Posted on 10/06/2007 5:08:57 PM PDT by finnman69
This has been the week of Hillary the Inevitable. She has broken the political equivalent of the sound barrier by surging past the 50 per cent mark in a national poll. Her fundraising is now outstripping that of Barack Obama, the Young Pretender. Rival political operatives are awestruck by the efficiency of her campaign.
But are the Democrats already experiencing buyer's remorse? "I've contributed to her in the past, I think she'd be a million times better than Bush but I don't like this coronation," one major party donor told me with a grimace at an Embassy Row function. "Maybe it's the dynasty thing. Maybe it's the control factor. Maybe it's just that she doesn't feel like change to me."
The American commentariat has simultaneously crowned the former First Lady and begun pelting her with rotten fruit. At a private gathering of pundits and pollsters recently, all nine declared in a straw poll that Mrs Clinton would win not only the Democratic nomination but the White House as well.
advertisementThen columnists from The New York Times, that most reliable bastion of the liberal establishment, formed the vanguard of an assault against her. "Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar [an elite college founded for women]," sniffed Maureen Dowd.
Her colleague Gail Collins wrote of Mrs Clinton's talent for knowing "how to string together the maximum number of weasel words in one sentence".
Frank Rich, another Grey Lady prognosticator, compared the New York senator to Al Gore in 2000. Although he has since been rebranded as the earth's saviour, the former vice-president is resented by Democrats for having been so paralysed by caution and ambition that he blew an election he should have coasted and brought the world President George W. Bush.
Mrs Clinton's answers to every question, Rich wrote, were "a rambling and often tedious Gore-like filibuster" and she seems "especially evasive when dealing with questions requiring human reflection". Her laugh had "all the spontaneity of an alarm clock buzzer".
The hilarious dissection of Mrs Clinton's laugh – cackle is more accurate – by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, another instinctive liberal, has already become a YouTube classic. Ridiculing her for her pre-programmed, poll-tested displays of humanity, he depicted her as receiving a message from a computer chip in her head ordering: "Humorous remark detected. Prepare for laughter display." Newspapers and cable television dutifully took up the theme.
When the backlash subsides, we are left with powerful indicators that the general election, never mind the primaries, is Mrs Clinton's to lose.
Mr Obama is the darling of those who inhabit the latte-sipping, National Public Radio-listening, granola-munching universe. He still draws huge crowds of starry-eyed college graduates, is a big deal on the internet's social networking sites and has raised eye-popping amounts of cash.
But that's a narrow base and so far his undoubted potential has not translated into rising poll numbers that, come January, can be turned into votes. Meanwhile, Mrs Clinton has been assiduously locking up important constituencies, such as blue-collar males, housewives and old people.
Her campaign machine is unrivalled and no quarter is given to Mr Obama. She has hammered him so hard on his limited track record and has got him into such tangles on foreign policy issues that this week he was reduced to labelling his visit to Iowa an "Experience and Judgment Tour". She has made his colour an issue – that he's green, rather than black.
The Republicans? Rudy Giuliani could be a general election winner but Christian conservatives are already vowing to run a third-party candidate to stop him. Fred Thompson was hailed as the new Ronald Reagan but his lugubrious demeanour, vacuous homespun generalisations and refusal to bone up on tedious things like policy threaten to turn him into a joke candidate.
By attacking Mrs Clinton, moreover, the Republicans may be helping her against Mr Obama and John Edwards in the primaries. As well as building her up in the eyes of Democrats, the attacks from the Right make it difficult for her party rivals to assail her without sounding as though they are using Republican talking points.
Polls show that Bill Clinton is turning out to be more electoral asset than liability. Some 88 per cent of Democrats have a favourable opinion of him and his global popularity, on display in London this week, boosts his wife's case to lead a country that would prefer to be liked a little again.
Democrats are understandably agonised over whether the candidate they think they've already chosen is as inevitable an eventual victor as she seems. By highlighting Mrs Clinton's vulnerabilities so starkly, however, they could be sowing the seeds of her demise.
It may seem to be all over bar the voting. But the campaign still has months to run and elections have a nasty habit of upsetting both conventional wisdom and the best-laid plans.
yikes.
“YEAH BABY, YEAH!”
Chattering-class Brits explaining American politics to other chattering-class Brits. One would hope they would be a little original (being Brits), but they obviously take their American liberal wish-thinking as straight as they take their whiskey.
What I love is Jon Stewart’s remark that Hil will be the first Pres ‘you can’t spill water on.’ Two meanings...1)Water will mess up her circuit board (the programming reference...’humorous comment detected, commence laughter in three, two, one...) OR 2)the Wicked Witch reference (I’m melting, I’m melting). Either or, spot on Mr. Stewart :)
Better at what?
Does this guy really believe Hillary will not be pushing shamnesty?
I'm loving this! There will be those who will vote for her come hell or high water, but there may be some who call themselves Democrats, but who might just consider voting Republican this time just because they can't stand Her Heinous!
You’ve got to join AARP once. It only costs $10 and they’ll spend hundreds on you later on to get you to renew.
“the programming reference”
I thought that was the best one. He bitch slapped her good.
My cat was standing on the back of the couch just now when I played Hillary’s cackle, and he headed for the hills. Smart cat. Where’d he go? He’s trying to get under the couch...
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