Electability, yo.

I guess nobody buys my Clark Kent theory of HRC. After inauguration she will slip into the phone booth and emerge as Emma Goldman+Bella Abzug.

I don't know whether or not I actually do buy 2, but I know HRC is sure counting on a lot of Dems buying it. She thinks she can court the right-center with impunity, because her leftist credentials are so indisputably solid. But I think she miscalculated.

And the truth is, I really don't know which is her real face.

You really think so? I don't think she's given much sign of caring about her leftist credentials at all.

If she's not going to try to stand for anything bigger than herself, why would anyone choose her as a leader?

I don't think she's given much sign of caring about her leftist credentials at all.

That's my point...

She doesn't think she needs to.

Wow, NPR's snippet of her online announcement made her sound (to me at least) just like the phony she's accused of being. Impressive.

I don't think that's right, though. I've never seen much evidence that the left ever cared much for her (or her husband).

8 to 6

supported the Israeli wall in the Palestinian territories

I support this one, too. All the other are ghastly.

The NPR segment must have been misleading--- while I have real reservations about her, she really was no more fake than many and perhaps less fake than some of the politicians I have experienced over the years. If you see the whole tape she does not seem that bad to me. TPM has a link.

2: Electability, yo.

I admire this.

I'd begun to write something that began:

Moot.

And continued: Sorry to be blunt. Clinton doesn't stand a chance in primary elections.

The comment was aborted because there is, of course, much more to be said about the Dem Party's assessment of the field, which is where the only real interest would lie. And I frankly just do not understand enough about that, why Clinton's exploratory committee would judge that she should throw her hat in.

La Forza del Destino.

she voted for the godawful bankruptcy bill

Oh, Christ, not this again. She didn't vote for the bankruptcy bill. First Obama, now Clinton. Honestly, is it that hard for people to look this stuff up before they say it?

she still can't bring herself to say the Iraq War was a mistake.

I think she finally did, a month or so ago.

supported the Israeli wall in the Palestinian territories

Lots of liberal Democratic activists support that one too.

supported the PATRIOT Act

It's gonna be a sparse field if that's a disqualifier.

supports the death penalty

Which candidate, other than Kucinich, opposes it?

opposes single-payer healthcare

Which candidate, other than Kucinich, supports it? Christ, even Paul Wellstone wasn't mentioning single-payer on his 2002 reelection page.

supported building a wall along the Mexican border

True, but she was very good in opposing the Chamber of Commerce's indentured servitude guest worker program. See here and here.

I'm not going to defend her taking all that insurance money.

And I'm not saying that your holding these positions is wrong (except for asserting that she voted for things she actually opposed). But the comment seems to hold the premise that being single-payer-only, anti-death penalty, pro-Palestine/anti-Israel, etc., anti-flag burning amendment, are all mainstream Democratic positions, and that therefore Hillary isn't a "real Democrat". On the Iraq War, I think it's true that Hillary has been out of touch with Democrats. But sometimes it's the more liberal activists who are out of touch with the mainstream Democratic Party voters.

Again, I'm not saying your beliefs are wrong. I'm just warning you against assuming that all Democrats everywhere agree with you.

She didn't vote for the bankruptcy bill.

A quick google said she did vote for one that lefties didn't like in 2001 and didn't vote, period, on the more recent one. What you've linked to is a cloture vote, not a vote on the bill itself.

Right, I was also confused about why you linked to the cloture vote. This lists HRC as not voting on the 2005 bill.

The cloture vote was the important vote, though (that is, it was the only real chance the Dems had to keep the bill from passing).

Anyway, I think we might get misled by "real democrat;" the larger point seems to be that the standard criticism of Hillary is true, that she very carefully stakes out "mainstream" positions, whereas the people we think of as Democrats (read: liberals) will get out in front on at least some issues.

Right, I get the point about cloture, but still. You know who voted for the bankruptcy bill? Abraham Lincoln.

Like Joe Lieberman, she's triangulated her positions on a bunch of meaningless issues to the point where I find her repugnant. Honestly, the video games and flag burning are almost more telling than the substantive issues.

You can't always trust wikipedia, Labs.

Sure you can. Just not about chickens.

That's a lie, Ogged.

Thank God the schedule means my primary vote is meaningless, or else I'd agonize about who to support. Clinton leaves me with the feeling that she panders more than she has to, and does it unconvincingly, but these things will all sort themselves out before my Solomonic insights are called for duty.

To expound on that a bit, one of the reasons that the Dems got their asses kicked post-92 is that it was very, very easy to caricature them as a bunch of hectoring scolds. The jackasses who write South Park should know better, but there's no reason that a significant portion of their one-time fan base would be expected to. Electing people like my mancrush Jim Webb and very carefully explaining that we're not taking anyone's guns away is an important step for ending this Mommy Party bullshit, but God knows how HRC expects to get the white liberal or union vote given that her legislative accomplishments pretty much are limited to minor triumphs of anti-free speech and anti-fun.

There's a real dilemma with her money. Right now she's probably the best-financed candidate in either party.

You need money to win, so that's good. You get money by promising favors to people with money, and that's bad. Her money in the primaries will help her defeat better candidates, and that's very bad. But her money in the general election will help her defeat the Republican, and that's good.

Realistically, if she dropped dead and her money went to the Democratic Party, that would be the best thing.

You can quibble about details, but she relentlessly sticks to the DLC script on everything and is consistently on the right wing of the Democratic Party, though there are others worse than her on the right. There really has been a shift in mood in this country, but she's still repeating the old 1988 lessons.

Her internet guy, Peter Daou, is very sharp and I expect Hillary to use the internet effectively and also to be able to deal with the smear campaigns aggressively and in a timely way.

20 gets it exactly right. Also, universal health care looks to be an important domestic issue in the near term; she took her shot and set us back years.

Everybody listen to snarkout.

Daou sounds like an Arabic name. Is that worse than the fact that he had a band with his wife, and they made this?

Daou sounds like an Arabic name.

IIRC he's Lebanese.

Via Josh Marshall, The Atlantic brought it's Hillary profile out from behind the subscriber wall.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200611/green-hillary

Electability. She doesn't need to worry overmuch about the base--who the fuck else are they going to vote for? My biggest worry is that the base (you guys) are going to hobble her by bitching about how fake she is and therefore reinforce the manipulative bitch image; on the other hand, bitching about how she's not left enough might help.

Look, she's feminist; she's going to run on a moms & families ticket (hence the videogame shit, which is NOT AN ISSUE and I wish people would stop getting in leftier-than-thou snits over it). Her domestic policies are going to be basically sound, given her past interests in things like health care, abortion rights, family policies. Her positions on the middle east at least mean she *has* a foreign policy position, which is more important right now than it was when Bill was running. She's a smart woman, and she's obviously demonstrated the savvy to work with political opponents and get things done. She's got a lot of money behind her, and she might be the one person who can play the mom thing to advantage in re. foreign policy; having proven she's not a wuss, she can talk about things like death tolls and the destruction of a safe (if objectionable) society--"soft" issues--without coming off as fuzzy-headed. Yeah, her votes on a lot of the crap that the R's have put forth in the last few years haven't been things I've liked, but if you insist on moral purity in this climate you end up marginalized, whereas none of the things she voted for hinged on her doing so--meaning that her votes were a safe way to establish credentials and build bridges.

Do we want purity, or do we want to get shit done?

How is she electable? She must be the least "electable" candidate who's announced on either side. She certainly has the highest negatives. The only thing that makes her a serious candidate is her money, and that's not going to be decisive in a general election.

Given who controlled both houses until recently, very little of what any democrat's voted for hinged on his or her doing so; that doesn't mean they should all roll over, and what exactly has been the positive outcome of all that bridge-building? (Where are the bridges?)

This is my first and last comment on anything political here or anywhere.

any democrat's voted

Probably wise to avoid politics...

Electability was Kerry's slogan. Competence was Dukakis's. There has to be something better. (It's not a "purity" issue either. People should drop that slogan too).

Hillary is not especially electable -- she has tremendous negatives, and they're not all hard-core Republicans.

Hillary is at the far right of the Democratic Party on a lot of significant issues, and of all the Democrattic candidates, she's the most corporate. She comes from the DLC branch of the party, which has been attacking everyone else in the party and triangulating against Democratic constituencies for almost two decades, and even a year ago she and her people were warning Democrats against making any noise at all about the Iraq war.

I'd support her over any Republican, of course, but there are better people out there. The DLC strategy made sense when the Republicans were riding high, but times have changed, and those guys haven't figured that out.

She doesn't need to worry overmuch about the base--who the fuck else are they going to vote for?

But you can say that about any core constuency: minorities, progressives, etc. Hell, I will vote for a yellow dog if that's on the Democratic ticket in the general election. It doesn't mean that people like us can be ignored. But of all the major players Senator Clinton is my least favorite. Come the primaries I won't vote for her. I won't give her money. I won't organize for her. That's OK by her I'm sure. She has plenty of people who will help. But, at this point (a year before the Iowa caucuses) I don't think it is disloyal to argue for and against candidates.

I wish people would stop getting in leftier-than-thou snits over it

That's rich. The fact that the faction she chose were the Vichy Dems for the last five years is not that important to you. The harms visited on this country and applauded by her, no big deal. Some of us feel differently. I don't think we're out of line. Fuck her and the DLC.

who the fuck else are they going to vote for?

You might be surprised.

This is B's revenge for comments about how feminist demands are impolitic and should therefore be put to the side. ("Comments" here construed broadly.)

md, I agree that it's not disloyal to prefer another candidate. I think, though, that Dems ought to be mindful of the fact that at the end of the day, she might well be the nominee. Sending her into the general with a weak hand isn't going to do anyone any good.

It seems to me that as much as possible people who prefer other candidates ought to be talking about how great those candidates are, and spend as little time as can be afforded (consistent with helping their guy win) on running down the others.

Reagan's 11th commandment is not the law over on our side, but it's not crazy either.

31: (hence the videogame shit, which is NOT AN ISSUE and I wish people would stop getting in leftier-than-thou snits over it)

I disagree, for two reasons. The obvious one is that I frankly don't that videogames are a problem, period, let alone one that I want Congress mucking around with. She disagrees so, well, fair enough; in a perfect world, I'd oppose her for doing this on general principles but that would be where I'd leave it. The less obvious one -- and to me, the truly compelling one -- was raised by Kevin Drum, I think, who noted that it wasn't so much the video game shit per se, but the colossal waste of time and effort that could have been spent, y'know, fixing the country. Helping stop the Iraq fiasco, putting roadblocks in the way of the ensuing Iran fiasco, tax reform, education reform, environmental protection, trade deficits... there are a million real and pressing issues in this country, absolutely none of which have a damn thing to do with videogames.

She could have made a difference. Instead, she squandered her opportunity on bullshit triangulation, and I find that telling.

I'd still vote for her over a Republican, though.

Charley I agree, and I think BPhD getting at that too.

The problem is that applies to all of the candidates, not just Clinton. So how do you say, "I don't like candidate Ω" and yet at the same time don't give aid and comfort to the (tue) opposition? That's the trick. There has to be more than "speak softly (or not at all) or the GOPers will use it". It is frustrating all around. Me, I think the Democratic party can handle the civil airing of differences. Among other things, it helps erase the impression that we are scared of our own shadows.

32: I think the electability thing comes from the money (primary), from name recognition, from the fact that she's a woman candidate who's "tough" on defense running against a party associated with a completely fucked-up war of macho posturing, from her being associated with an interest in healthcare reform, which seems a lot less of a bad idea to people now than it did sixteen years ago, from her being a feminist who supports reproductive rights but isn't "pro" abortion.

The feminazi thing is a negative, but I think the voters who will react most strongly to that are going to be a lot more marginalized next time than they have been in quite a while. The negative I worry about is the reaction from our side to her running to the center, which might (as other comments show) be a major issue, and which annoys me because at this point I want us to not run *any* of our candidates down, and then fall nicely in line behind whoever gets the nod.

Do we want purity, or do we want to get shit done?

B, all of your negative reasons for supporting HRC could apply just as easily to Lieberman. Are there any positions of hers that you actively admire?

People just spent two or three days bitching about the "dirty hippie" meme, and the DLC is as responsible for the popularity of that meme as any group. If HRC becomes the de facto leader of the party, all of those DLCers move up. If she ends up our President, they stay up, and the Dems become a party that shies away from the "dirty hippies" for at least another twenty years. Hope you enjoyed the behavior of the Dems over the last five years.

SCMT, which candidate do you prefer?

40:what the guy said. You think HRC is my dream candidate?

(Psst. There are and will be a lot saying that they could vote for Obama and are lying. My bet is that there are a lot of Republican women who will vote for Hillary in the privacy of the booth, and never tell anyone.)

Maybe we should change the way elections are financed and run in this country, but in the current system, HRC is the frontrunner. Raising 100 million dollars certainly does not qualify someone to become President, but it ain't nothing. That John Edwards can't or won't raise real money is a mark against him, not for him. I remember Jimmy Carter, who ran something of a low-money campaign and then could not work with and relate to Congress. Politics is a team sport.

We could blow this thing in '08 with internecine fighting. All of the Repubs look like utter nightmares.

md, sure. But we all have to remember that it's a coalition. We're going to need all of the members of the coalition to win. Going around telling some that they suck -- whether because they are dirty hippies or because they are DLC -- isn't going to get it done. That said, there's nothing wrong with anyone who identifies with a particular faction within the coalition from choosing to support, at this point, the candidate that best represents their faction.

I'm not terribly happy with our choices, but at the moment I'm leaning towards Edwards. His economic populism (which I'm not actually all that crazy about) must be like garlic to those guys. But we'll see.

47 -- Aside from the clear example of 2000, I think that much of the failure of 1994 had to do with internecine fighting. Dems ran away from Clinton, and then the base stayed home.

44: She's a feminist, and Lieberman isn't. I admire the way she has managed to find a way to talk about repro rights that holds her ground while conceding that it's an emotional issue for a lot of people. I like her ability to speak sincerely about families in a way that doesn't sound condescending (Edwards does this, too), and I think it's both an excellent campaign strategy and something I'd like to see in the bully pulpit: the willingness to talk about things like wages, family planning, and health care in both anecdotal and policy terms. I think getting someone in office who gets the connection between the two would be *huge* in terms of public opinion.

Which is one reason that I kind of liked the videogame stuff--it went nowhere, and I don't think it was really meant to, but it didn't waste time. It helped brand her as a candidate--not as the "censorship" person, I don't think, but as the liberal feminist who *gets* that Middle America feels a great deal of cultural anxiety, and is willing to take that seriously rather than simply deriding it or ignoring it. It's very similar to Bill's lip-biting town halls, which I think were a big part of the success of his presidency: making people feel that they mattered and were understood.

45: Again, the behavior of the Dems over the last 5 years has been in a situation where the Rs were in control of both houses *and* were successful, by and large, in pushing the "dissent is treason" myth. Sure, I'd like to have seen them do a lot more protest votes and make a lot more noise (and one reason I like Clinton, Pelosi, and Murray is that they were willing to do that in situations where their doing so made a difference--e.g., Plan B and the FDA). I'm not sure that a lot of protesting over war-related stuff, though, wouldn't have been politically stupid. At least, we won the last round, thank god, and what I'm interested in now is what they're going to do with power, rather than what they failed to do without it.

It's very similar to Bill's lip-biting town halls, which I think were a big part of the success of his presidency: making people feel that they mattered and were understood.

It's similar to Bill's Sister Soljah moment, and when he executed a retard, I think you mean.

My bet is that there are a lot of Republican women who will vote for Hillary in the privacy of the booth, and never tell anyone.

Amen to that. And a lot of single women who might actually show up at the polls for a woman candidate, too.

Would they vote for a pro-choice Republican woman?

I'm not sure that a lot of protesting over war-related stuff, though, wouldn't have been politically stupid.

And, to be clear, I'm not talking about her, I'm talking about Will Marshall (""Conventional wisdom says that presidential candidates who want to be responsible on this are going to hurt themselves with the angry, impassioned activist left," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank. "But the activist left is out of sync with the American public. Americans don't want to concede this is a total debacle." That's a couple of weeks old.) and the rest of her BFF.

52: Yeah, it might end up being a Sister Souljah thing, I admit. I hope not, though. It sure isn't comparable to an execution.

See, Tim, I like Edwards too. But my concern with him is the "what does he know about foreign policy" thing, which might not be an issue in the primaries, but which is going to matter a hell of a lot in the election. Bush got away with the "it doesn't matter, he'll hire good people" argument, and I don't think folks are going to buy that again. Now, Edwards is smart (so's Obama), and probably either of them (or whoever else throws into the ring, I hope) is going to be able to bone up and have something to say on that front by election time. For that matter, presumably by then Hillary will have a coherent answer to the question of what the hell to do now. But, at least for now, I think she's got a head start on the other obvious candidates in that arena, and I think that's going to matter.

We need to take Western and Midwestern states to win. That's the reality. Sending in gun control Mom Clinton to waggle her fingers at everyone over video games isn't going to cut it.

But, at least for now, I think she's got a head start on the other obvious candidates in that arena, and I think that's going to matter.

Her "head start" is three years of support for Iraq. "Head start" s/b "giant fucking anchor around her neck."

The "support the war" claim has been wrong since 2004. She's pretty far down on my list of favorite candidates, but she's likely our nominee and next president - let's leave the smears to the other side.

"Head start" s/b "giant fucking anchor around her neck."

You don't get peace liberals in this country. You get Wilsons, and FDR's and Truman's and Johnsons. Or corporate liberals like Bill Clinton, who wasn't that peacable.

I mean I decided twenty years ago what I was gonna get was Republicans like Reagan and Bush, who only got thousands of Americans killed and really fucked up everything else up; or Democrats like Truman and Johnson who killed ten times as many and made the country a lot better.

The entitlements are in real serious jeopardy, folks. The Reagan-Bush bill is coming due, and Bernanke will make it even tougher. It is going to take a literal killer to save them. If Hillary gets elected, most of y'all will hate her guts.

I hate the fucking country that makes Hillary the best we can do. But it is a fact.

56: Edwards-Edwards 2008. You pick which is Elizabeth and which is John.

Word. I'm not nearly ready to cede the field to Clinton. The Republicans are weak, the Democrats have an opportunity, and I want someone who is going to talk about things I care about, like poverty. "Electability" is a trap that just makes you think the candidates you actually like couldn't possibly win--no one knows what will happen in the general election.

The "support the war" claim has been wrong since 2004

Fine, two years of support. Whatever. Earlier in 2004 she was still pulling this shit.

"Obviously, I've thought about that a lot in the months since," she said. "No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade."

She's also been pretty consistently on the "we can't just pull out" wagon. Oh yes we fucking can. At least Obama was smart enough to see the Iraq debacle for what it was right from the beginning.

You don't get peace liberals in this country.

I'm not looking for a peacenik. I'm looking for someone with some spine who wasn't completely fucking wrong about the biggest foreign policy issue we've had in decades.

52

If you aren't willing to execute a retard to get there you aren't tough enough to be President.

So apparently BPHD is the panderable voter envisioned by sunday columnists. And you think all the other women think the same way.

HRC is on the record with saying that "marriage has got historic, religious, and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time," and that it should be restricted to unions "between a man and a woman." That pretty much makes her an asshole in my book. That, and the Mexican border wall, and the Patriot Act, and everything else that's been noted by apostropher and Ogged and everyone else. Sure, she's less horrible than most Republicans and less despicable than Joe Lieberman, but as the contest is not yet restricted to those awful possibilities, I'll maintain, for now, that fuck no, I'll not be voting for her.

According to this, Peter Daou has played with Bjork, Miles Davis, and others. Can there be two Peter Daous? There's a picture of his hot wife too.

. She even did a Coltrane tribute album.

Vanessa Daou.

59: Rilkefan, Somerby is being obtuse. Clinton only said in that link that "there wouldn't have been a vote"; she kept insisting that her vote for the war was justified through 2006. Until very recently, her position has been that she was right to vote for the war based on the evidence presented, that the war itself was a worthwhile theoretical undertaking in many ways despite lack of WMD, and that its failures were entirely due to administration incompetence. This is a transparent dodge, one that evades responsibility for her own actions, and one that I suspect won't play especially well in either a primary or a general campaign.

Clinton's long and tangled stance on the war is not something we want to bring into a campaign that's going to be dominated by Iraq. That vote is an albatross, and Clinton's trying to shrug it off a few years too late. Do we really want a replay of 2004, where our candidate has the better, saner foreign policy, but gets so mired in excuses, explanations and old quotes that they lose to the lunatic who at least "talks straight to the people"? Jesus Christ.

I would only vote for a Democrat who consistently supported disbanding the US military and outlawing the Republican Party. Anything that falls short of that is cynical pandering.

It also needs to be pointed out that Clinton's current Iraq stance is still woefully tepid, in that she favors "benchmarks" over an actual timetable for withdrawal. If you want a president who's actually going to end the war, you probably want to look elsewhere.

B wrote: "It's very similar to Bill's lip-biting town halls, which I think were a big part of the success of his presidency: making people feel that they mattered and were understood."

I think Hillary's big liability is that she doesn't have that lip-biting-down thing in her, so that her attempts to show she understands other people fall flat. It's especially tough for Hill to prove she understands traditional voters because she has a long history of condescension to live down - no one who cares about this stuff has forgotten the crack: "I'm not not some little woman 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette'", or I'm not at home baking cookies. The idea that women should be confined to traditional roles is repulsive and deserves scorn; but Hillary's comments sound like scorn for the women who maybe weren't as strong as they could have been and who lived their lives confined by those strictures. This plays generally into her emotional tone, which is very cool and (on the surface) very judgmental. If your goal is to persuade people you understand their fears/values, this isn't going to get it done.

Ironically, I think Hillary's biggest assets are the opposite of empathy: no one doubts her toughness, determination or critical intelligence. She's been through the wars and proved she's more than tough enough; she's not going to shrink or fail to hit back. That general demeanor will help her on national security issues in getting around some voters' reluctance to vote for a woman as commander in chief. She may even be able (depending on her opponent) to use her gender to turn her opponents' personal attacks against them (see Rick Lazio).

Last thought - I'm very glad there's a primary. It's been a while since she's had sustained media attention and she may show that she's gained a defter political touch than she used to have. All the same, I suspect we're going to war with the Hillary we have, not the Hillary we wished we had: tough, smart and determined, but cool, judgmental, and calculating - and often not in a good way.

I'm not nearly ready to cede the field to Clinton. The Republicans are weak, the Democrats have an opportunity, and I want someone who is going to talk about things I care about, like poverty.

I'm not asking people to cede the field; just pointing out that language like gun control Mom Clinton to waggle her fingers at everyone over video games and someone with some spine and [you are the] panderable voter envisioned by sunday columnists. And you think all the other women think the same way are potentially self-defeating (and, dare I say, a wee bit sexist in their portrayal of women voters and Clinton herself as weak and silly?). I'm picking phrases from the comments after my last, btw, lest anyone think I'm trying to attack gswift personallly.

I'm not saying people should support her above all other candidates. I'm saying that I wish people could support their candidates, or criticize Clinton, in ways that won't help out the feminazi smears if she ends up being the Democratic candidate.

OK, B, but you should realize that the reasons people don't like Hillary aren't purist reasons. They're pretty much the same reasons why people had doubts about Bill. Bill won, and maybe he had to do those things to win, but if it's no longer necessary to make those compromises, we shouldn't.

I'm more concerned with her corporate liberalism and her military stands than I am with her symbolic stands on things like video games and the Defense of Marriage Act. Her willingness to make concessions to business are the reasons why she's such a dynamite fundraiser. The Clintons also have taken weak stands on civil liberties issues.

weak stands on civil liberties issues

This is a considerable understatement. We started extraordinary rendition under Bill Clinton. Not on anything like the scale we're seeing with Bush, but Clinton saw nothing wrong in principle with shipping a prisoner off to a friendly dictatorship to get a little torturing done. Nor did he have many qualms about creepy electronic surveillance or sweeping claims of executive power.

To be honest, I don't have high hopes for the future of post-9/11 civil liberties under any president whose name doesn't rhyme with Fuss Reingold. But Clinton is married to a record - literally and figuratively - that doesn't speak well for her in this area at all.

Except that no one is smearing her. Everyone here seems to have reasons not to support HRC, most of it having to do with her voting record. This call to shut up lest the Republican operatives figure out how to smear her in the general; perhaps good advice for the Edwards or Obama campaign, but not so much for a comment box.

I'm not saying "shut up." I'm saying there's a difference between objections and (what to me seems) overheated rhetoric of the "there's no difference betwen the Dems and the Rs!" variety, which I found equally objectionable when Gore was running against Bush.

Also not saying people here are smearing her (although now that you've brought it up, I think some of the 'no fucking way' language is, if not a smear, awfully, uh, shrill?). Just that if Dems (in general) roll out all the reasons why Hillary sucks and is virtually a Republican in the primaries, we're going to have a hard time explaining why people should vote for her and not (for example) "forthright John McCain" in the generals.

I'll semi-agree with B and Somerby about one thing here. In the 2000 election, Republican operatives were able to weaken Gore by highlighting and exaggerating his conservative stances while at the same timemaking sure that conservatives knew that Gore was an extreme liberal. The Bush / Gore difference became obscured, with a lot of help from Nader, and that was a disaster.

We can also expect a lot of really crappy free media badmouthing Hillary. It's already started (with Pelosi and Reid too). ABC and CNN have gone the Fox-Limbaugh route, and even the media which isn't overtly rightwing is capable of wounding a Democrat severely with mindless snark.

It isn't a foregone conclusion that she'll be the nominee. And I think she's going to have a very hard time distinguishing herself from the Republicans with the length of her support of the Iraq War.

Who knows what will happen by 2008, but right now, the Democrats at least have the midterm election momentum to try to repair some of the damage that's been done in the 'starting stupid wars' category. It's going to be a lot harder to keep up the 'they're the party of stripping civil liberties, man-raping dogs, and stupid wars' rhetoric with a candidate who is more or less okay with the civil liberties being stripped and is slow in renouncing her support of the war.

I'm starting to think that tailoring what one says to how the media or especially the right will respond is just completely hopeless. The right wing is not bound by facts or reason; the media is not bound by any sense of proportion (they'll latch onto any small thing, and if there are no small things, they'll latch onto how overcautious the candidate is being). I'm not sure what people should do instead, but it seems like the media has been so completely corrupted by twenty years of right-wing badgering that it just seems like a lost cause.

I dunno. I loathe Hillary Clinton for reasons already given. I'm really, really not willing to elect a president who will screw over poor Americans (like Bill Clinton's welfare "reform" did--and I think that's the kind of political logic we can expect from Hillary) which will mean de facto letting things slowly get worse for a lot of people of color. Would I vote for her if it meant electing a Democrat? Maybe, but I would feel really ashamed. And maybe I wouldn't--I would feel like a traitor to the interests of a lot of people I care about, and I've gotten less willing to feel that way (strangely enough) as I've gotten older.

I feel electing Hillary Clinton will just guarantee a continuation of the Bill Clinton "as long as white middle class liberals are happy, we're all happy" routine. (My family, by the way, are white middle class liberals...and we'd certainly be better off in a Clinton-style environment.) On reflection, I'm not sure that's really sustainable in the long-term anyway, what with global warming and other big issues that make the "work in a professional job, invest in the stock market, send your kids to an classy school, retire to a home in a nice part of the country" thing less viable.

The other thing I wonder about--unrelatedly--is whether a woman can actually win the presidency. There's a lot of regular liberals who HATE Hillary Clinton (and deep down it's for sexist reasons--they think she's unfeminine.) How do I know? I'm related to them and I've heard them talk about it. (Or at least, I'm related to a reasonable number of them, and although we're a bit eccentric generally, I still contend that there are other people like my family.)

Just that if Dems (in general) roll out all the reasons why Hillary sucks and is virtually a Republican in the primaries, we're going to have a hard time explaining why people should vote for her and not (for example) "forthright John McCain" in the generals.

Welcome to democracy. Clinton doesn't get a pass on the primaries just because she's the one with the famous last name and the biggest pot of money, and in any halfway functional primary system you'll get attacked by your primary rivals in ways that will be taken advantage of by your general election rival. This is as true for Edwards and Obama and Dennis Kucinich as it is for Hillary Clinton - and for that matter, it's true for Giuliani and McCain and Romney and Brownback. Any given side is going to rip its eventual nominee apart before that nominee actually becomes the nominee, and that's a good thing - if your candidate can't take attacks from your own side, he or she certainly isn't going to be able to take it from an opposition candidate determined to win at all costs.

81: s/b "a classy school"

There's a lot of regular liberals who HATE Hillary Clinton

And I promise you this is nothing compared to the conservatives. My family's great, but they're wingnuts, and the radio was always tuned to Limbaugh, and we're talking eyeball-spitting hatred. I'm not sure where 'electability' figures in (it landed us Kerry last time), but I don't think Clinton has it. Who knows what will happen in a year, but my money's on that she motivates the winger base to come out and vote for whomever all by herself, let alone gay marriage referenda.

Sausagely has pointed out that Clinton is very mderate but is thought to be a raging liberal, which is pretty much the opposite of what we'd hope for.

I think we just don't know about Clinton's 'electability' -- we really don't know about anyone's, but she's particularly hard to get a handle on. People really really hate her, but is that numbers or intensity? After all, you can only not vote for someone once. Leftists are somewhere between unenthusiastic about and sickened by her, but this is a year when they really aren't going to break ranks. And she has big hard-to-calculate positives along with the big hard-to-calculate negatives; the historic first woman thing, the associated prestige of the last President we had who wasn't [however you'd like to describe him].

She's not my first choice, but I don't think she's a disaster substantively (she might be a disaster in terms of electability, but as I just said, I don't think that's something we can really tell). On the most basic level, she's not crazy -- we're not going to go attacking randomly selected countries just to look tough. And I believe that her basic goals, domestically, are right -- the only thing I'm worrying about is how she's going to turn them into policies. This isn't wonderful, but it's easily as good as we usually get.

The key question about Hillary-haters is, "How many of them would ever vote for a Democrat?" Anecdotally I've met Hillary-haters who were not hard-core Republicans, but I have no idea what the numbers are.

Hillary will make GOTV easier for the other side, but she'll probably also bring out a lot of woman voters.

I also know a few rank-and-file, salt-of-the-earth Democrats (not elitists or feminists) who love Bill and are gung-ho for Hillary.

it's easily as good as we usually get.

She's actually better than the Democratic Party often offers. Although 2008 looks pretty good for you all if you can avoid self destructing. With Richardson in the race, there are now three Democrats I would vote for over anyone who seems to have any chance of winning the Republican nomination right now (I would consider voting for Guiliani, but I cannot see him winning the nomination).

Not trying to dispute what Cala says about her family--I am sure that there are Hilary-hating coservatives out there--but it seems to me that the main source of the "all right-wingers have an irrational hatred of Hilary because she is a woman and a Clinton" is liberals who oppose her candidacy and who in stretching for reasons to oppose her have relied on those staples of liberal rhetoric, which is that conservatives are irrational and sexist. Not that there are no right-wingers who have such an irrational, sexist opinion, but I think the strength of this sentiment is wildly overestimated.

She's actually better than the Democratic Party often offers.

Not to be snide (oh, who am I kidding.) Snidely, this isn't a selling point for the rest of us. What I understand you to be saying is "As a Republican, I find her policy positions preferable to those of most Democrats and might even concievably be able to see how someone might vote for her." Which is something that might make her electable, but indicates that if your substantive evaluation of her is accurate, than Democrats are right to be suspicious of her.

"All right-wingers have an irrational hatred of Hilary ... "
Irrational indeed. In the 1960s, Hilary was a Barry Goldwater supporter. At least she has an open mind, a good mind, and is willing and able to consider others points of view. How times have changed!

Well, in high school, if that counts.

this isn't a selling point for the rest of us.

Obviously. (Unless you are interested in nominating someone who can win and govern)

Although 2008 looks pretty good for you all if you can avoid self destructing.

As you say here, this isn't really the election where we need to worry about trying to appeal to strongly identified Republicans.

To be either more or less conciliatory, I'm not sure which, I think the things you find appealing about Hillary are more intangibles than policy preferences, in which case it's all good. If she's appealing to Republicans on intangibles rather than substance, more power to her.

Obama's going to take this thing. HRC, I'm sure, has plotted away for this nomination for awhile, and so it sucks for her. The best layed plots etc.

I don't care for the anti-mom rhetoric of 57 and 24 at all. We should be pleased to be the party of motherhood. (1) Mom is as all-American as apple pie. (2) the actual needs of mothers, both working and not, are hugely neglected right now. (3) the misplaced anxieties generated by the actual needs of moms are what drives the Christian family values agenda. We can quash that movement if we take away its base. (4) Moms are a huge portion of the electorate. (5) If you say anything else bad about my mom, I will kick nonviolently resist your ass.

best-laid plots.

this isn't really the election where we need to worry about trying to appeal to strongly identified Republicans

Exhibit 1 in the case explaining why the Democratic Party has had such a hard time since 1968.

"Hilary was a Barry Goldwater supporter"

And in the 70s, she was a kid-lib radical. I have a gut reaction to people who never owned a house until the left Washington. The Clintons are among the very few who didn't make their millions before public service, like Edwards. And by Senatorial standards they still aren't rich. That impresses me.

There are those who say Bill & Hill are corporately owned. Is there much doubt of what they could have been if they had gone into the private sector?
They are the least money-hungry politicians I have known.

Really, though, what am I actually supposed to like about Hillary Clinton? Am I just supposed to see "Clinton" and have it work for me in the same way that "Kennedy" used to work for people who voted for the Kennedys, or the way that the Republicans have tried to turn the Bushes into a franchise? Am I, Prospective Democratic Primary Voter X, assumed to be that much of an idiot? Because she hasn't actually done anything that matters that's actually good as a senator, and on most things I really care about she's either been on the wrong side or mostly absent.

Am I then supposed to vote for her triumphant political skills? Because I'm not seeing them, either. She kept on the wrong side of the war for far longer than it was politically convenient, and her attempts to jump ship have been too muddled, weak-kneed, and belated to do her much good. Her positions on trade and business sound like they were brainstormed ten years ago, and in general she seems like she's been reading the political landscape wrong since at least 2002. She has an ability to raise a lot of money, but that has more to do with her name and her husband's connections than anything intrinsic to her skills as a politician - and what will that money buy her? A lot of ad time, which she'll have to use to attack her opponents, which will drive down their numbers, but will drive her negatives up even higher. She's not the best candidate, and she's not the most skilled candidate. Why is she the frontrunner? It's utterly maddening.

51: It helped brand her as a candidate--not as the "censorship" person, I don't think, but as the liberal feminist who *gets* that Middle America feels a great deal of cultural anxiety, and is willing to take that seriously

But rather than acknowledging and defusing the anxiety and taking the right stand (like, say, Feingold), she panders to the anxiety. That's not okay.

On the most basic level, she's not crazy -- we're not going to go attacking randomly selected countries just to look tough.

As the DLC appears to have Iran in its sights, it certainly won't be random.

She really doesn't have a chance if Obama runs. She and the DLC know this. This "frontrunner" talk is a bunch of bluffing.

"She's also been pretty consistently on the "we can't just pull out" wagon. Oh yes we fucking can. At least Obama was smart enough to see the Iraq debacle for what it was right from the beginning."

Obama's practically driving that wagon now: in his recent book he attacked liberals who want to withdraw now instead of a Friedman from now. You know, it's "useful to remind ourselves, then, that Osama bin Laden is not Ho Chi Minh".

69: Somerby's not obtuse, he's a crank. Saying a policy wouldn't have made it to a vote in the face of better intel is in fact a dismissal of it. And her defense of her vote is as follows:

Hillary Clinton's decision to give Bush her approval in 2002 was influenced by her recent White House experience. "I have respect for Presidential decision-making and I saw what the Republican Congress had done to Bill on a range of issues, denying him the authority to deal with Bosnia and Kosovo and second-guessing him on every imaginable issue," she said. "And I don't think that that's good for the country, and I had no problem in giving President Bush the authority to do what he stated he would do and what I was assured privately on many occasions would be done."

Still, Clinton was never an enthusiastic supporter of the war. In a speech to the Senate before casting her vote to support the resolution, she cautioned Bush, saying, "If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. In recent days, Russia has talked of an invasion of Georgia to attack Chechen rebels. India has mentioned the possibility of a preëmptive strike on Pakistan. And what if China were to perceive a threat from Taiwan? So, Mr. President, for all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option."

It seems to me like "we should never have gone in, and now that we did, we have a duty to try to prevent a complete meltdown" is the only defensible position. The problem is, how do we prevent a complete meltdown? And it's even more muddled in that, even if you think our presence is now necessary, you probably can't trust the people who put is there to make things better, and not worse.

All of which to say, I don't think Obama's position is the same as HRC's.

who put us there. I swear I'm not drunk this early.

McManus, Bartcop, Somerby -- all the cranks but me are on the Hillary bandwagon.

Coincidence? I think not.

I just noticed that the look of Ackerman's new "too hot" site mimics the look of TNR Online. Ha.

Somerby's not obtuse, he's a crank.

I read Somerby regularly and I'm well aware of his peculiarities. But he's plenty obtuse on this issue. Clinton has consistently dithered on the war, attempting to strike a "middle ground" by positioning herself as tough on terror/tough on war but simultaneously hedging her bets with a full-on embrace of the incompetence dodge, along with plenty of "everyone was fooled/how could we have known" bullshit. Nothing you (or Somerby) have quoted contradicts this.

I've been wondering about that. While I doubt legal action would be successful, it's close enough to TNR's look that I'm surprised he hasn't at least gotten legal threats about it. I wonder if they've been civilized, or if there have been threats and Spackerman's ignored them.

Maybe Ackerman is carzy after all. Good for him.

You don't think that he's fishing for the Emerson seal of approval, is he? I would feel used.

How would a "total meltdown" in Iraq differ from the current situation? Are we predicting concentration camps or something? (That's what it would take, as far as I can see, to make it qualitatively worse than it is.)

112: I have been worried about genocide taking place if we leave. I have also been worried about genocide taking place if we stay.

96 - I'm referring specifically to the Mommy Party/Daddy Party formulation first set up by (apparently) Chris Matthews. The Democrats are the party of taking away your GI Joes and making you eat your greens; the Republicans are the party of buying the kids ice cream for dinner and invading the shit out of Iraq.

If either the Democrats or the Republicans were to actually put some rhetorical oomph behind making America more friendly to (particularly working) mothers, more power to them, but this is strictly a sexist rhetorical framing.

113 was what I was thinking. Rwanda. Not sure we can prevent it.

I think that the various factions in Iraq are well-armed enough that genocide won't happen. The Sunni and Shi'a will segregate and from then it will be protracted war. The Sunni are outnumbered but I think that they've got more military.

I don't know a lot about Ruanda but it seems to have been very strange, done on a very ad-hoc free-lance basis by thousands of people.

3: I really don't know which is her real face.

I don't think she has one other than opportunism and that makes anything she promises just the hot air of the moment.

My liberal side loathes her and so does my conservative side.

114: Is this all that different than Lakoff's more academic discussion of framing things in terms of caring mothers and strict fathers? A standard response to Lakoff's analysis is to say that democrats should emphasize their caring side and point out that dad is really just a bully. I've never found the strict father/petty martinet/great santini image repulsive.

Why is she the frontrunner?

Fundraising. Wasn't Dean the front runner at one point, too, largely on the 'size' of his 'warchest'?

119: Yes, I know. That was a rhetorical question. The problem is that she's the frontrunner for no actually substantive reason. She is neither a representative of especially laudable policies nor the most excellent campaigner in the field; she just happens to be married to the most famous - and wildly overvalued - Democrat in the country. It was insane for Republicans to nominate someone in 2000 because he had a familiar last name, and it's equally insane for Democrats to do the same now.

118 - Sure. If you want to replace all references to "Mommy Party" with "Hectoring Knows-What's-Best-for-You Scold Party", of which Joe Lieberman is member #1, that's probably a more apt way of describing the situation. For a variety of reasons, I think Kathleen Sibelius would be a better candidate, among Democratic women. It's a shame she's not running.

119 - And name recognition.

For a variety of reasons, I think Kathleen Sibelius would be a better candidate, among Democratic women.

If neither HRC nor Obama wins the nomination, I suspect Sibulius (or possibly the AZ gov) will be the VP candidate.

119-120: I'm not a Clintonista at all, but being the representative of that branch of the party is not nothing. One of the things people seem to resent most about her was that she was a full partner in Bill's administration. I have no doubts about her competence. It just bothers me that she seems to be continuing the same old 1988 / 1992 DLC line.

107:Mostly devil's advocate, but partly bandwagon. Too old to believe we get Wellstones or Edwards or their policies;we get whoever and however much Citicorp and Exxon allows us to have. People with trillions at stake don't play softball, but play smarter than the Bourbons and Romanovs. We will get panem et circenses.

Cataclysmic times, like 32 or 45 or 65 can change that, but hilzoy tells me it is evil to hope for cataclysm. So the Leninist side of me goes dormant at election times. If I can't hope for cataclysm and revolution, ain't much hope left.

Clinton. More war, outsourcing, declining real wages, social issues degrading, freedom diminishing, bad tv & movies, insufficient dogparks, no Mavs championship.

But better than Republicans, until the deluge.

Oh, but Youth & Beauty & Goodness must believe:It doesn't have to be this way. It really doesn't. Really.

122 - I think Janet Napolitano is out by virtue of being unmarried (the Phoenix alt-weekly suggesting that she's gay certainly doesn't help). The flipside of Condi Rice's most superficial problem.

I have no doubts about her competence.

You mean because of the massive success of healthcare reform?

123:Somewhre around 1994 Greenspan had a private meeting with Bill. I think Finance and Industry are blackmailing the center. They have put enough money overseas and will crash it all down if fucked with too hard. The Clintons don't want 30 percent unemployment, breadlines, collapse. They play ball out of compassion for the poor, because they understand just how utterly ruthless, nuclear war/depression ruthless the Republicans are.

Many here if given such a choice, would go along.

Musing aloud: The first woman President, if it occurs in the near future, will be a moderate Republican.

i can't believe that I'm sticking up for Hillary. Win a few,lose a few.

96 points 2 and 3, yes; also, the fact that taking care of moms means taking care of the poor and the working class.

105: Agreed, which is why I'm not willing to throw Clinton out. Now that we're *there*, I'm less interested in punishing the Dems who voted to give Bush authority (most of them) than in figuring out what the fuck to do. I suspect the answer is get out, but I'm not unwilling to listen to someone who says otherwise if they have a good plan and good reasons. She may, she may not (and ditto Obama and Edwards)--and that's what will make a difference to me.

114: It's sexist if you use "mommy" to mean "hectoring." If you use "mommy" as Clinton and Pelosi are doing, to mean "giving a shit about education, wages, social policy, and reproductive rights"--and that last, hello? is a reason to vote for her, and all of you who say you don't see anything positive about her bug me for failing to acknowledge, at least, that--then it's not sexist. Or rather, it's using sexism ("mommy cares more than daddy does!") to promote the domestic policies we want and need.

128: Arguably, for a lot of people here, that's Hillary.

That's only because most people here aren't Republicans.

Moderate Republicans are Democrats now.

and reproductive rights"--and that last, hello? is a reason to vote for her, and all of you who say you don't see anything positive about her bug me for failing to acknowledge, at least, that-

In what way does her stand on reproductive rights differ from that of Obama, Edwards, Dodd, Biden, Richardson, or any other Democrat save Casey?

B., I appreciate that it's sexist rhetoric, but I didn't invent the term. And seriously, how does HRC represent those caring about reproductive rights or social policy any more than the other left fifty percent of the Democratic Senate? Serious question -- what policy proposals has she made that should make me sit up and cheer? What has she done for America's working mothers or single moms? I don't even think her rhetoric sets her out as particularly more impressive than, say, John Kerry or Joe Biden. She has a uterus, I'll give her that.

Pwned by SCMTim.

I think, also, that the "mommy" thing is a sexist framing that lots of people already have set up in their minds, which certain kinds of policy and rhetoric tends to awaken. No?

It's hardly the last word on things, but NARAL's rankings have Clinton, Biden, and Kerry all at 100%, along with Babs Mikulski, Chuck Schumer, Jack Reed, and a bunch of other Senators not running for President. I'm not a New Yorker or a fan of Clinton, nor am I super-duper up on abortion policy, so I might honestly have missed something she's up to that's worthy of special praise.

One thing you might say about Clinton is that she might give reproductive rights issues higher priority than, say, Biden or Kerry. I'm not aware of any particular justification for this argument other than uterus-possession, but there could well be some.

Reproductive rights shouldn't be an issue for awhile unless the Democrats lose Congress, especially if a Democrat is elected President. That shouldn't be the decider for anyone by NARAL,

"but NARAL."

135: I didn't mean to accuse you of being sexist; I meant to point out that Clinton also didn't invent the split.

Re. what she's done for reproductive rights. Upthread, I mentioned her, Murray, and Pelosi having dug their heels in on approving a new FDA chief until there was solid agreement to quit stalling on OTC Plan B. That's one; Kerry and Schumer didn't do that. The second is her creating a coalliance with Harry Reid (who is pro-life) about emphasizing the importance of fact-based sex ed, of providing birth control, of *preventing* abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancy. That's a form of outreach that does a great deal of good; a lot of people have criticized her for "pandering" to the pro-life folks, but the facts are that most Americans are pro-choice *but* also pro-limitations on access--and shifting the pan off the pro-life/pro-choice burner helps. She's *said* she supporrts parental notification (who doesn't?) but she has campaigned against parental notification *laws*, which is what matters. She's also the only possible presidential candidate that I know of who has made reproductive freedom a central issue in her public identity. Sure, most Dems are not going to appoint anti-abortion judges or pass anti-abortion laws. But very few of them are willing to take heat on the issue (from both sides). And it *is* a fundamental issue of civil liberties, just as Guantanamo is.

142 is correct. I think, though, as President, the substantive between her policies and another Dem's would be quite small. They're all going to appoint pro choice S Ct justices, decent people to the FDA, and sign and veto similar bills. Whereas on war and peace, executive power, treatment of prisoners, a President is much less constrained by the other branches, and has more influence on policy. I trust her *much less* than the other leading Dem candidates on those issues.

See, I can accept 143. I may even end up voting for someone else in the primary for those reasons. I would give a lot, though, to have someone in office who could do something to move past the pro-life/pro-choice back and forth; repro rights would be a lot more secure if we could do that.

B, in what way can reproductive rights be an important issue in a Democratic administration with a Democratic Congress? When the Republicans controlled both branches fighting to the last ditch was important, but any Democratic President would end that.

The next President will have an enormous mess to clean up, and I don't see reproductive rights as being very central to the job.

To me the way to end the pro-life / pro-choice back-and-forth is to definitively defeat the pro-life people. I don't see any possiblity of compromise, concessions,or mediation, and attempts in that direction are a waste of time.

I more or less agree with #143, though I distrust her people more than I distrust her. And to be fair, as a man, I probably don't weigh the abortion issue in the same way as many women quite reasonably would.

Also, as someone who grew up in Chicago, she's objectively anti-Katrina victims. Like ogged.

Any Democratic pres will put an end to the fight *until the next election.*

There's a big difference between the pro-life leadership (mostly asshole right-wing water carriers using pro-life rhetoric as a power grab) and the pro-life rank and file. Being a hardass alienates the latter. But we can appeal to them and bring them on board by talking about the difference between honoring morality and legally enforcing it. Look at what happened in South Dakota.

I'm not sure that that's the right lesson to draw from South Dakota, but this isn't a thread for hashing out abortion rhetoric, it's a thread for discussing whether Hillary Clinton will personally break into your house and steal your guns to send them to Osama.

She'll make Bill do it.

"Send," my ass. "Hand them to Osama, in the hot tub."

145:Stevens.

Either the Senate can hold Bush off for two years, and reproductive rights moves near the front, or they can't, and reproductive rights moves to the front.

I don't think we can *win* on abortion, any more than the good guys could win on slavery and racism. It is a Forever War.

In the general election, I will vote for a tin can on a stick if it has a (D) next to its name.

That said, after all my kvetching about Clinton's policies (and Katherine's 143 gets to some of my doubts about the way she might handle FP issues, which are really important to me), after all my repugnance at political dynasties, I still respond, emotionally and positively, to the woman when I see her on television. I don't know what that counts for.

Also: is anyone else mortified by the prospect of two families holding the White House for twenty-four straight years in a fucking democracy?

Yup.

I hate the fucking country that makes Hillary the best we can do. But it is a fact.

What Bob said. And all of what BPhD said, which is, like, too much to quote.

My own theory is that people who seriously think Obama or Edwards can win the White House in 2008, as prez not veep, are spending *way* too much time on the Internet. But we shall see.

One more thing: all of you wondering about "Hillary's real face," etc., are evidently wishing for someone OTHER THAN A POLITICIAN to win the Presidency. There are good novels and movies where that happens, and I commend them to you. Just not in real life.

One more thing, before I go back to moping over the Saints:

Hillary will have something that I didn't see in Kerry or Gore, and don't see in Edwards. She really, really, wants this. The presidency is not something she's going for because, hey, she's a senator and that's the next rung on the cursus honorum. She is *all about* winning this thing. That is not something that we have typically seen in a Democratic nominee.

I think it's also offputting to some of you, b/c she cares more about winning than about staking out Left positions. But I look at Kerry's fiasco w/ the Swift Boats, and I just don't see Hillary being such a pussy. She was in at the creation of the present right-wing hate machine, she has seen the worst it can do, and I have to think that she has some thoughts about how to handle it -- or she would be a fool to run.

"Steve Clemons calls out presidential candidate Bill Richardson on, um, well, as Clemons phrases it, the "blurring of public responsibilities and 'what should be' private behavior" ...Josh Marshall

Ah tol ya. I don't have any idea what they are, but I have heard over and over that Richardson has prohibiting skeletons.

Apparently it's repeated demeaning behavior toward staff women -- grabbing his crotch, etc.

I hate the fucking country that makes Hillary the best we can do. But it is a fact.

Clinton is not the best we can do, not by a long shot. Both substantively and electability-wise she's mediocre to wretched, and I shudder at the thought that well-read lefties on a blog like this one can't find a better Democratic candidate - a more charismatic, more resourceful politician with better instincts and better policy positions - by, say, swinging a goddamn stick in a crowded room.

The guy from the flophouse has weighed in

Both substantively and electability-wise she's mediocre to wretched

What Democrat is more electable than Hillary? Names, please.

As for "substance," see my "politician" snark above. You say "substance," I say "pie in the sky." Let's call the whole thing off?

Atrios adds this to the Flophouse Guy's post:

To which I'll add, if your criticisms and general thinking about a particular candidate or politician sound eerily like something Maureen Dowd could or did write then maybe you should step back and rethink.

"She really, really, wants this."

Not a plus in my book. And not a guarantor of anything.

No, let's not call the whole thing off. Let's nominate Obama, Edwards, I don't care, someone for whom the first thing that comes to mind isn't "really wants this." It doesn't just turn off the liberal base.

What Democrat is more electable than Hillary? Names, please.

Are you kidding me? Edwards is polling better than her right now, and he doesn't have anything like her negatives. In what way is Clinton supposed to be electable in the first place? Don't say "fundraising," because in any general election she's going to raise just as much money for the GOP as she will for our side. Her political instincts are terrible: again, her vote for the war was not only catastrophic policy, it was incredibly short-sighted politics, and she's played the war wrong ever since. Her public persona is wooden and strained - not cringe-inducingly bad, but not up to par with Edwards or Obama, and definitely not what Democrats came to expect from Clinton the First. So why am I supposed to buy the electability argument for her again?

Rilkefan at ObWi linked this Atlantic profile on HRC from Nov. 2006, if you missed it.

Obama, or as someone at Joyner's blog put it, "Colin Powell without the impressive resume," may be president sometime, but not in 2008.

Edwards was deeply, deeply unimpressive in 2004, and I don't believe he has Hillary's appeal to the center.

Try to remember, folks, that when HRC voted to authorize the Iraq War, most of America agreed with her. They were wrong, but "you muthas were SO WRONG" is not how any Dem is going to win the White House, or even the nomination.

All this is moonshine, of course; HRC may stumble miserably, Edwards may turn out to be the second coming of FDR. But that's what blog threads are for.

She really, really, wants this. The presidency is not something she's going for because, hey, she's a senator and that's the next rung on the cursus honorum. She is *all about* winning this thing.

Good for her. After she puts on her magical Winning Hat and uses it to Win her way to the White House with she sheer power of wanting it real real bad, I'm sure she can loan it to George Bush so he can bring us triumphant victory in Iraq.

Try to remember, folks, that when HRC voted to authorize the Iraq War, most of America agreed with her.

And try to remember that now, when Clinton is actually running for president, the overwhelming majority of Americans thinks she made a horrible mistake, and moreover, wants someone to get America out of this war. Clinton won't be able to get up, wag her finger, and say "But you WANTED me to be wrong!" She's certainly not going to be able to get by on lukewarm promises of benchmarks and "as they stand up we stand down" talk.

The fact that Clinton read this war so badly, and cast the most important vote of her senate career in the worst way possible for her presidential ambitions, should tell us something about her political instincts. I have no idea what the Clinton people are smoking, but it won't get her elected.

Well, Hillary should have known that vote was a bad idea because I wrote her beforehand to tell her so. Repeatedly.

[/silly, embittered constituent talk]

SJ, my point about HRC wanting to win was not a Green Lantern theory of electoral politics, but rather to distinguish her from the halfhearted losers that the Dems seem to favor for their nominees.

Lukewarm talk, btw, happens to be what most people want. We're still not cozy with getting the fuck out of Iraq on the next plane. "Benchmarks" etc. are actually a politically viable way of getting out: "I hate that we have to pull out, but we gave the Iraqi gov't its chances & they blew it." That's politics.

Otherwise, I think your evident distance from the political center kind of makes my points for me.

Obama, or as someone at Joyner's blog put it, "Colin Powell without the impressive resume,"

and record of lying to the UN!

Yellow flag on Anderson for playing the centrist card.

171: IIRC, 43% of the electorate dislikes her. I'm not sure you have quite the fix on the center that you think you have.

What's unimpressive about Obama's resume? It looks as impressive as HRC's on my desk.

This will sort itself out in the primaries. If I were a betting man, my money wouldn't be on HRC. I don't see her numbers going anywhere but down as the other candidates get more face time. But I've been wrong before.

and record of lying to the UN!

Shhhh, Rob -- that was a Very, Very Difficult Decision for poor Colin to make, and we should respect that he had a professional duty to completely abdicate his professional duty ...

IIRC, George Tenet was literally in the room as Powell worked on his speech, and was ebulliently confirming the excellent quality of CIA's intel on the subject. That bastard in particular bears a helluva lot of the blame. Can you imagine Tenet *resigning* and going public with "the intel simply is not there to support this war"?

(Cheney retort: you blew the last intel on 9/11, you're going to blow this too? The man should have had the guts to resign after 9/11. But no.)

43% of the electorate would vote against Hillary if Satan were the opposing candidate. I'm not looking for Nazi-plebiscite-level returns. And I think her actually campaigning could even bring that number down some.

175.2 - I think HRC looks good against any individual person, but I'd have difficulty picking her against the field. The problem is that while she has a major block of support among African-Americans, Obama is going to Hoover up a great deal of that. I believe white primary voters skew strongly liberal, and her muddled-plus-plus position on Iraq is going to be an anchor there. Still, she's probably more likely than any other single person in the race to date just because of her vast fountains of cash. (This is kind of how I feel about McCain, only I'm becoming even more dubious about his odds and "vast fountains of cash" s/b "strange, Jedi-Master-esque hold on the imagination of Boomer reporters and pundits".)

I guarantee that most people have forgotten that they ever supported the war. Being against the war is the Woodstock of 2003 -- more people remember being there than were there.

I appear to be the only person who thinks that Obama is running for Veep, so what do I know?

I doubt that Obama is going to have quite such a lock on the black vote as sheer identity-politics would suggest, but whatever he can collect would be a big incentive to Hillary to put him on her ticket, rather than anything that would get him to the White House on the top of the ticket.

How many moderate Republican women will cross over to Hillary, I wonder?

I guarantee that most people have forgotten that they ever supported the war. Being against the war is the Woodstock of 2003 -- more people remember being there than were there.

Hillary will be totally okay with forgetting it herself. And it's going to be very hard for Edwards to beat her up with that in a way that will appeal to moderate voters. He does not look like a foreign-policy genius himself.

"How many moderate Republican women will cross over to Hillary, I wonder?"

About the same as would cross over for Obama. With regard to his angling for a VP nomination, I don't take him for a sucker.

"Benchmarks" etc. are actually a politically viable way of getting out

I have an even more politically viable plan for getting out of Iraq: actually getting out of Iraq.

180 - You're muddying the issue between the primary and the general election. Any major Democrat (and I include the potentially tainted Richardson in this category) has a perfectly respectable shot at the general. A Democrat will be running in the aftermath of a losing war and a historically unpopular President from the opposite party, on top of Henry Waxman (and Joe Lieberman, if he is killed and replaced by Bizarro World Joe Lieberman, which I would support) picking at the scabs of 6 years of Republican corruption. Things can change, but assuming that nobody can convince Bush to save the Republicans by starting to move us out of Iraq (and the Baker ISG report was his chance if he was going to take it) even a second-tier candidate like Clark or Biden could potentially win in 2008. The question is who comes out of the Democratic primary -- as I said, HRC has an institutional advantage and a huge money advantage, so it may well be her.

Hillary will be totally okay with forgetting it herself.

All those clips of her on C-SPAN and Meet the Press, on the other hand, won't be quite so forgetful.

And it's going to be very hard for Edwards to beat her up with that in a way that will appeal to moderate voters. He does not look like a foreign-policy genius himself.

He doesn't have to. I thought Edwards got crushed by Cheney in the VP debate, but apparently polls found that viewers overwhelmingly loved him over the horrible old troll. As much as I'd like voters to admire politicians for their policy chops, more of them go for the guy who's likable.

And yes, Edwards voted for the war, too, but he's managed to pull off apologizing for that in a way that at least has the appearance of sincerity, as opposed to grudging contrition. The speech he gave on MLK day - with his aside about taking full responsibility for his vote - was a letter-perfect example of how to go from war supporter to war opponent. Notice, though, that Edwards didn't stop there: he went on to call for an immediate withdrawal of 40-50,000 troops and a full withdrawal of American forces from Iraq on a timetable. That's the kind of stance that'll earn you points with the antiwar crowd - an antiwar crowd that now makes up about 60% of the electorate, incidentally.

And this is all a long way off -- I'll be angry at my alumni magazine for fluffing Gov. Bobby Jindal months before we're even faced with the frigging Iowa caucuses.

185 - For all the idea that we're mad at HRC for being a politician rather than Liberal Feminist Jesus, it strikes me that her political (as opposed to policy or simple-human-decency) skills as demonstrated re: Iraq have been really, really lacking.

it strikes me that her political (as opposed to policy or simple-human-decency) skills as demonstrated re: Iraq have been really, really lacking.

Take a look at that Atlantic article. I think her political skills have been underestimated.

But look, enough nyah-nyah: it's too early for anyone to really have good predictions. (Who was predicting Bill Clinton this far out from 1992?) I just dislike this appearance of bashing Hillary for being, gasp!, a politician.

I also have a touch of knee-jerk feminism, perhaps summarizable as: okay, which man do you think Hillary should support, rather than running herself?

Feingold, Feingold, he's my man!
He won't run, but Obama can!

I don't understand why it's particularly unfeminist to say that any given woman would be a bad president. I don't think Libby Dole, a poltician with a resume as impressive as HRC's, would be a good president, either. Were Republican feminists wrong not to vote for her? Would I have been racist for thinking that Al Sharpton made an unappealing candidate and wishing that he got out to throw his support to a white man? I said upthread that I think Kathleen Sebelius (whose name I spelled wrong) would, on paper at least, make an great candidate, and she's been mercilessly exploiting fissures between the business conservative and religious conservative wings of the Kansas GOP, but I'm not going to vote for a woman just because she's a woman, the same way I wouldn't vote for a man just because he's a man. (For what it's worth,

Look, it sounds like she's doing a kick-ass job in the Senate. Good for her -- I hope she's Majority Leader some day. I hope she's the second coming of LBJ, except for the war part. But from that Atlantic article: A close friend of the Clintons offers this diagnosis: "She was focusing on the delivery of health care. She was utterly and totally tone-deaf to the politics." You read that, and then something like Most people correctly foresaw the vote as authorization for Bush to invade Iraq. Did she really mean to suggest she had not been among them? "Well, I think that's right," she said, affecting total ignorance, and then launched into a point-by-point defense of the position. "That's what Bush said in his speech in Cincinnati on October 7th. They called me to the White House on October 8th and gave me another briefing. When I got back to my office, Condi Rice called me and asked if I had any questions. I said, 'Look, I have one question: If the president has this authority, will he go to the United Nations and use it to get inspectors to go back into Iraq and figure out what this guy has?'... Privately and publicly, that was the argument they were making." That's true, but it's not convincing, and it seems like a desperate tap-dance around an open admission of failure.

I can't see into her soul -- I don't know if she's honestly describing what happened, or if she voted after agonizing about it and is now tacking back to her real beliefs, or she really enjoys the thought of invading Iraq. But this was the most important foreign policy decision of her career to date -- God willing, it'll be the most important one of her career when she retires at 90 -- and she blew it, and she isn't doing a good job of pouring balm on the waters. Do you want to argue that she is? Those are the sort of political chops I'm thinking of -- her husband could fake sincerity, and she just can't. She constantly seems to me to be pandering, even when she probably isn't, and it's a real flaw at the level of national politics where so much revolves around the ability to seem earnest and trustworthy on television.

You know, I said much the same thing the last thread (goodness knows when) when we talked about Hillary -- that she's got a tendency to sell out badly, taking positions that don't seem to be either what she wants on their merits, or best calculated to serve her politically. But that seems to me like much more of a political problem than a substantive problem -- once she's elected, and I think if she makes it through the primary, she can take any of the obvious Republican possibilities, she has much less of a need to shape her positions to her idea of what's politically possible.

and 161: Good for Sausagely. It's not as if it hasn't been said before, often, but it should be repeated frequently.

I just dislike this appearance of bashing Hillary for being, gasp!, a politician.

Reread my comments. My objection is not just that Clinton is a politician - it's that she's a bad politician.

I also have a touch of knee-jerk feminism, perhaps summarizable as: okay, which man do you think Hillary should support, rather than running herself?

Any of them, as long as they're not DLC.

once she's elected... she has much less of a need to shape her positions to her idea of what's politically possible.

Is this an endorsement of the "she's secretly been a super-liberal all along, and will change by the power of Greyskull as soon as she gets elected" hypothesis? Because I don't see much evidence for this at all.

And once again, while I see plenty of reasons not to vote for Clinton, I can't see any reasons to particularly want to vote for Clinton. What does she bring that the other major Dem contenders don't?

Not so much that she's always been a super-liberal, but that some of her public positions have been idiotic things she was muscled into rather than anything anyone was likely to have believed was a good idea. While I am angry with her for having gone along with the Iraq war, I don't have any reason to believe that she's enough of a maniac to have come up with something that stupid spontaneously -- if she (or Kerry, to name someone else who voted for it) we wouldn't be in Iraq because the thought would simply never have crossed her mind. Likewise with HillaryCare -- another mess, but a compromising mess rather than something I'm prepared to believe was her own spontaneous bad idea.

I would expect her to do better, rather than worse, with more power. Not a superliberal, but probably a competent moderate.

Stras, I can remember any number of attractive candidates in my lifetime. But the subset of those that got the nomination and the even smaller set of those that were elected President equals exactly zero. (Okay, McGovern was a nice guy but not an actual contender)

Which is pretty decent evidence that anyone I can actually stand has no chance of getting elected.

Come to think on it, the number of "attractive candidates" is pretty low. Kinda like Billboard top tens and Box office winners, my tastes do not track fashion.

McManus is playing a deep game. He's pretending to think that Hillary's OK in order to kill off her chances. But I see through that.

it's that she's a bad politician.

Word.

And no people, we should not play the "mommy" card when it reinforces a negative stereotype of the Democrats as the party who wants to tell you what's good for you whether you like it or not. Especially when it's a stereotype that will play especially bad in the states that will likely decide the election. West and Midwest people, eyes on the prize.

And this talk of resumes is laughable. What country have you people been living in? Reagan and Bush Jr. both got two terms.

People people people. I need coffee.

bashing Hillary for being, gasp!, a politician.

Yeah, the problem is not being a politician. They're all politicians, and you have to be a good one to win the presidency. The problem is that if I line up all the Democratic senators, it's very difficult to define any ideological space between her and Joe Lieberman. Really, find the issue where they don't agree. She is the corporate candidate, Joe Biden's quixotic campaign notwithstanding.

We have a real chance to win the presidency and a huge Senate majority in '08, so that we'll actually be able to enact progressive legislation. Possibly only for a short window, at that, and this isn't an opportunity that comes around very often. I'd prefer we not have one of the two or three most conservative members of our caucus leading the party.

"I'd prefer we not have one of the two or three most conservative members of our caucus leading the party."

Me too. I offer hope or consolation from history, like 68-74. Despite Humphrey losing to Nixon, Nixon never had coattails;Congress got very liberal; and those were good years in some ways. for liberal legislation. Need I list? OSHA, EPA, AA.

And Bill did us little good at all.

Don't overrate the Presidency or underrate Congress:Hillary won't veto single-payer or tax increases.

Except for the war stuff.

I don't know how young the people here are; I don't pay attention.

But GWB's servile rubber-stamp Congress, or ineffectual in wing-nut terms, is a real historical oddity. And a take it or leave President is an exception. And the hostile obstructionist Congress of Bill Clinton's years is an exception. "Divided government" is rare in practice. I don't like most of what was done, but Truman & Eisenhower & Nixon & Reagan and GHWB worked quite well with Democrats and Republicans. Because they had to.

Congress rules this country.

You get one great person at a time. Pelosi. Give Pelosi 10 more Congresspersons and 5 Senators and President Hillary will kiss Pelosi's ass.

One thing I can say for Hillary over the other candidates is that when the first attack ad runs, she's more likely to say "I'm going to make those motherfuckers pay." Obama and Edwards doesn't seem like the MTMFP type.

205: Disagree entirely. As a general rule, when a Republican walks into the room, your average DLCer gets on the floor, rolls over onto his stomach, and smiles coyly over his left shoulder. I don't see HRC being any different.

201 is it.

I don't see her suddenly feeling unconstrained if she was president. For all her uncharismatic iciness, i don't think she has any real confidence. Whatever amount of time she'd squander away in piddly initiatives chasing polls the same way bill did. Someone mentioned she is the candidate who most wants to WIN. Which is why she will pick small fights she's sure she can win; she doesn't understand that audacity is power.

L'audace, l'audace, toujours, l'audace! Which ends with your army stuck in a Russian winter, right?

One thing that seems odd to me is the strong feelings, positive or negative, people have of Hillary as a person. She reminds me of about 10% of my coworkers in my old hospital job. Some of them I liked and some not, but few of them seemed exceptional one way or another. Just businesslike career women.

"Don't overrate the Presidency or underrate Congress:Hillary won't veto single-payer or tax increases."

She also can't sell these things politically to any public or to the media debate creators and thats what gets congress-the-instutution ie the swing district reps and purple state senators to go along with stuff.

I really can't emphasize this enough:

1) All the Democratic Presidents you have ever known or ever heard before had Southern conservative Democrats in the Chairs and with veto power. At best Johnson could make deals, meaning Vietnam, with Northern Republicans. No more Dixiecrats. First really liberal Congress, like ever. Even FDR had to deal TVA and segreagation.

2) Congresspersons don't need a bully pulpit or to sell policy. They know their constituents and what their constituents want. They just do it.

What, Hillary gonna say, "gotta veto this, that Reid and Pelosi just way too liberal for me" when there are liberal majorities in both houses? Not if she wants to get re-elected, any bills she wants, or any credit for what passes. She gonna ally with Trent Lott and John Cornyn to defeat a Feingold bill?

Worry about Congress.

But HRC isn't going to invade russia; her real desire, outside of pure power, is only buying a quarter of new orleans after make a few concessions to the banking interests.

One vote for Anderson.

I worry that the Democrats have a lingering inferiority complex from Election Nights like this (back when Democrats were Reds, because apparently Republicans like obvious jokes). But that's just not where we are anymore. "Electability" doesn't mean choosing the candidate farthest from our own ideals, or the candidate best able to pretend not to have any agenda whatsoever. The 2008 Democratic nominee only needs to hold most of this map or this map, plus one or two non-negligible future draft picks.

I was trying to develop a more sophisticated analysis but I really must sleep now.

156 & 157. Oh don't get me started on the "well, you see, they're politicians." Yes, they are, and SOME ARE MUCH BETTER and SOME ARE MUCH WORSE. This is like saying "we are all sinners". Utter utter utter cop out.

Also, to me, the idea that she'll be different if elected makes no sense. I believed that, actually, of Kerry--but Kerry's botched Iraq war vote was positioning him for the 2004 election. Clinton's was positioning herself for an election over 6 years away. She'll be a lot closer than that to facing reelection on the day she takes the oath of office.

Sorry to be pissy above, btw. She's not even that bad. But she has been actively harmful since 2001 on the issues that I've been most focused on and that the president has most control over.

Unless Leiberman joins in, of the declared and actual nominees, only Clinton has tried to put one of my employers out of business. I've done some work on the fringes of computer gaming, and a lot of my friends still work there. It will take a lot to make me feel good about supporting someone who wants us out of business.

Now, if Clinton wins the primaries, I will campaign for her against any Republican I can imagine winning their nomination. I will be happy to praise her merits and make a positive case for her, as well as the negative one against the Republicans. In the meantime, however, and not just for the personal reason, I regard her as the worst of the likely candidates so far. Since she's in the race, I feel some obligation to take part in someone else's campaign. I haven't decided whose yet, and probably won't for some months yet. But I very much wish she weren't in the race.

By the way, I'd give at least one in three odds that there's some very good candidate out there, one I would really like to see as the Democratic nominee and who would have a good chance of unseating the Republican machine, who isn't being talked about at all. I distrust this kind of super-early consensus and think that we're all of us rattling around in the echo chamber a bit much. No real evidence for this, just a suspicion.

It's fuckers like Bruce who are stealing the innocence of our children. (Second paragraph)

Edwards has been working on semi-high-level things with Russia for at least two years. It's not getting media play, but it is making him the contacts and the connections and the impressions that he will need if he ever occupies the Oval Office. That's a good sign.

He's also got, as we here all know, a clear domestic agenda. He'll need it. Because the world always demands the American president's attention, so a passionate domestic commitment is good for two reasons: 1) he will be itching to get back to it as much as possible; and 2) his people will be able to keep driving it even when he is off mediating the Middle East or Taiwan or some other damn place. That's another good sign.

Good as Edwards is, though, his campaign isn't one that will invite voters to make history. Clinton's, Obama's and Richardson's all do that. (Richardson's less obviously, of course, than if his name were more visibly Hispanic.) That gives all three a way to pull at voters' hearts, which is potentially huge. I'm with B about HRC's potential crossover vote among women who often vote Republican. Voting for her is a way to make history, to shape the nation, to let America once more shine among nations ... (sorry, went into speechwriter mode there for a moment).

I was reasonably plugged in in DC in the mid-90s, and one of the things that I consistently heard was that HRC was extremely good to the people who worked for her. That's important for any leader.

She's also not likely to underestimate the viciousness that the Republican party is capable of; she's been on the receiving end of it for more than a decade. I'm of two minds about that part: Either her negatives are so high because everyone has already made up their mind, or she's got nowhere to go but up from a caricature.

Finally, internet video should play a huge role in this election. Candidates can put things out that are designed to be seen as a whole, not bracketed into 30-second commercials or aimed for 8-second sound bites on the evening news shows. Not everyone will see the whole thing, but enough will to drive the conversation. The bully pulpit is now a podcast.

(Parenthetically, it's not too early. Primary calendar is front-loaded and likely to be more so; the effective general election will run from Feb or March; positioning and framing are happening this year.)

It occurred to me this morning that the complaints about Hillary -- two-faced, insufficiently left, can't tell what she really stands for -- were reminiscent of complaints about Franklin Roosevelt as well. It is rather difficult to imagine many at Unfogged supporting a patrician Dem for president in 1932.

Anyway, looking forward to the horse race.

Btw, I dropped a comment at DeLong's asking about his "keep Hillary away from the White House" line, & he replied in the comment:

Word is that she has learned a lot since 1993--and has a lot better sense of who her real friends are...

I think that the complaints about Hillary ar reminiscent of the complaints about Jesus, really. And Galileo. People were mean to Galileo, but he showed them.

Mostly, Jesus, though, don't you think, Emerson? After all, he's really the closest parallel we have to the mystery that is Hillary, in all of her miraculous grace, who will deliver this nation to the promised land.

I'm glad the obvious resemblances between Hillary and Jesus are evident to Emerson.

As for Galileo, I've never looked at him the same since that movie where Schwartzenegger played him dropping a cannonball on Cardinal Bellarmine, crushing his skull, and croaking, "It *does* move."

obvious resemblances between Hillary and Jesus

She looks great in sandals and bleeds when punctured.

Also, the beard.

I agree with Katherine's take above. I'm trying to stay open-minded, but it's been rough having what I consider legitimate doubts about Hillary treated, in the coarsest terms, as if it were simply sexism, on these here threads.
There is an awful lot to dislike, and the defense of her maneuvers just doesn't seem credible to me.

treated, in the coarsest terms, as if it were simply sexism, on these here threads

That "coarsest terms," I don't think it means what you think it means. Certainly not in the threads I've seen at Unfogged.

Anyway, I don't think you're a fucking misogynist.

Actually, I'm thinking of one really bad day you may not have noticed, but that still gets under my skin.

It is rather difficult to imagine many at Unfogged supporting a patrician Dem for president in 1932.

After Hoover? The liberals of my parent's generation weren't too worried about subtleties, they were worried about the prospects for food and shelter in a few days or weeks. And HRC isn't a patrician unless that's defined the same way as celebrity nowadays.

Eh. I'd agree with Anderson that I haven't seen any accusations that all dislike of Clinton has been framed as purely attributable to sexism in the coarsest terms in this thread, and I don't remember anything much worse in the past. Further, I'm not crazy about her as a candidate for many of the reasons that have been mentioned in this thread, and I still think the intensity with which she is opposed has something to do with sexism. A man with her record (which really isn't comparable to Lieberman's) wouldn't be getting this level of horror, he'd be getting a lack of enthusiasm. Opposing her doesn't make you a sexist, but sexism makes up a part of some of the opposition to her.

which really isn't comparable to Lieberman's

How do you figure?

219,220: So Hillary is the reincarnation of FDR but Edwards is a closet commie-symp.

I think I am tending towards Edwards for the commie stuff, especially my double-reverse with twist strategy has been outed by Emerson.

232: Unlike Lieberman, Clinton doesn't exert much effort worshiping the boy-king.

(I was going to use an obscene metaphor involving kneepads, but thought it inappropriate.)

232: What makes Lieberman notably awful as a Democrat, rather than merely someone at (but not particularly outside) the right-wing margin of the party, is his political positioning much more than his votes. What he says in public (which, bob's take isn't that far off) does much more damage than anything concrete he does. Clinton hasn't been lined up with the administration on every godawful thing they're doing in nearly the same way as Lieberman.

Sure, there are style differences. But legislatively and substantively, how does the difference manifest?

236 was posted before I saw 235.

Clinton hasn't been lined up with the administration on every godawful thing they're doing in nearly the same way as Lieberman.

Wow, that's praise.

Look, I'm not a fan. But I don't think she'd be a nightmare.

and I still think the intensity with which she is opposed has something to do with sexism. A man with her record (which really isn't comparable to Lieberman's) wouldn't be getting this level of horror, he'd be getting a lack of enthusiasm

Give me a break. If she wasn't, far and away, the presumptive nominee, she wouldn't be getting this reaction. Early in the '04 cycle, when Kerry was first the presumptive nominee, there were plenty of people saying (a) "Please, Dear God, no," (b) Kerry's an asshole, and everyone in Boston hates him, (c) Kerry's a sell-out, and will sell out anyone to get ahead. And Kerry didn't have three very big strikes against him that HRC has: (1) he was nothing like the presumptive nominee the way HRC is, (2) there appeared to be no truly attractive candidates, with the possible exception of Dean, and I think it's fair to say the Dean supporters were pretty vocal about how bad the rest of the field was, and (3) Kerry wasn't the effective head of the organization (the DLC) that used the worst anti-Democrat tropes against other Democrats in order to sell a war that the DLC thought would go down well with the Dixiecrats.

Fuck HRC and fuck the DLC.

I've never been excited about HRC for various reasons (her centrist tacking, bunker mentality, and unfair but inescapable association with 20th-century scandals), but I'm actually relieved that she's in the race. If anyone else becomes the Democratic nominee (I'm leaning Edwards), there must be no ability to say "Well, this nominee is okay, but if Hillary had been in the race..." Anyone who gets past her will gain instant giant-killer credibility.

I'm not a fan, I don't think anyone is obliged to support her, and so on. There are perfectly non-sexist reasons to want not to vote for her. None of that makes raising the issue of sexism as it influences what people say and think of her in any way out of line.

the intensity with which she is opposed has something to do with sexism

Passive voice faux pas, LB. Surely you don't mean the intensity with which we enlightened Hillary opponents express our opposition around here?

Seems to me that it's simultaneously true that some opposition to Hillary is due to sexism, but also that she wouldn't have a chance if she weren't a woman.

INone of that makes raising the issue of sexism as it influences what people say and think of her in any way out of line.

Fair enough. May I raise the possibility that anyone who chooses HRC (or Edwards) over Obama might be a straight racist? (Includes me, at the moment.) FWIW, I really do think that's more likely to be true.

Passive voice was used advisedly (and continues to be), in response to the passive voice complaint in 227. I'm not griping at anyone particular here for sexism in their opposition to Clinton, but I'm not comfortable with saying that she's clearly such demon-spawn that any discussion of sexism in relation to why she's getting such strong opposition is inappropriate.

I'd rather Edwards than either. Are you seriously gonna say this is because I'm a racist sexist? If only there were a homosexual candidate, then you could award me the bigotry trifecta.

And 244 is probably true. McCain wouldn't have much of a shot if he weren't a man, on the other hand -- without his biography, he's not that impressive. So, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

245: Also possible.

247: There have always been rumors that HRC's a seekrit lesbian, and Obama's awfully thing and awfully neat for a man of his age. Consider yourself the winnah!

A big part of my thinking is that I only very grudgingly accepted Bill, as a sign of how low we'd fallen and how desperate our case was. Hillary gets all the friends and enemies Bill (and the DLC) had.

However, and my main point, I don't think that the DLC "we have to nominate a centrist hawk" argument is good any more, but Hillary is still on that track.

Pretend I just reposted this comment, including its conclusion.

247: No. Do I have to say that I'm not a fan of hers either, or that there are non-sexist reasons to oppose her, in all caps? I can if you like.

THERE ARE NON-SEXIST REASONS NOT TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT.

I can say it again in bold and italicised, if that'd help.

I'm still not walking away from the position that for some opponents of hers, sexism is part of the explanation for why they oppose her, and for many opponents of hers, sexism is part of the reason they oppose her vehemently rather than simply preferring another candidate.

This is going to be a fun two years.

Even better than the last six have been? Couldn't possibly be.

Hey, McCain/Bush looked like splitting the GOP. Unfortunately....

I have a problem with your habit, LB, of rephrasing and refocusing a statement or position we've complained about, usually into a much more nuanced and less personal form, and then insisting that what you just said is what was said before by someone else. You did it on the Twisty/BJ threads and you're doing it now. What you've said here is of course a better thing to be arguing about, but it's beside the point of what I'm still offended by, which is barging into a thread that was then already hundreds of comments long, making exactly the kind of objections we're making here today, and calling us all sexists for opposing Hillary.

These numbers were interesting. No, really, it says so.

Another interesting question is how much sexism Hillary will face regardless of her campaign style. Dana cites "According to a December Newsweek poll, 86 percent of Americans say they would vote for a female presidential candidate, but only 55 percent believe the nation as a whole is 'ready' for a woman president, suggesting some ambivalence." I think those numbers suggest more than ambivalence, maybe even outright hostility. 86 percent is lower than the proportion of Americans who typically claim that they'd vote for a black or a Jew. And more people claim they would vote for a member of a disadvantaged group than actually will. I think the 55 percent saying the country is ready is more telling--and it's very striking.

See, IDP, if you want to complain about what Bitch said in the prior thread, I'd strongly prefer that you identify exactly what you're complaining about, rather than saying things like this:

I'm trying to stay open-minded, but it's been rough having what I consider legitimate doubts about Hillary treated, in the coarsest terms, as if it were simply sexism, on these here threads.

Because that covers everything one might say about Hillary and sexism. And I have thoughts about Hillary and sexism, which I might want to post on, and which I don't think are unfair to anyone here.

If you have specific complaints, make them specifically and they'll get responded to specifically. Generally phrased complaints, on the other hand, tend to make me want to respond as if the real complaint was general.

That John Edwards can't or won't raise real money is a mark against him, not for him.

Um. He'll be just fine. Not only is he the preferred netroots candidate by a large margin, but he's got one of the biggest lists of trial lawyer donors in Democratic politics. And now he's polling really well. Donors give money to people who can win.

My own theory is that people who seriously think Obama or Edwards can win the White House in 2008, as prez not veep, are spending *way* too much time on the Internet.

Or, they're people who have spent actual time working in presidential politics, instead of just talking about it. Looking at the primary calendar, Edwards has the clearest road map to the nomination, starting with Iowa, where I worked in 2004 (for someone else). Should I draw the map for you?

Oh, and Edwards does the best in the latest general election matchups, if you want to talk about electability.

Guys, here's the truth of it. The Republican party is going to be split like we've never seen it. No matter who they nominate, there will be factions of the part unhappy with the choice. Nominate a pro-war hawk like McCain? 30% of Republicans want us to get the fuck out; lots will stay home or vote for the Dem. Nominate an anti-war crusader like Hagel? Ditto for the pro-war Republicans. Nominate a conservative Christian like Brownback or Huckabee (who, incidentally, is rather a brilliant politician and is making waves among the Christian Right and Republican donors, as well as Iowa caucusgoers)? Republicans who are fed up with the Christian Right will stay home. Nominate a social moderate, and the Christin Right stays home. Their party is completely falling apart, guys. They're all at war with each other, and it's going to be bloody. The Republican primary is way more interesting than the Democratic primary this year. They're in the middle of a massive identity crisis, and saddled with a war everyone hates. For general election purposes, Republicans more divided than at any time since the pre-Reagan era. The war has really, really fucked them. They're where the Democrats were in 1968. This opportunity is historic.

Drat. That came out sounding terribly hostile, rather than mildly annoyed. Could I ask for it to be mentally read in a mildly annoyed tone of voice?

I've been trying to find the thread I have in mind, with yahoo searches and month-by-month, and I haven't found it yet. Can anybody help?

I can see you're annoyed, and I can understand why. That thread, when we find it, made such an impression on me that I actually thought my reference in 227 was sufficiently pointed as it was. Apparently not.

For general election purposes, Republicans more divided than at any time since the pre-Reagan era.

Sadly true.

Slol linked a prior discussion of Hillary in his 251, but I can't see anything all that objectionable in that thread.

Comity with Idealist! Now, we dance.

263: Yep. This is part of why I'm less opposed to Hillary now than I might be another year -- I think this is an election where our candidate will be running as a Democrat, much more than as their individual persona, and where the Democrat is going to have a serious advantage. I think her weaknesses are much more electability related than substantive; with a Democratic Congress, while I'm still not crazy about her, I think she'll be a fine president.

Clinton's Iraq speech

Obama's Iraq speech.

I won't claim that's typical of him. But if he campaigns like that, and she campaigns like that, he is going to win the primary. Simple as that.

I hope he realizes this...

I think I might be for Edwards just because of Joe D's enthusiasm for him.

261:No, that's not the one I remember, nor is this, where we seem already to be trying very hard to be reasonable. It must have been earlier than that.

You too? Actually, I'm mostly leaning Edwards because he's positioned himself as the labor guy, which I'm all for.

Possibly I'm biased from hanging out around insurance-defense lawyers, but I think that Edwards' being "the trial lawyer candidate" would mobilize quite a lot of force against him.

Same kind of problem as Gore. There are a lot of people willing to pay a lot of money to keep Gore away from the presidency.

Part of why Hillary's so disliked here is precisely that she doesn't have a similar class of enemy. (Neither does Obama, AFAIK.) Sure, there are people who hate her, but I think her Senate career has made a lot of big-$$$ comfortable with her who might not have been before.

Of course, to some, that is another reason not to support her. But it seems that's how the game is played.

Joe D. may of course be right; it will be fun to watch.

263: Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch.

precisely that she doesn't have a similar class of enemy

Are you sure we're talking about the same person?

Anderson, a lot of us hope for a game in which influence peddling is not so completely dominant. This kind of thing (along with the Iraq War and civil liberties) is my main reason for not liking Hillary, not the Defense of Marriage Act or the video games.

I think I might be for Edwards just because of Joe D's enthusiasm for him.

I'm a little in love, yeah. His MLK day speech was really extraordinary.

Edwards' being "the trial lawyer candidate" would mobilize quite a lot of force against him.

Among Republicans? Hillary brings out more opposition with them than Edwards does, I'd say.

Anderson, a lot of us hope for a game in which influence peddling is not so completely dominant.

Sure, me too. I'm visualizing that right after world peace. But I don't really understand how, in 2008, anyone gets elected president, or accomplishes anything if elected (cf. Carter, James Earl), without knowing how to play that game.

I would like a president who can work with the Congress, not just with the portion that belongs to the same party; Hillary may can do that.

Among Republicans? Hillary brings out more opposition with them than Edwards does, I'd say.

I can see that I was unclear. Hillary is the bane of many "cultural Republicans" who wouldn't vote Dem anyway and can thus be disregarded. I am not so sure that she is the bane of the affluent Republicans who run corporations and write large checks to candidates. They would rather see President HRC than President Edwards or Gore, I feel reasonably confident. And if they think a Dem is going to win, or has a good shot, they will be writing her checks; they will know full well that she's keeping a list.

Hillary is the bane of many "cultural Republicans" who wouldn't vote Dem anyway and can thus be disregarded.

This doesn't mean they can be disregarded, though. Their strong opposition translates into more money and enthusiasm for the Republican candidate among the conservative base.

I am not so sure that she is the bane of the affluent Republicans who run corporations and write large checks to candidates.

FWIW, Buffet apparently loves Obama.

Dumb answer, Anderson. We're looking for a better game, and as I've said, it may be possible now. You either have given up or don't care.

And bipartisanship too! You really do have a lot to offer.

I totally agree that a lot of rich Republicans prefer Hillary to better candidates. That's the main rason why I oppose her. For you, it's apparently a reason to support her.

Buffet is mostly a Democrat, IIRC.

Dumb answer, Anderson. We're looking for a better game, and as I've said, it may be possible now. You either have given up or don't care.

You say "dumb," I say "realistic as opposed to hopelessly trapped in the ivory tower." I concede that "dumb" is snappier.

Lawd, lawd, people. If you're gonna talk about me, do it when I'm around.

If I actually said that everyone who opposes Hillary is sexist, or that all opposition to her stems from sexism, or that opposing her is sexist pure and simple, I take it back. I'm pretty sure, though, that what I said then was a version of what I said upthread: that opposition is one thing, but the assumption that a well-connected moderate with the backing of her party is a completely unviable candidate is, one way or another, the result of sexism. Either of the "I doubt a woman can win" variety or of the "a lot of people hate her for being a woman" variety (i.e., the "she has high negatives" stuff).

All that's quite apart from the language about hectoring moms and the dismissing her simply because her husband was president. At the time I pointed out that most women who get into political office do so partly as a result of having fathers/husbands who are politicians; sadly, this is still the primary way that women gain access to political power. Someday it'll change, but not before we get a few women into office.

You have gotten to the place where you oppose doing the right thing and assume it's political suicide merely because it's the right thing. That's past "realistic" into given up, and that attitude's infecting most of the Democrats in Washington played no small role in getting our country where it is today.

that was to Anderson.

284: Comity!

K, I don't "oppose doing the right thing." Nor do I necessarily support doing the right thing.

I assume that politics means giving up on some stuff in order to get other stuff. How well one gives up on the small stuff while winning on the big stuff is a big measure of one's poltical prowess.

I admit that I do think President Hillary would move to the left from Senator Hillary, because I see her Senate career as a highly deliberate counterbalance to her First Lady years. I don't think she'd go as far left as Edwards, but then, I don't think the country is as far left as Edwards (who I wish had stayed in the Senate & done some good, rather than joining the Kerry Krusade).

Doubtless this, too, is "dumb."

Anderson, we've all heard that a million times before. Most of us are actively looking and hoping for an alternative to your wisdom. There's a terrible political down side to what you propose, in my opinion and that of many of us here. There are things that bother us that you apparently don't care about.

If you're right, this country is in terrible shape. And your defense of Hillary has intensified my opposition to her.

I gave you a yellow card above for playing the centrist card, and I'm giving you a second yellow card for your obnoxious "ivory tower" remark. In theory, that means that you're out of the game, though in practice, it means that I need a cooling-off period.

In theory, that means that you're out of the game

Done, sir.

If you want to defend her on the merits defend her on the merits. Don't meet every single substantive criticism of her record with a pro forma dismissal of "ivory tower" idealists who care only about their own purity. Maybe they want to win, but they think they're playing a different game. There's more to political strategy than maximizing one particular candidates chance in one particular election--and running to the center or follwing the polls doesn't even necessarily work for *that*.

And, of course, what I said about the disarray of the Republicans this election works against as well as for Hillary. This is an election where we can get a Democrat elected, and we have a lot more leeway about who it is than usual. That's a strong argument for getting behind someone you really support on substance.

(and 289, 290 -- can I gently encourage less hostility? This is a real point of disagreement, and there's something to be said for talking through it rather than just butting heads.)

Well, I plan on continuing to say that everyone who opposes her is evil, just to annoy Ogged.

We ivory-tower extremists are like that.

Yeah, well, wait until I figure out a way to piss you off, John.

"Ogged" means "peace."

Shut up, hooker.

Looks like Apo and I posted at the same time.

284: I'll take it back too, and I'm sorry for defaming you, B and annoying LB. I had the clearest memory of what I described, but I can't find it. What I have found is us all being pretty heated but not going over that line. I've been reading back on this stuff for hours now. I must have conflated that with something else, perhaps not meant to be taken at face value.

297, 298: You both know that all comity all the time is boring, and leads to dull sex.

298->297

300: Oh, don't worry about it. At least defamation is a kind of fame.

I'll take an "Another Woman Against Hilary" sticker, please.

267: He realizes it and it's not atypical of him. I really think, unless Anderson and B can convince the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire that a vote for anyone but HRC is a vote for sexism, that this thing is already over. I feel a little bad for HRC. I don't think she's horrible, and it looks like she's been building up to this for awhile. But them's the breaks. It's like Brad Pitt enrolling in your high school and stealing your girlfriend. Send out all the exploratory committees you want--she isn't coming back.

That's "Another woman against Hillary Hitlery".

this thing is already over

First caucus is still a year off. That's a long, long time for things to happen.

Two years, I mean.

307: Richardson seems to have had a short ride already, though. Allen too.

Two years, I mean.

Wait, what year is it? Who am I? What are all these tubes?

but the assumption that a well-connected moderate with the backing of her party is a completely unviable candidate is, one way or another, the result of sexism.

This is total nonsense. There's all kinds of reasons such a candidate can be unviable that have nothing to do with sesixm.

I'm being really premature about this, yeah.

311: Can be, yes. In this case, I find it hard to see.

Hillary probably is a viable candidate this year, along with a lot of other people, but for the same reasons this seems to be a year when we don't have to play the cringing DLC me-too game.

The virulent, near-insane opposition to Hillary does come from sexism, I'd say, and not all of it is from hard core Republicans. What they really hate is her professional manner, her success, her competence, etc. This is exactly the same thing that a lot of women love about her. Whether it evens out or not, I don't know, but there's a real schism here.

it's also the widely held illusion that the candidate you like best is the most electable and the candidate you like least is the least electable.

Hillary probably is a viable candidate this year

This cycle, she's viable, because the GOP is in such disarray with no unifying candidate on the horizon. Some people have expressed concerns that HRC could be a drag on down-ticket races. I'm not sure how to evaluate that worry, though.

Katherine, talk to me or Bob. We know that the candidates we like best are least electable. For us that's Rule One.

People, people: we Democrats are not very good at deciding electability, which basically amounts to trying to imagine what candidate might best be able to pander to people we disagree with. Let's not even bother to have that debate at this point.

244

"Seems to me that it's simultaneously true that some opposition to Hillary is due to sexism, but also that she wouldn't have a chance if she weren't a woman."

I don't think the second part of this is accurate. She weren't have a chance if it wasn't for the connection with Bill Clinton but I think her chances would be at least as good if she were his younger brother rather than his wife.

A big problem for her is that Bush has given such a spectacular illustration of the downside of selections based on family connections.

245

I believe racism is a bigger obstacle for Obama than sexism is for Clinton. This may not be obvious because sexist statements are more acceptable than racist statements (perhaps because racism is a more serious problem).

yeah, I won't vote based on electability, so I don't have to pretend. I wasn't particularly talking about discussions here, even.

One result of my brain-fevered reading of a year's "Hillary posts" is to realize that many of us have said really smart things about this issue before. I think there's not much to add now, but when considered as a multi-voiced discussion, we've actually got a lot to be proud of, more than I would have thought. In fact just now I'm really fond of just about every regular who participated. I think we've about talked it out, though.

284 called me sexist, I think. Oh well.

I do think it's a problem for an alleged republic to have two ruling families in 20 years, but we could get them little patrician robes and maybe not worry about that so much.

I do think HRC (not women in general, Idealist, in response to your earlier remarks) calls out the redmeat evangelical 1994 Contract with America vote terrified of another set of Clinton years. It's like having a 15-year Senate career, except more public, with a group already dedicated to hating you.

What would be awesome is if Chelsea Clinton married a Kennedy scion, and then they adopted the abandoned child of one of the Bush twins. Having all those bloodlines intermingled would give that family a lock on claims to the throne presidency.

324: Drunk, horny, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

Having all those bloodlines intermingled would give that family a lock on claims to the Anti-Christhoodnessthing.

I do think HRC (not women in general, Idealist, in response to your earlier remarks) calls out the redmeat evangelical 1994 Contract with America vote terrified of another set of Clinton years. It's like having a 15-year Senate career, except more public, with a group already dedicated to hating you.

Exactly. Was it really so much fun refighting Vietnam in 2004 that we want to spend 2008 reliving the lowlights of the Clinton years?

She weren't have a chance if it wasn't for the connection with Bill Clinton but I think her chances would be at least as good if she were his younger brother rather than his wife.

A big problem for her is that Bush has given such a spectacular illustration of the downside of selections based on family connections.

Shearer? I find your making comments that I agree with and consider illuminating disturbing -- please stop.

Apparently someone who talked to the Onion is a commenter in this thread:

Mike Irving,
Snow Removal Worker
"Is [Hillary] too polarizing a figure? I say no, but apparently some fucking assholes disagree."

I think her chances would be at least as good if she were his younger brother rather than his wife.

Yet if she were both, her chances would be terrible. How flawed is our system!?!?

Ned, I think you're onto a whole new branch of mathematics ... keep searching!