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Miscellaneous thoughts and ramblings
Thursday, January 26, 2006
 
Many faces of Hillary -- none a winner
Ever since Hillary announced her run for the New York senate seat, the press has been hyping her as the de facto Democratic presidential nominee in 2008. For the same amount of time, I've relentlessly informed people that, not only will she never win the presidency; she'll never be nominated. She has the charisma of a cockroach, her politics appeal to few outside of New York and California, and her only true claim to the throne is her surname (donated to her by her philandering husband).

Anyhow, it looks like people are finally beginning to catch on to the myth of Hillary's viability. Or, at least Jonah Goldberg...

Many faces of Hillary -- none a winner

Whatever the reason, some liberals have had enough. "I will not support Hillary Clinton for president," wrote Molly Ivins, the voice of conventional thinking on the left. "Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone." The segment of Democrats who sanctified Cindy Sheehan can hardly countenance a presidential candidate who unapologetically voted for the war and positioned herself to the right of President Bush on foreign policy.



...and Molly Ivins...

The New Republic offers perhaps an even more devastating critique of Clinton for Democratic pragmatists: She can't win. Marisa Katz dismantled the myth that Clinton can appeal to "red state" voters because she won in upstate New York. Turns out former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry each did better in upstate New York than she did. And Gore, a Southerner, couldn't even win his home state of Tennessee. Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll showed that 51% of Americans won't even consider voting for Clinton.


...and the "New Republic" and 51% of Americans...
Comments:
the charisma of a cockroach - that's a GREAT phrase!
 
I always found her voice shrill, her public personality annoying, and her character at best devious and conniving, at worst actually evil. But strangely enough, Michael Medved writes in his autobiography that Hilary was a warm, motherly person when he knew her in Yale Law School (they were students together). He is very conservative but seemingly has nothing bad to say about her -- which surprised me very much when I read his book.
 
I'm not a big fan of Hillary. But 2 years is an eternity in politics. She has the most $$ and the most name recognition, and the country is divided about 50-50 politically.

So, she's still the biggest fish on the Dem side and has a better shot of becoming President than nearly every single other politician.

This is not a good thing.
 
Eagle,

It's true that Hillary has a ton of name recognition. In fact, I think it goes further... her persona is well-known; not just her name. America knows Hillary about as well as it's ever known a candidate this far before an election... and it doesn't like what it sees. I just find it hard to believe that there's much she can do to reverse her high negatives, given that there's little she can do to undo a decade's worth of very public record.

Couple this with a Democratic Party that has publicly veered sharply left since the Clintons departed the White House, I think she's likely to encounter more opposition from other candidates within the Democratic Party than she expects.
 
Nomad,

All true. Maybe she's invincible in the Dem primary, but fatally flawed in the general election. Who knows?

She has high permanent negatives, but who, right now, could beat her in the Dem primary? Kerry? Al Gore?

Anyone who wins the primary has a 50-50 shot at becoming Prez. I think she's the default favorite in the Dem primary, until a specific candidate comes and knocks her off.
 
Does anyone have any reasonable guess who's gonna run on the Republican side? McCain? Frist? Condy? Some Governor I've never heard of? Jeb?
 
Mitt Romney. Gov of Mass.
 
I don't think that america is ready for a liberal chick at the helm. A conservative chick, maybe, but not a feminist. Too much of a reach.

(*)>
 
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