cause my opinion is that Clark campaigned as well as many other more seasoned campaigners, and bested many of them!
Clark came in a year later than all of the rest of the crew, had never ran a campaign in his life, was not a politician, and most importantly did not contest Iowa, and yet managed to best John Edwards (who took 2nd place in Iowa--and from that point on had the Media blowing at his backside with superlatives) in New Hampshire and beat Dean's fundraising efforts in the critical primary month of January 2004.
Clark WITHOUT media asskisses went on to beat Edwards in New Mexico, Arizona, North Dakota and Oklahoma.....while Edwards only bested Clark in 3 contests that Mini Tuesda -- Delaware, South Carolina (Edwards' birth state) and Missouri.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-TuesdayOf course, John Kerry beat both men....except for in Oklahoma, where Clark won....and in South Carolina, where Edwards won.
Even with Clark's good showing on Mini Tuesday, the pundits decided to ignore him (see this article...written on Mini Tuesday after the results....)
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/02/04/primaries/index.htmlClark dropped out BECAUSE HE IS NO FOOL AND WASN'T RUNNING FOR VP....and unlike some, once it was understood that John Kerry had it all wrapped up, Clark had no personal need to continue to collect donations from his supporters only to waste those precious resources for naught.
So it is my researched opinion that Clark did some great campaigning considering the obstacle of getting through to voters without a full blown press who were too busy with promoting the Iowa winners till the end anyways.
Here's some back up from a "real" journalist....and I have more, if needed.
Primary Colors
By Elizabeth Drew
At a huge rally outside Manchester on Saturday afternoon, January 17, he (Clark) stirred up more emotion than I have seen since Robert F. Kennedy addressed large crowds. Clark's stump speech was largely about values. He distinguished genuine patriotism—a commitment to American traditions of civil liberties and vigorous dissent— from fake patriotism—the indifference to rights and intolerance of dissent that characterize the Bush administration. He strongly criticized the President for not taking effective measures to prevent the attacks on September 11, 2001, even after Bush had received a warning about a plan for terrorists to hijack American planes, and for "lying us into an unnecessary war." He talked of Bush "prancing around the deck of an aircraft carrier," prematurely declaring an end to "major hostilities" in Iraq. His basic message was that "a higher standard of leadership" is needed in the US.
The Bush administration for a while took the threat of Clark's candidacy seriously, and tried to undermine him by spreading the charge that he had been inconsistent in his opposition to the Iraq war. This was unfair. He maintained the position of his testimony to the House Armed Services Committee on September 26, 2002, that a congressional resolution "need not, at this point, authorize the use of force" and that
if efforts to resolve the problem by using the United Nations fail ...then we need to form the broadest possible coalition, including our NATO allies...if we're going to have to bring forces to bear.
The press—some reporters encouraged by the Bush administration— also attacked him for not distancing himself from the left-wing humorist Michael Moore, who, in a funny introduction of Clark at a rally, called George W. Bush a "deserter." Moore was obviously joking, as he made clear in a chat with some reporters afterward, saying also that he respected people who tried to avoid service in Vietnam. Perhaps because of Moore's comment, whether Bush reported for duty in the Alabama National Guard has become a major issue again, though it was generally ignored in 2000. Bush, for his part, recently acknowledged that he was allowed to leave the National Guard eight months before his term expired: "Well, I was going to Harvard Business School and worked it out with the military."
Some reporters concluded that Moore was serious, and this set off Clark's largest crisis in New Hampshire, on the weekend before the primary. Clark said in a press conference after the rally, and in the debate in New Hampshire on January 22, that he wasn't going to tell anyone what form their dissent should take. This is a fundamental principle for Clark, one that he defended even before he entered the race. Yet his response was widely seen to have been a mistake. He said the next day that he wouldn't have "used those words," but it was too late. This episode damaged Clark in New Hampshire and elsewhere, though he managed to come in third, just a few hundred votes ahead of Edwards. (Contrary to many reports, Clark fully expected Kerry to win in Iowa.)
Kerry and Dean both had advantages in New Hampshire, since they are from neighboring states; the only surprise was that Dean came in such a distant second—26.4 percent to Kerry's 38.4 percent. In the seven states that voted on February 3, Kerry won five and Edwards won South Carolina (where he was born, and lived for ten years), while Clark narrowly won Oklahoma and came in second in Arizona, New Mexico, and North Dakota, a respectable showing, but one that was largely written off by the press, which had by then practically anointed Kerry. Kerry easily carried Michigan and Washington State on Saturday, February 7, and won Tennessee and Virginia by large margins on February 10. Edwards came in a distant second in both states, and Clark came in third and withdrew from the race the next day.
snip
The race was declared "over" so many times, and so many outcomes were declared "inevitable," that it sometimes seemed as if the voters were irrelevant. Reporters and pundits kept telling us what was going to happen rather than explaining what's happened and trying to analyze why. Early in 2003, The New York Times announced that John Kerry was the "front-runner." This turned out to have been prescient, but at the time it was written it was hard to discern how there could be a front-runner a year and a half before anyone had voted, and months before there was an opportunity to observe candidates and hear their plans.
Before Christmas, countless pundits and reporters told us that Howard Dean had the nomination sewed up—again before anyone had voted. If Dean won Iowa and New Hampshire, we were told, "it's over"; some commentators and reporters ventured further, stating that if Dean won Iowa, that would suffice. Consider, they said, the fearsome power of the unions in Iowa, who were backing Dean along with Dick Gephardt. Then Gephardt was said to be winning the nomination, and Kerry was "coming apart"—all before anything real had happened. Clark, a man with admirable qualities —and at times a very good candidate—received, on the whole, negative treatment in the press.<2> That much of the press was wrong in predicting Dean's "inevitability" apparently gave them no pause in making further predictions.
Such journalism is not only a waste of time but can seriously distort the electoral process. Forecasts by the press that a certain candidate will win may produce contributions, volunteers, and energy (as with the early endorsement of Dean by labor unions)— and the reverse is also the case. That they mislead the public seems not to matter. The entire nominating and election processes need to be reconsidered by the political parties and the press. The voters deserve to be better served by both the politicians and by journalists; otherwise the principle of democratic nomination and election through informed choice is made a mockery.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16965 
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