[lbo-talk] how Hillary could win

ravi gadfly at exitleft.org
Tue Jul 18 08:42:04 PDT 2006


At around 17/7/06 11:05 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> By FRANK LUNTZ
>
> For all those Republicans and a few Democrats who think Hillary Clinton
> can't possibly be elected President, I have two words for you: Ronald
> Reagan.
> I remember it well. He was too old. He was too conservative. He was too
> scary. And he was elected in two landslides. The exact same kinds of
> assumptions about electability 25 years ago are alive and well in 2006,
> and they are just as wrong for Hillary Clinton today as they were for
> Reagan in 1979.
>

The analogy fails me. Reagan's ultra-conservativeness would be analogous only to a Hillary ultra-leftism. Which she clearly has none of. The question is: will she win the Dem primaries given her right-of-centre attitude and positions.


> Never mind the chatter. Hillary Clinton sits atop many polls for
> President with good reason and, if she plays her cards right, she could
> remain there right through November 2008.

Not any of the polls I have been reading. In almost all of them, she leads the other potential Democratic contenders (Kerry, Edwards, Gore, Clark, etc), but fails every time to reach the 50% mark against either McCain or Guiliani (both of whom beat her 50+%). What is even more significant in these polls is that more so than any other candidate, she has a solid 45+% who will not vote for her.


> Why? Because her intelligence, assertiveness, personality and celebrity
> are powerful strengths. I know this for a fact. My firm has conducted
> extensive focus-group research in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Remember when Howard Dean was leading all the polls for 2004 primary? Assertiveness, intelligence, personality. But Kerry, the conventional wisdom holds, won the primaries ultimately because of *perceptions* of "electability" (in other words the perception of Dean's inelectability). Now, Kerry, IIRC, was not even a strong candidate at that point. Joe Leiberman had the recognition from his 2000 VP run. Dean and Clark had all the buzz (though IIRC Clark opted out of Iowa). And Edwards had the great storyline.

My opinion: The Dems will choose someone "electable", and just like Kerry benefited from his lack of assertiveness, personality, etc., to fill that role, someone else will come along in early 2008 to please the conclaves in Iowa.


> First, she must be herself. Her recent tack to the right - from
> equivocating on the Iraq war, to supporting a ban on flag burning - is
> fooling no one and is seriously agitating her liberal base. The reason
> Hillary became so popular in the first place was her unflinching
> willingness to tell it like it is. She must say what she means, and mean
> what she says.

Well, yeah!


> Similarly, recent efforts by Clinton to inject religious references into
> her speeches to prove she's a person of faith is like fingernails on a
> chalkboard to Democrat primary voters. Clinton must win the primary
> first - then worry about the general election. If Democrats really cared
> about religion, they'd be Republicans.

No kidding!

And so on he goes to create a Hillary who may win, except she would be the anti-Hillary of the Hillary today. And in that case, he is proving the opposite case! That Hillary (as she is today, which after all, is all she is) is not going to get the nomination.

--ravi

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