and supporters were getting anxious. “We stayed steady,” she said. “We never fired anyone or changed our message.”

Along the way there would be a few encouraging signs, such as the endorsement by a local politician or two in Iowa or New Hampshire. “There would be things to celebrate, little by little,” she said.

Now the party’s 796 super-delegates – party notables, including governors, senators and congressmen who will have a casting vote at the convention – are beginning to swing behind Obama, while the Clinton camp clings to the vain hope that they will crown her in defiance of the majority of voters.

Clinton has set up a website, www.delegatehub.com, outlining a path to the nomination which relies on arm-twisting the super-delegates and seating the “ghost” delegations from Florida and Michigan, states which broke party rules by holding their contests early.

Members of her campaign have spent countless hours justifying these hardball tactics. As Matthew Yglesias, a blogger for The Atlantic magazine, wrote acidly: “This . . . isn’t the sort of thing they need to be wasting their time on. Persuade some people to vote for you!”

Hard-nosed Hillary drives away Joe Six-Pack, the hard-hat man

If the Democrats were certain of one thing before this election, it was that “Reagan Democrats” – white blue-collar patriots – were coming home to them. But when their choice of candidate boiled down to a white woman and an African-American man, it appeared that history had rushed ahead of the white working-class man.

Hillary Clinton thought she could win over Joe Six-Pack by projecting a tough message on the economy and national security. However, in a crucial shift that could cost her the nomination, white working-class men are moving into Barack Obama’s camp.

In Ohio, Clinton still holds a lead of 52% to 40% over Obama among white men, but the figures are reversed in Texas, where he has a 53% to 43% advantage, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Obama has been pitching for working men’s support, appearing at a titanium plant in Niles, Ohio, last week. He criticised Nafta, the free trade agreement, and claimed there was “greater income inequality” in America than at any time since the great depression of the 1930s.

Clinton’s feminism can make men uncomfortable. “For a lot of blue-collar guys over 40, Hillary Clinton is a poster child for everything about the women’s movement they don’t like,” Gerald Austin, an Ohio political strategist, told The Wall Street Journal.

Obama beat Clinton by 63% to 34% among white men in the Wisconsin primary last week, according to exit polls.

How Obama stormed the Clinton lead Texas poll
(March 4th, delegates: 228)
Clinton 48%
Obama 47%

Ohio poll
(March 4th, delegates: 161)
Clinton 50%
Obama 43%

Head to head polls – McCain v Clinton
McCain 47%
Clinton 44%

Head to head polls – McCain v Obama
McCain 43%
Obama 47%

How white men plan to vote in Ohio
Clinton 52%
Obama 40%

How white men plan to vote in Texas
Clinton 43%
Obama 53%

Video: Barack Obama's Wisconsin Primary Victory Speech

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