Dead Campaign, Walking… How Does This Affect the General Election?

I note Patrick Healy giving some notice to the building falling down around Hillary Clinton.

Morale is low. After 13 months of dawn-to-dark seven-day weeks, the staff is exhausted. Some have taken to going home early – 9 p.m. – turning off their BlackBerrys, and polishing off bottles of wine, several senior staff members said.Some advisers have been heard yelling at close friends and colleagues. In a much-reported incident, Mr. Penn and the campaign advertising chief, Mandy Grunwald, had a screaming match over strategy recently that prompted another senior aide, Guy Cecil, to leave the room. “I have work to do – you’re acting like kids,” Mr. Cecil said, according to three people in the room.

Others have taken several days off, despite it being crunch time. Some have grown depressed, be it over Mr. Obama’s momentum, the attacks on the campaign’s management from outside critics or their view that the news media has been much rougher on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Obama.

And some of her major fund-raisers have begun playing down their roles, asking reporters to refer to them simply as “donors,” to try to rein in their image as unfailingly loyal to the Clintons.

To which, Gabriel Malor over at Ace’s place notes:

One of the problems Clinton will have when this is all over is dealing with the disappointment of the truly devoted. The ones who have invested so much money, time, or heart in her candidacy that they hear her cackle and think how kind and genial she is. They think she won this week’s debate. And they think that she can still win the nomination without some kind of catastrophe at Obama HQ. The true believers.

Those are the folks most like to stay angry long enough to truly hurt her future in politics. Betrayal and heartache are powerful motivators in the short term and lots of these people are going to feel it. More than that, the frustration of defeat is going to be a long term deterrent. Clinton’s failure, and for a good portion of these people it will be seen as her failure and not just something that can be blamed on some mythical anti-Clinton media, will hang around her neck for a long time.

There’s no question of this in my mind… mostly, because as I’ve said here previously, liberalism is built mostly on emotionalism, and certainly what Malor describes here is an emotional response.  But there’s something deeper going on here that will I think affect the general election; How may of Clinton supporters will sit on their hands in the coming general election, after investing so much in the losing candidate?

Addendum:  (David L )

This comes down to myth meets reality,  Mrs. Clinton and her fanatics believe that Mrs. Clinton is tough, smart, strong and ready to lead.   The problem for Mrs. Clinton is that she has none of these attributes.   The truth be told, Mrs. Clinton is a weak and delusional women, with few accomplishments of her own, who just isn’t all that smart.   As they might say in Texas: all hat, no cattle.