Our cagey friend Dick Morris actually does a nice job explaining why Senator Clinton might well win AND why she shouldn’t. She will mobilize the single-female vote, bringing its turnout "to its proper ratio of the adult population." More generally, she will inspire a new kind of enthusiasm in the electorate. Besides, Bill will campaign for her.
But Ms. Clinton shouldn’t win, Dick goes on, precisely because she’s so different from her husband. Bill is comparatively moderate, flexible, and un-ideological; the truth is he was "a very good domestic-policy president." She "specializes in advocacy," is "obtuse" and "ham-handed," and "deeply believes in European-style socialism." Not only that: Bill is "most like Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Bush Sr.--feeling his way, acting with caution, and skeptical of all advice. She is more like LBJ, Nixon or Bush Jr.--determined to charge ahead and do what she thinks needs to be done, the torpedoes be damned."
My own view is that Dick is exaggerating these differences. But they do have considerable truth and make for good talking points for any Republican campaigning against her. And we can almost wish that the Constitution be changed so that Bill could run against her.
For the reasons Dick gives, Jonah Goldberg is just wrong to think liberal voters would regard Hillary as just a stale figure from the "holiday from history" that was the 1990s. Kerry and Gore are, in fact, yesterday’s boring news and have no chance; Obama’s prospects are uncertain. A big question: Is Senator Obama preferable to Senator Clinton from a good-government perspective?
This is one area where I think the GOP will come through in 2008 - portraying Hillary as the radical she is. Still, if they don’t have a conservative candidate, you can’t count her out...
As much fun as it would be to see Hillary Clinton in the White House again, (Sean Hannity would possibly experience angina pectoris on the air) she just couldn’t govern the whole nation because of all the bad blood.
I disagree about Al Gore - the old Al Gore is old news, but the current one is a gutsy guy with personality and opinions. I’m witholding judgement on Obama because he’s mostly charm and unknown quantity at this point.
The article was kind of disappointing. Dick Morris discussed neither why she would win nor why it would be bad in any detail; all he said was Hillary would mobilize the single, unmarried woman vote (with which the two single, unmarried women by whom I was sitting - and one a Democrat, both disagreed), and then he spat off a bunch of differences between her and Slick Willy. I wasn’t convinced that she could win nor was I convinced it would be bad (at least from reading the article).
I wouldn’t mind amending the Constitution to let good ol’ Bill run again. :p
Whether or not Hillary wins would be more focused on his Republican candidate than anything else-- single women vote or not. If the Republicans field a more moderate candidate they would probably beat her. McCain has a good chance at doing so (but due to his age, I believe that the population will be looking for a strong vice-president here as well), and Giuliani would probably beat her as well.
While people would say having Bill around to help her is a good thing, I personally think that his shadow would be too big for her to operate under. Everyone will be expecting Bill, and will find out that Hillary definitely is not him.
On the note of VPs, I think the Democratic VP will also play important. If a Clinton-Obama team (which many Democrats I know seem to think will be there best bet) popped up, it would prove formidable for the GOP in my opinion, what with Clinton’s experience, funding, and name-recognition and Obama’s charisma and ability to talk to the evangelical voters.
We’ll see what happens.
I concur with DK that Gore has a serious chance to win the nomination. The Dems want the White House bad. And there is a sentiment in their party that despite their fondness for Hillary, her past, her iconoclastic image and her open marriage aren’t going to fly withe American electorate. She’ll carry a healthy number of the blue states, but she won’t be able to cross that magic number of 270 electoral college votes. Recall, Gore earned more votes than any Democrat, {other than Kerry I think, and Gore earned a higher percentage of the black vote than the supposed FIRST black President}.
So who will it be:
Hillary should be considered the inside strait right now;
Kerry is dead in the water, just where his Swift Boat former crew mates left him;
Hussein Obama is nothing more than a more articulate version of John Edwards, a one term Senator, with a glossy image that won’t wear well through the protracted scrutiny of the nomination process, count on him to fade, and it will become clear that he’s just in the race to garner a place on the ticket;
Edwards is still the light weight, and this time, he won’t even enjoy the privilege of being the most glossy candidate, for that honour will be held by Hussein Obama;
Richardson,???????? Hispanic, thus able to pull a not insignificant constituency, a Governor, purportedly popular, and Governors ALWAYS have an electoral advantage over Senators, there’s a reason that the Senate is known not just as the killing fields of legislation, but also the killing fields of Presidential ambitions;
WHICH LEAVES US GORE.... Gore might sneak in there, especially if Hillary makes a verbal blunder, which is hardly unusual for her. We’re talking about a woman who made a Gandhi joke about gas station attendants and 7-11 owners, we’re talking about a woman who ridiculed women who stood by their husbands, through thick and through thin, by denouncing them implicitly when she said that "she wasn’t going to sit home, bake cookies, and sing "Stand by your man." Thus taking something of a swipe at an ENORMOUSLY popular song, and an enormously popular Country female vocalist. If Hillary makes a misstep, as Dean did when he was closing in on the nomination, instead of Kerry being there to pick up the pieces by default, it could be Gore this time. Gore could run the campaign that Kerry ran against Dean, sans the Vietnam war hero bullshit, remember that Kerry bumper sticker, which read: "Dated Dean, married Kerry." Gore could easily produce endless variants against Hillary.
The problem with Gore is that while Hillary has been spending the last couple years moving to the middle, Gore has spent the last couple years catering to the Left. While it’s possible he could win the nomination, there’s no way he could be competative in a national election. For the GOP I think a McCain/Guiliani ticket would be a powerhouse, while the Hillary/Obama ticket would be the Democrats’. McCain/Guiliani would win, though, because they’re both moderates whose strength is national security; if they promised the Conservative base of the GOP a couple of Scalia/Thomas/Alito supreme court judges, they’d be unstoppable.
You’re placing the White House BEFORE the nomination process. The Democrat must first get the nomination. Their nomination process is slanted towards the left. There are reasons why they’ve nominated no real Centrists since 1968, Hubert H. Humphrey was the last Democrat nominated without significant leftist inclinations. Gore knows that far more than any of us.
What about that Clinton guy?
Clinton only governed as a Centrist AFTER the electoral shellacking he received in ’94. Prior to that, Clinton tried to socialize 1/7th of the American economy. Take a look at his judicial nominees, former Chief Counsel to the ACLU...............Hardly a "Centrist" selection that. And Breyer has demonstrated himself to envision a world where the High Court looks beyond parochial and mundane American concerns, American laws, American Constitutional interpretation, he envisions a world where the "global test" of Kerry is translated into our own body of law.
After 9/11, Clinton moved towards the center. But even then, he did things profoundly consistent with lefty longings since the ’60s, such as signing a plethora of treaties that tied down the United States, and constrained American freedom of action.
That last paragraph should lead off by saying "After ’94, Clinton moved...." NOT "After 9/11." Sorry about that.
I think that Hillary Clinton as DEM nominee would be the best possible situation for the moribund GOP. There is no more polarizing figure in current politics, and the folks would come out of the woodwork to vote against her. It would be a battle, but one I think we could win.
The first commercial against Hillary: The look on her face at Bush’s State of the Union just after 9/11. No patriot there...