NYP: TWO SHOO-INS FOR N.Y.

New York Post ^ | December 11, 2004 | DICK MORRIS

[OESY]

...Even though the Democrats will probably nominate two of the most controversial people in American politics, Hillary Clinton for senator and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for governor, they will probably face no serious challenge.

Hillary and Spitzer got lucky. The two Republicans who might have given them fits — Rudy Giuliani and George Pataki — both have their eyes on the presidency and neither wants to go through a bruising, no-win battle in New York two years before making the big play for the White House.

Pataki knows he is living on borrowed time. When 500,000 whites left New York state in the 1990s and 500,000 immigrants moved in, New York became the bluest of the blue states....

Rudy has become a business consultant, heading a firm that offers advice and crisis management to companies in trouble. He would not have started a new firm if he were planning to take on Spitzer, much less Hillary. Having campaigned nonstop all over America for George Bush — filming and taping ads for candidates in every swing state — Giuliani is a bona fide presidential contender....

If Pataki pulls out, Rudy might run against Spitzer, but only if he decides that the presidential nomination is a mirage and he had better use his popularity and prestige to win a permanent day job like governor instead of squandering it on a presidential dream....

But the ease with which Hillary and Spitzer are likely to win re-election just indicates the dismal state of the Republican Party in the Empire State. Here are two people who have left a trail of enemies a mile wide behind them. Hillary has never had Schumer's level of popularity, and Eliot accumulates corpses from his prosecutions at a rate too rapid for most politicians....

[OESY]

DISCLOSURE by Dick Morris: I am a friend of Eliot Spitzer since our childhood. My father was his father's lawyer. And I worked to help Spitzer in his races for attorney general. But I do not work for him now, and I'm out of the business of handling American candidates. The elections of 2006 might as well be canceled. Even though the Democrats will probably nominate two of the most controversial people in American politics, Hillary Clinton for senator and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer for governor, they will probably face no serious challenge.

[MikefromOhio]

I am afraid Giuliani wont figure out how slim his chances at being President are until the primaries....

[Thebaddog]

It's early, but I think that Giuliani has a good shot at the 08 run from either party unless he has some NY style stuff in his background that hasn't come out yet.

[MikefromOhio]

and you never know, if he has a strong showing, someone might pick him up as a VP candidate...especially if the Presidential candidate is rather conservative....

[demlosers]

So what's Dicky's track record at making election predictions?

[Flux Capacitor]

----So what's Dicky's track record at making election predictions?----

Dicey, and this column is further evidence that he must be taken with a grain of salt. I certainly don't agree that Giuliani couldn't at the very least be a serious challenge for the Hildebeast.

-Dan

[Ann Archy]

Is Hillary REALLY going to run for Senator? Only if she doesn't make big promises about fulfilling her years! Hec, she will be running for President immediately and will not even be doing her Senatorial duties at all after she is elected. Kerry was out campaigning for TWO YEARS!! She will be too!!

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

Both of them should stay in New York.

I'd never vote for either RINO, even against the Hildebeast.

[FormerACLUmember]

Spitzer and the rats are currently (and with malice and intention) utterly annihilating the fragile NY economy. This is how rats stay in power.

Spitzer (the corrupt show-boating Attorney General) is suing the Financial Services industry into ruin, directly causing the loss of tens of thousands of jobs directly, and hundreds of thousands of jobs as this sector relocates out of New York.

The rats in the legislature just over-rode Pataki's veto of a $2.00 an hour minimum wage increase, the greatest job-killing move in American history.