Halloween Comes Early for Hillary
Hillary Clinton, she of the perfect campaign, saw her first chunk of armor-plating come off in last night's Democratic debate. I only saw bits and pieces, but it was pretty clear that she was playing defense most of the evening, and was not comfortable in the position given her perceived entitlement to the nomination. It's unclear whether her less than stellar performance presents a serious opening for her long-suffering challengers to mount a serious challenge to her frontrunner status. You can't accuse them of not trying last night, particularly John Edwards and Chris Dodd.
Clearly, Hillary's biggest faux paus of the evening came on the topic of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, which she tried to dodge, deflect, and split hairs over in typical Clintonian style, but was unable to get away with. Granted, Hillary's in a tough position on this issue since her state's Governor is the one pushing for driver's licenses for illegal immigration, a position that Hillary (and every other Democrat running for President) knows is way out of the mainstream. She handled it as well as she could without actually giving a real answer, but that lack of yes or no answer feeds right into the narrative of flip-flopping that slayed Kerry in 2004 AND of untrustworthiness that hamstrung her husband's Presidency. And Hillary clearly did not take suffer her dissenters lightly judging by the discomforting "how did I lose control of this thing" look on her face in the final moments of the debate.
With that said, Team Clinton added to their problems after the debate by lashing out at moderator Tim Russert for being "unfair". If Hillary can't handle the kid gloves of Tim Russert, how is she possibly gonna contend with the brass knuckles of the Republican slime machine when it starts oozing its bile by the gallon throughout 2008? While I can't say I've been thoroughly impressed with the political instincts of Clinton's rivals up to this point, the last 24 hours have proven that Hillary's only selling point--a political savvy purported to outmatch anyone else on the planet--is not quite as polished as we were led to believe.
More than ever, I believe a Hillary Clinton candidacy would be an unmitigated across-the-ballot calamity for the Democratic Party next year, potentially making 2004 look like the good old days. While she hadn't necessarily won me over in the past few weeks, I had been growing slightly more comfortable with the prospect of her heading the ticket simply based on the apparent inevitability of it. After last night, seeing how quickly things fell apart as soon as a drop of her blood got in the water (and worse yet the lack of that magical Clintonian "damage control" the day after), I'm hoping I'm not alone in refusing to accept her coronation and giving a very close look at her worthy-if-not-mind-blowing challengers for the nomination.
Clearly, Hillary's biggest faux paus of the evening came on the topic of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, which she tried to dodge, deflect, and split hairs over in typical Clintonian style, but was unable to get away with. Granted, Hillary's in a tough position on this issue since her state's Governor is the one pushing for driver's licenses for illegal immigration, a position that Hillary (and every other Democrat running for President) knows is way out of the mainstream. She handled it as well as she could without actually giving a real answer, but that lack of yes or no answer feeds right into the narrative of flip-flopping that slayed Kerry in 2004 AND of untrustworthiness that hamstrung her husband's Presidency. And Hillary clearly did not take suffer her dissenters lightly judging by the discomforting "how did I lose control of this thing" look on her face in the final moments of the debate.
With that said, Team Clinton added to their problems after the debate by lashing out at moderator Tim Russert for being "unfair". If Hillary can't handle the kid gloves of Tim Russert, how is she possibly gonna contend with the brass knuckles of the Republican slime machine when it starts oozing its bile by the gallon throughout 2008? While I can't say I've been thoroughly impressed with the political instincts of Clinton's rivals up to this point, the last 24 hours have proven that Hillary's only selling point--a political savvy purported to outmatch anyone else on the planet--is not quite as polished as we were led to believe.
More than ever, I believe a Hillary Clinton candidacy would be an unmitigated across-the-ballot calamity for the Democratic Party next year, potentially making 2004 look like the good old days. While she hadn't necessarily won me over in the past few weeks, I had been growing slightly more comfortable with the prospect of her heading the ticket simply based on the apparent inevitability of it. After last night, seeing how quickly things fell apart as soon as a drop of her blood got in the water (and worse yet the lack of that magical Clintonian "damage control" the day after), I'm hoping I'm not alone in refusing to accept her coronation and giving a very close look at her worthy-if-not-mind-blowing challengers for the nomination.
posted by Mark at 4:34 PM
5 Comments:
Mark, I think we are in for a big surprise in 2008. Most of the Daily Kos crowd seems to think that 2008 will be a huge Democratic year. I don't think it will be at all. The main reason is that the Republicans are likely to use the immigration issue against any Democratic nominee and hit them with it over and over again until election day. This among other issues will lead to the Rudy Giuliani winning surprisingly handily.
The only positive thing that comes out of this is that Democrats will be shielded from losses in the House and Senate because the Senate landscape is overwhelmingly favorable to Democrats and Republicans have too many open seats to defend in the House as well as well as only a few real top tier challengers to Democrats. This would Democrats to pick up ground in state legislatures and governorships in 2010 to allow them to draw the lines in 2012 so they can pick up as many as 25 new House seats from redistricting by undoing Republican gerrymanders in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, and possibly even Texas if current trends continue.
Kossacks will anticipate a can't-lose Democratic environment every two years until the sun burns out, but I tend to agree with you the GOP will successfully use illegal immigration to mercilessly bludgeon Democrats to death at every level next fall, especially at the top of the ticket. It's rather amazing how quickly the Democrats realized illegal immigration was gonna be a liability for them after two straight years of media insistence that the issue was both a short-term and long-term source of devastation for Republicans. I just hope the issue doesn't trickle down the ballot to these Senate races. The Democrats are never likely to face as friendly of a Senate map as what they face next year, and we can't risk squandering it with dead weight at the top of the ticket.
I don't believe Giuliani will be the nominee though. For all the hoopla about his "frontrunner" status, more than two-thirds of Republican primary/caucus voters are opposed to him, and when the campaign ads spelling out his liberalism on these "moral values" issues, I can't see how he wins. Furthermore, Mitt Romney is poised to go three-for-three in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan. It's gonna be hard to stop his momentum after that.
Mark, do you think Romney could actually come from behind and beat Hillary? He is behind her by about 11 points right now. The results are conflicting, one poll only had her beating him by four and another had her up 18. Those are pretty big numbers to overcome, but anything is possible.
The only thing holding Romney back is a lack of national name recognition, which would be easy to overcome. I'm guessing the entire Midwest except Illinois is up-for-grabs for whoever the GOP nominee is if Hillary's the nominee. Beyond that, the combination of Detroit's trepidations over upcoming fuel-efficiency mandates and the fact that Romney's father was the state's former Governor, I'm betting on Michigan being a certain blue-state loss if Romney's the nominee. So in short, yes. Romney would most likely be our toughest Republican challenger aside from McCain.
Mark, you think Romney would be tougher than Giuliani?
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