Hillary can be stopped

The inevitability of the Hillary campaign has been the theme for awhile now in the MSM, but a few people are willing to dispute this assertion. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times started the ball rolling:

Yet Mrs. Clinton may be a good example of why the front-runner designation is so ephemeral. Mr. Obama has arguably outpaced her in fund-raising and crowds. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards have held their own in winning endorsements.

Mrs. Clinton may have the lead in national polls and polls in New Hampshire. But most polls show a tight three-way race in Iowa, where many Democrats consider Mr. Edwards the, um, front-runner. Anyway, polls in Iowa and New Hampshire in the fall do not tell you very much about what is going to happen in January.

The truth is, there is no evidence that the Democratic primary voters have fallen head-over-heels for Mrs. Clinton. And any event that reminds Democratic voters of the lingering concerns about her could topple her from her perch.

The Real Clear Politics Blogs took up the issue and kicked it around. Jay Cost says Nagourney fails to realize that the media creates the front runner not voters:

This points to the methodological flaw of using polling data to analyze the state of the race. Polls are valuable to a point – but they really cannot be taken as independent evidence of the state of the race. This is how the media’s echo chamber is created. The media talks up one candidate over another. The polls echo this talking up back to the media. The media believes the polls offer independent evidence that justifies its talking up, and proceeds to talk up the particular candidate all the more.

This is why I refuse to ask the question that Dan Balz asked this week. The manner in which voters make a selection will change – because of all the money that candidates have. That’s when the real campaign begins, you know. It begins when the candidates start their advertising blitzes. That has only begun – and so the campaign has only begun. The fact that the media has nothing better to talk about in August than the “campaign” does not mean that there is a campaign to talk about.

Tom Bevan agrees and adds that a loss in Iowa could derail the Hillary campaign:

So it’s nuts to sit here in September and say Hillary can’t be stopped. We don’t know whether she can be stopped, and we won’t know whether she can be stopped until we get within a couple weeks of the caucuses and watch as voters start getting serious about making their choice.

[. . .]

Now consider how all of this could work against Hillary. She has massive leads in the national polls and in New Hampshire and Florida. But the one place where she’s in a real dog fight is Iowa. A win there would probably clinch the nomination. But if she enters as the national front runner and the prohibitive favorite and suffers an upset in Iowa – especially a bad one – it could cause her entire campaign to unravel. Especially if, as it looks now, the caucuses are held in very close proximity to the New Hampshire primary and she has no time to stanch the bleeding. So for all the talk of other candidates seeing Iowa as a “must win,” it may turn out that Hillary needs a win there most of all.

The doubts about Hillary will come. The question is whether anyone will position themselves to take advantage of those doubts and second guesses when the voting starts.

Six Ways to Beat Hillary

John Dickerson at Slate offers Six Ways to Beat Hillary. I will post a longer discussion of this later today, but here are John’s six:

1) Start sucking up
2) Speak softly and build your Iowa ground game
3) Attack Clinton on policy
4) Attack Clinton as a captive of lobbyists
5) Sharpen the complaint that Clinton is too divisive
6) Attack her honesty

Wesley Clark lobbies for a cabinet spot

Sure, they call it an endorsement but it amounts to a request for a spot in her administration:

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed Saturday by retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who sought the party’s nomination in 2004 and whose sterling military credentials could bolster her bid to be the first female commander in chief.

Notice too that Hillary continues to denounce the MoveOn ad:

But Clinton also sidestepped questions about a newspaper ad by the liberal group MoveOn.org that criticized the top military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus. She has refused to condemn the ad, which referred to Petraeus as “General Betray-Us.”

“I have repeatedly not only expressed my strong admiration and support for our men and women in uniform but with respect to General Petraeus, I have also made my respect for him abundantly clear and I think that speaks for itself,” she said.

So if she respects them then why wasn’t the ad out of bounds? It is one thing to disagree with policy it is another to call it a betrayal. But Hillary doesn’t want to lose the faith of the far left in her party so she straddles and evades the issue. Typical.

It’s not about ‘whose turn it is’

Michelle Obama makes a good point about Hillary:

“You know, some women just feel like, that it’s a woman’s turn,” she added, regarding Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.” And people have said….that they just feel like, you know, it’s Hillary’s turn. That, I reject because democracy isn’t supposed to be about whose turn it is.”

Good point. You shouldn’t vote for the wrong person just because of their gender.

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

That’s the phrase Hillary used to describe listening to Gen. Petraeus testify. It seems to me that it is a perfect phrase to capture listening to the former first lady. On issue after issue she simply refuses to admit her mistakes or share the blame. Isn’t this the very characteristic the left hates about President Bush?

Take the infamous Iraq war vote. Hillary continues to spin it in ways that stretch credibility. Recently, when Bill Maher asked why voters should trust her after having been “fooled by George Bush” she once again described the vote as something it wasn’t:

Well, Bill, it was a little more complicated than that. I sought out expert opinions from a wide variety of sources. People inside and outside the government, people in my husband’s administration. And I think it is fair to say that, at the time, I made it very clear I was against a pre-emptive war. And I believed that giving the president authority to go back to the United Nations and put in inspectors was an appropriate designation of authority. That is not what we have seen him do, and I’ve said that had I known then what I know now, obviously, I would never have voted to give him the authority.

Here answer seeks to imply that the vote was simply a way to get the President to go to the UN, but everybody knows this simply isn’t true. If that was the case it would have been a much easier vote as everybody supported more attempts to get the UN to act. Hillary was afraid if she voted against the resolution she would lose her hawkish and centrist credentials on the war; especially if things went well.

As is so typical of Hillary, she sort of admits that it was a mistake – “If I had known then what I know now . . .” – but conveniently blames Bush for the mistake rather than her own vote. It is a rhetorical spin designed to avoid the heart of the matter and avoid blame. The rest of the answer is another typical Clinton move, let’s talk about what’s really important: what we do now. In other words, let’s quit talking about my mistakes and focus on the future.

Hillary does the same thing when it comes health care. To my knowledge she has never admitted that it was manly her insistence on secrecy, her refusal to compromise, and her antagonizing of potential allies that sunk her attempt at health care reform in her husbands administration.

She crafted the plan that most people in the Clinton administration felt was to complicated and to ambitious to pass Congress. She was the one who insisted on secrecy and near paranoia in the task force and working group process which resulted in a lawsuit. She was the one who not only refused to work with Republicans but made enemies of key Democrats. At nearly every step of the process she made decisions and took actions that led to the plan’s failure.

So what does she say now? Special interests killed it. Here is what her web page says:

- “As First Lady, Hillary introduced a plan to provide full coverage for all Americans, which was defeated after aggressive opposition.”

- “America is ready for universal health care. Hillary has the vision and the experience to make it a reality.

This is a battle Hillary has fought before — and she has the scars to prove it. She knows better than anyone how to fight and build the political support to get the job done.”

Charlie Rose recently asked her why, in what should be her issue, she was only just getting around to releasing a plan:

Rose: Because of your long involvement, some are saying we should have expected you to be not sort of issuing your third part on Monday, but you should have been first out of the gate on health care especially.

Clinton: Well, I’ve been at the gate and out of it for 14 years, and you know when we weren’t successful with the overall reform, I moved ahead and was one of the people responsible for the children’s health-insurance program and trying to make sure drugs were safe for kids, and dealing with aftereffects the Gulf War veterans suffered. So, I’ve stayed consistently focused on health care and am engaged right now in this battle with the president over his threatened veto of the children’s health-insurance program. But I learned, among other things, that we’ve got to build a consensus. A plan is necessary but not sufficient. We’ve got to have a political consensus in order to withstand the enormous opposition from those interests that will have something to lose in a really reformed health-care system.

And here is the great irony of her response, she claims that you need to build a consensus in order to achieve something. Now obviously that is true for the most part. If you don’t have the votes you have to convince other people to join your side. But this is the skill that Hillary showed she absolutely lacked in her time as first lady. Oh sure, she has done a better job as Senator, but does anyone really believe that Hillary would be a unifying or consensus building figure as president? Does anyone think that on contentious and controversial issues she can lead a coalition of Republicans and Democrats? It simply strains belief to see Hillary as a unifying figure given her history and the likely political environment.

It is particularly hard to imagine this scenario because she has never admitted that she was wrong or that her actions caused the failure rather than simply aggressive opposition.

Democrats have been castigating President Bush for years for his inability to say he was wrong or to say he was sorry. Isn’t it about time we held Senator Clinton up to this same standard?

Hillary ignores no campaign pledge

What a surprise, Hillary isn’t keeping a promise:

A little more than a week after Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign promised Iowa Democrats she would not campaign in states that broke party rules by scheduling early primary contests, Clinton held six events Monday in Florida.

As is so typical of Hillary the lawyer, she may be withing the technicalities of the pledge but she isn’t honoring the spirit of the pledge:

Carrie Giddins, spokeswoman for the Iowa Democratic Party, said Clinton also did not violate the pledge because Florida is not yet considered noncompliant.

While Clinton’s campaigning is not considered a technical violation of her pledge, some question her actions.

“It’s not immoral. It’s not improper, per se,” said Dave Nagle, the former Iowa Democratic chairman. “But it does raise the suspicion of how sincere they were when they said they wouldn’t campaign in those states.”

Hillary and the Netroots

Interesting article by Jeff Cohen over at the Huffington Post on Hillary Clinton and the netroots – liberal online activists.

Here are a few choice quotes:
- On the Netroots inability to slow down Hillary

Despite being overwhelmingly opposed to the nomination of Hillary Clinton, the Netroots have so far done little to slow down her coronation. Boosted by celebrity-worshipping corporate media (and a maximum donation from Rupert Murdoch himself), Hillary Clinton keeps rolling on – allied with the corporate lobbyists and Democratic insiders loathed even by moderately liberal bloggers.

Meanwhile, Clinton has never been popular among the Netroots. She’s never moved out of single digits in the (unscientific) monthly straw poll of DailyKos readers, while John Edwards has averaged 38 percent in the last six months among Kossacks, with Barack Obama averaging 26 percent.

[. . .]

Netroots leaders seem almost mute today as Hillary Clinton makes full use of old media/old money advantages. Bloggers who loudly championed the Dean insurgency are oddly quiescent as the candidate of the party establishment gains ground. Have these young insurgents become Democratic Party elder statespersons – team players first and foremost? Has the courtship by Party insiders quieted them?

- On the potential hazards of another Clinton White House

While progressives desperately want a Democratic president, the last Clinton in the White House subverted the progressive agenda. Eight years of Clintonite triangulation caused the Democratic Party to decline at every level of government. Hillary today is surrounded by the same staff and would likely appoint the same corporate types to top jobs as Clinton I, where big decisions were often corrupt and calculated toward moneyed interests.

The toughest brawl Bill Clinton was willing to wage (besides saving his own hide from impeachment) was against the Democratic base: for the corporate-backed NAFTA. Through the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Bill brought us far more media conglomeration than George W. He pardoned well-connected fugitive financier Marc Rich, while leaving Native American activist Leonard Peltier to rot in prison despite pleas from Amnesty International and others.

One of the most interesting question of 2008 is: will Clinton use the electability issue just as John Kerry did and with the same result? That thought has to make the online left nervous.

Obama taking on Hillary

It looks like Obama is starting to warm up to more obvious criticisms of Hillary. He never mentions anyone by name, but it seems obvious who he is talking about in these quotes:

“There are those who tout their experience working the system in Washington. I understand that,” the Illinois senator told about 3,000 die-hard Democrats at an event launching the California chapter of Women for Obama. “But the problem is, the system in Washington is not working for us.”

“George W. has been a great advertisement for the Democratic Party, but it will take more than a change in parties in the White House to truly turn this country around,” he said. “George Bush and Dick Cheney may have turned divisive politics into an art form, but they did not invent them.”

Divisive politics? Now I wonder who he could be talking about . . .

Feelings, nothing more than feelings

According to a Gallup Feeling Thermometer Hillary is a polarizing figure:

Using a “feeling thermometer” rating scale, Gallup recently tested the public images of several of the Republican and Democratic candidates running for president in their respective parties. Of these, only one — Barack Obama — stirs up warm feelings in a majority of Americans. However, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and John McCain are all close to Obama in favorability. Clinton’s image is the most polarized of this group: nearly as many Americans say she leaves them cold as say they feel warmly toward her. [emphasis mine]

Ya don’t say! Here is the chart:

Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to be a problem within her own party:

Nationally, 82% of Democrats rate her warmly, which is higher than the other most positively rated Democrats: Barack Obama with 72% and John Edwards with 68%. Biden and Richardson receive much lower warm ratings from members of their own party, mostly because a large segment of Democrats says they have never heard of either candidate.

Are we ready to “Move On”?

Here is a question that I find very interesting: Is the country really prepared to have the Clinton’s back in the White House? After eight years of Bill and twelve years of Bush’s wouldn’t it seem that voters would be looking for something different? Shouldn’t there be a sort of deal: Jeb Bush agrees he will never be president and so does Hillary.

Hillary is now claiming that she has spent her entire life working for change, that she is the candidate of change, and that her experience best prepares her to effect that change. But it seems to me that since President Bush is term limited change is inevitable in the most basic sense. Obviously, if the issue is just a change in policy Hillary will bring change to the White House. But all of the Democratic candidates vehemently reject most of Bush’s policies so Hillary isn’t unique in this.

No, what all this talk of change is aimed at is the almost cliche discussion of changing the culture of Washington. Bill Clinton ran on it, George W. Bush ran on it, and Obama and Hillary seem to be seeking to grab the mantle of change. Color me cynical as to whether anyone can “change” the harshly partisan style and tone of Washington and whether or not changing it would be a good thing.

But one thing I am sure of is that Hillary is the worst possible candidate to bring a new tone or style to Washington. Does anyone really believe her boilerplate about working with Republicans to get things done? It is one thing to succeed in the staid collegiality of Senate. To be one of a hundred. It is something altogether different to be the leader of your party and the chief executive.

Do you think the GOP will decide that they can suddenly work with Hillary? Suddenly the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy goes quietly away? Even if that was a possibility Hillary has never shown the least inclination to work with the opposition or to do anything but to go on the offensive.

Hillary needs someone to be the bad guy. She needs someone to demonize and attack. That is what motivates her; what gives her life purpose. And it isn’t just other politicians. Hillary has always had an antagonistic relationship with the press. In the heat of the battle over complex and controversial issues, does Hillary seem like the person to bring leadership and unity? No, a thousand times no.

Richard Collins made this point in his column a few weeks ago:

One of the great ironies of the early days of Democratic presidential primary is that the very accusations that the rabid left hurls at President Bush daily apply equally well to Hillary Clinton. This, in addition to her waffling on Iraq and her centrist posturing, is a key element of the distrust the Democratic base feels towards the former first lady.

The caricature of President Bush created by the left is an authoritarian, secretive, and arrogant politician who rewards loyalty above all else. Hmm, what other famous political name can easily be associated with these tendencies? It has seemingly been forgotten in the era of Bush Derangement Syndrome, but the Clinton White House wasn’t known for its openness to scrutiny or contrary opinion and had a pretty black and white view of who was friend or foe.

Given this history and personality it just strikes me as outrageous that Americans will choose to vote for Hillary. Is it too much to ask that we finally be allowed to move on?