If she runs, she may lose. But if she does not run, she will never be President. Nothing else matters.
It's becoming clear even to the Clintonistas that '08 is too late. If Howard Dean is the nominee, his first order of business will be to purge Clintonistas from the Democratic Party and fire Terry McAuliffe. Once Dean has consolidated control of the Party, Hillary! will no longer be able to keep herself in the center of attention, and will have to campaign in '08 on her merits, which are just too thin to win.
So if Hillary! is ever to be President, it must be now. She will probably lose to GWB, but you never can tell. Iraq could still go in the toilet, and the economy could still falter. And if she goes down to glorious defeat in '04, she will still have prevented anybody else seizing control of her Party.
For this reason and many others, not the least of which is unconfined megalomania, Hillary! will run for President in 2004. She will announce this week. I stand by my tag-line.
No argument from me there.
She will announce this week. I stand by my tag-line.
You lose me there. There's no way she can go a full year without having to answer at least some questions, and no way she can go a full year without being caught in some moment that isn't totally choreographed, controlled and rehearsed by her handlers. Anytime Hillary is caught in an unscripted moment, it has disastrous results for her.
The only way she can hope to have a chance is to set up her nomination from the floor at a "brokered" DNC convention (I put brokered in quotes because this, while appearing to be a grassroots "Save us Hillary!" move, will be as carefully calculated and rehearsed as anything else she does). The last minute insertion of Frank Lautenberg in the 2002 NJ Senate race showed the Rats that, for them at least, the election "laws" are merely suggestions.
By going the brokered convention route, she's only a "candidate" for a little over a month. Again, this is a sham. She's really a candidate right now, but since the media's pretending she isn't they can avoid giving her the candidate treatment.
Even with all that, I still don't think she can beat Bush. But she can certainly delude herself into thinking she can.