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Archive: Published Feb. 14, 2009 |
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Hillary Clinton When I began the research for this essay, my opinion was in alignment with the conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton was a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination, and given her own and the effort of the mainstream media (MSM) to portray her as a moderate, was likely to win the 2008 election. At this point, however, I am considerably less certain of both. And, it isn't the polls that are necessarily feeding my doubts. True, she doesn't look very good in the polls against either ex-mayor of NYC Rudy Giuliani or Senator John McCain [Polling Report -- 2008]. But, would Giuliani run and could McCain get the nomination? Against others, she looks much better -- she's winning, in fact. Her approval rating is fairly high, and many people feel that she looks presidential [Polling Report -- Political Figures]. Still, my doubts remain. That Hillary is attempting to portray herself as a moderate is unquestionable. Witness the Jan. 24, 2005 speech to the New York State Family Planning Providers where she has tried to find a middle ground on the abortion subject [Family Planning Providers]. Witness her vote for the Iraq war [Senate Speech on Iraq]. The MSM has already attached "centrist," and "moderate" to her [AP Dispatch]. Is this going to work? The problem is that she was rated in her first three years in the Senate by the liberal Americans for Democratic Action [ADA Voting Rating] at 95 percent. Her voting record is just as liberal as either John Kerry's or Ted Kennedy's. Also, endorsement by the MSM probably hurt John Kerry more than it helped. It may do the same for Hillary. And, you know, there just isn't any middle ground on abortion if you have voted for partial birth abortion. That makes the rape victim argument moot. And, the anti-war sector of her party is very bitter about her vote to allow the Iraq war. She has tried to ameliorate her stance on the war by calling for Bush to adopt multilateralism and level with the American people on the human and capital cost of the war [Council on Foreign Relations]. This might have worked better if John Kerry had not so vocally raised the suspicions of the electorate by constantly calling for these very steps. This stance is widely realized to be a veiled anti-war position. Of course, the Hollywood crowd, the Academics, and the Media are still in her corner, but you can tell that the kids are beginning to doubt the wisdom of nominating her [Can Hillary win in 2005?]. The Democrats were stunned by the John Kerry loss. They, of course, still believe that Al Gore won in 2000. However, if the Wisconsin voting scandal ever sorts itself out and becomes widely publicized, that view may change for major parts of the electorate [Wisconsin Election Fraud]. The fact may become clear that neither Al Gore, nor John Kerry won Wisconsin. Also, the Democrats have begun to examine the Clinton era more carefully. The fact is that Clinton won in 1992 because of Ross Perot being on the ballot. Clinton did not achieve a majority of votes. Similarly, he remained a minority President in 1996 [Clinton Election Victories]. This is calling the Democratic Leadership Council's (DLC's) middle-ground stance strategy to pickup the moderate vote into question, and it is this strategy that Hillary is pursuing. The thing that the left is determined not to do this time, is to nominate a candidate that they think is unelectable. They thought they had this issue solved with Kerry, because of his apparently outstanding war record. When this record began to fall apart under attack by the Swift Boat Veterans, it took the middle-ground campaign with it. Another question involves the relative health of both Hillary and Bill. Bill appears still to be reeling from his quadruple-bypass surgery. The apparent victory of Howard Dean in his run for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairmanship is a direct indication of the ill-health of Bill. Dean's grass-roots style meshes well with old-ally Al Gore's populism. Dean could back Al Gore for President in 2008. [Al Gore -- 2008] Dean is also more than aware that Bill and Hillary were instrumental in managing his defeat in the Iowa primary. There is some confusion about the Clinton-Clark relationship, but what is clear is that both Clintons were behind the Clark run. Hillary did not mount a serious effort to stop Dean's chair bid. This indicates two important things -- one, that Bill was not available to her as a serious ally at the time, and two, that Hillary herself does not have the confidence to work alone. {Much of the above material comes from Dick Morris' writings and interviews.} Bill is very important to her candidacy. He is also very important to her ability to actually perform as president. Hillary fainted the other day at an Erie county, NY women's group fund-raiser [Hillary collapses]. This is not, probably, an indication of ill-health, but it does pose the question of whether she can stand up under the overwhelming pressure of an actual presidential election effort. At 57, she shows her age [Senator Clinton 2005 Events]. Why did the Clintons try so hard to derail Dean? Dean had very little chance of winning the Presidency. Why not support Dean, and reap the reward four years later? Their candidate, Clark, was not the man who did it, but there was the same idea behind his candidacy as the winner's, Kerry, and that was successful military service that promised a strong hand in the War on Terror. It may be that the Clintons could not bear to see the party head in a direction they knew would not only fail with the electorate, but possibly terminally damage the party. Or, they may have felt that though Dean couldn't win the Presidency, that he might lead the party so far down the radical path that it might make it impossible for Hillary to get the nomination in 2008. Now that Dean has assumed the DNC chair, that might happen, anyway. Still, Bill is supposed to have told Clark that he probably wouldn't win the nomination, but if he did, he would be President. Maybe they were angling for the Vice Presidency for Hillary on a Clark ticket. Still, that would mean that Hillary would be 65 before having a shot at the Presidency in 2012. [Perry on Politics] Or, maybe, their desire to maintain control of the Democratic party is so strong that it sometimes blinds them to their otherwise overwhelming ambitions. The part of the Democrat party which appears to be the heir of this last election is the populist left. It was the victory of the local state parties over the Beltway that elected Dean to DNC chair. Their argument is that the Democrats did not succeed in the last election in bringing their own base out. Carl Rove's strategy was much more successful in this regard. This group wants to return to what they consider to be Democratic party roots. They have a rather different picture of what exactly this is, as compared to what conservative analysts believe. The conservatives keep telling the Democrats that they will have to move back to the party's positions during the era of the coalition established by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. The positions of WWII and the Cold War. The people soon-to-be in power in the Democratic party say that this is not true -- that they actually lose their base by moving to the center. They are poised to move left, instead. [Daily KOS] Ironically, if Hillary were to present her voting record as proof of her position, then, except for her stance on the Iraq war, she might be a perfect candidate in the eyes of this faction of the left. However, the MSM will probably make this impossible, by continually referring to her as a moderate. This is doubly ironic, because the MSM is also strongly anti-war. It is difficult for an outsider to appreciate how much the far-left dislikes Hillary for her pro-war vote. In their eyes this is akin to suddenly becoming pro-life. There are also some rather odd things working against Hillary. Her candidacy is being called the War of the Roses -- Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Clinton, again. Their fears are that a successful run by Hillary would also entail a possibly successful run downstream by Jeb Bush. As one Democrat wrote, Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton-Bush is not a democracy. There is a real ideological strain in the Democratic party left that would rather be right than win. {Much of the above material comes from Daily KOS threads} Hillary's campaign has stood upon two legs. The first is that she is to portray herself to the electorate as a moderate candidate. She is supposed to be helped along in this portrayal by the MSM. The second leg relies upon the fact that Hillary has been a visible part of the liberal elite since leaving law school. She expects this group to know that her portrayal as a moderate is not real, and that she shares the core values of this group. This very early in the 2008 campaign, neither leg appears especially strong. Then, there are the troops. It is not widely known, but the troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq that she encountered on her recent trips there, gave her the cold shoulder. [Hillary with a soldier in Iraq] The military distrusts her down to the troops on the ground. Soldiers actually walked off on her when she was still speaking. [Dean's World] Of course, the MSM hasn't let this out, but it makes you think of her unscheduled appearance at the Concert for New York at Madison Square Gardens, held on Oct. 20, 2001, for first-responders, right after the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster. She was jeered and booed by thousands there. [Drudge Report] MTV edited out the boos, but the news still slipped out. The war has worked against Hillary's ambitions. She has tried to change from her anti-military past by getting appointed to the Senate Armed Armed Services Committee [Armed Services Committee]. It hasn't really worked. The war remains popular, despite the best efforts by the MSM to undermine the effort. Hillary's own conduct with the military during her time in the White House and on the War on Terror has warned the troops against her. She voted for the war, but has been very vocal in demanding that the Bush administration come clean and inform people about the future cost of the war. She is a strong multilateralist. The blogosphere is rapidly gaining the power to inform the electorate about things that the MSM has always been able to suppress in the past. This power is greater during an election period because the blogosphere has a bigger audience then. No one knows how important the blogosphere will be next time out. The questions about Kerry's military service saw the light of day because of the blogosphere, and it very probably caused his defeat. Dan Rather and Eason Jordan have been brought down, exclusively by the Internet. Maybe, if Hillary runs in 2008, it will give the blogosphere the opportunity to thoroughly investigate the literally hundreds of stories about Clinton corruption that the MSM so effectively either pooh-poohed or suppressed. But, the most curious thing is that the Democratic, themselves, don't seem to think she can win [MyDD thread]. Women, especially, doubt that the time has come for a woman to win the presidency. Certainly, a liberal woman. They seem convinced that the Republicans will drag Hillary down by resurrecting the old scandals that we all remember. The polls do not reflect these doubts in actual numbers - Hillary's poll numbers are excellent against anyone other than Rudy Giuliani or John McCain. Women and men, in the polls, support her in equal numbers, though more men than women do not. [Polling Report -- 2008] Besides, the electorate has heard all about these scandals and wouldn't they be expected to resist any effort to resurrect them? And, the fact is, that Hillary earned a lot of points with women by sticking with Bill through the Monica Lewinski affair. However, she lost points with men. There is one Clinton scandal that the public is little aware of, though, and that is the number of deaths associated with both his gubernatorial and presidential administrations. Some of these deaths are clearly murders, and more than a few of them directly impacted scandals affecting the President. [Clinton's Body Count] This may be brought into daylight by Republicans or the blogosphere during the campaign, and it might resonate with the public. Then, there is the problem of substance. There just isn't that much. It is true that she has been an active member of the Senate, both as co-sponsor of bills and active proponent of others. There is very little that stands out from just standard liberal activity in the legislature, however. [Washington Times] She is a vocal advocate for women and children. She has taken on the cause of first-responders and homeland defense and has worked with Republicans in the Senate on such issues as education and health care. She also is a vocal advocate for deterring illegal immigration. [Democrat & Chronicle] Nonetheless, there is nothing that has her name on it. Her, perhaps, most famous act as Senator, was her vote to give President Bush the right to go to war with Iraq. She is, of course, quite famous as leader of the Clinton administration's 1993 failed effort to provide universal health care coverage [National Public Radio]. There are other things working against Hillary in the long run. She isn't a terribly good speaker. She does best when she is speaking to a crowd which clearly loves her. How will she handle skeptical crowds who need to be convinced? She is not very imposing visually -- short and blockish, and now somewhat worn and wizened. Recall that Margaret Thatcher was a rather tall woman. She was a conservative, too, who conveyed real strength on the world stage. Then, there is the question of how voters will react when it suddenly dawns on them that if Hillary gets into the White House, then Bill will be there beside her. Do the voters want Bill back in the White House, even if only as First Gentleman? Given, especially, that they were always a team? She hasn't been one to help other Democratic party candidates. She has blithely moved through the Senate with the certain knowledge that she was the liberal anointed. Aside for some very early appearances with the candidate, she did almost nothing to help out on the Kerry campaign. She didn't ask to speak at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and was not invited to do so. There was speculation on all sides, as to why. [San Francisco Chronicle] There has to be party members who wonder if her help might have made the difference in such a close election. It was clear that she didn't really want Kerry to win. She had made the determination in the year before that Bush could not be beaten in 2004. It was only later that Bush began to be seriously vulnerable. No, 2008 was going to be her time, when the Republicans would probably have a hard time in presenting a strong candidate at the end of Bush's second term. Bill had supposedly planned to speak for Kerry in the closing weeks of the campaign, but his heart surgery left him too weak to do so. Who really knows how serious his offer was? He had waited until the very last to help, anyway. He wants Hillary to become President, and that meant Kerry had to lose. Bill wants to be back in the White House. Lastly, she has to get reelected to the Senate in 2006. The only real chance of beating her, is if George Pataki, the current New York governor, or Rudy Giuliani was her opponent [Outside the Beltway]. However, the recent New York court decision, if it stands, legalizing gay marriage may hurt her [Kuro5him]. Such rulings seem to rally liberal opponents, while making allies less certain in their support. Given the liberals' tendency to turn on their own, when it suits their purposes, it might be expected that the men who run the Democratic party will turn also against Hillary. The feminists, like the blacks and the gays, are the second class citizens of that party, who, perceiving themselves as having little where else to turn, are taken for granted. As Bill Clinton did -- fawning upon feminist leaders, while treating individual women as the meanest kinds of sexual object. For Bill, women are hardly more than forms of self-gratification. So, that's some of the pros, and some of the cons. In the end, I just have a feeling about it. The times may have passed Hillary by. It may well be that 2004 was her only real shot, when the Republican candidate really was pretty weak -- at least, until the blogosphere took the Democratic candidate apart. She proved too cautious to take that chance. As Brutus urged his companions in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar :
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Copyright 2009 by Dana Lotzgesell |
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