Mrs. Clinton, however, has positioned herself way ahead of her party and any of her putative 2008 Presidential rivals by championing initiatives that appeal to middle-class, white-ethnic, suburban Catholic voters, especially married women (another group that swung heavily to the G.O.P. in 2004).
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'04 ELECTION PROVIDES CLUE
The venue is Washington Journal (C-SPAN). Enter Harold Ickes, looking weirder, more Ichabod-Crane-on-crank, than usual. Looking weirder still when one remembers that Harold Ickes is a strictly behind-the-scenes sort of guy. Only something very important could have coaxed Harold Ickes onto center stage....21 Forgoing the standard niceties, Ickes launches into his planned tirade. He accuses Bush of terrorizing white women to get their vote.22 (The way he carried on, you would think he was accusing the president of rape or something.)23
Now fast forward to October 11, 2005. Susan Estrich, alignments adjusted upward--ALL alignments--is on Hannity and Colmes. She is there to huckster The Case for Hillary Clinton, 24 both the book and candidate. Estrich's spiel turns her recent dire warning to the Democrats ("The clintons are sucking up all the air. Get them off the stage!" )25 on its literal head.26 (Air? Who needs air when you have a clinton?) ICKES + ESTRICH PROVIDE ROADMAP FOR HILLARY DEFEAT (oops!)
She argues that hillary clinton is the best chance, probably the only chance, for a woman president in our lifetime. The false and demeaning argument and offensive gender bias aside, someone ought to clue in Susan Estrich. Gender feminism requires as its token a functional female. So why is Susan Estrich making such a transparently spurious and insulting argument? She isn't that dumb. For the same reason Harold Ickes is fulminating on C-SPAN.
The white woman, the only real swing voter, the demographic the Democrats MUST get in order to win the White House, has turned red. In the immediate aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, a journalistic consensus emerged to explain George W. Bush's victory. Despite the sluggish economy and deteriorating situation in Iraq, voters supported Bush primarily because of his values. One prominently featured exit poll question showed "moral values" to be the most important issue for voters, ahead of terrorism, Iraq, and the economy. Backlash against the Massachusetts court ruling allowing gay marriage and attraction of Bush's appeals to Christian faith helped bring out socially conservative voters and cement Bush's second term. This explains why Bush won Ohio, for example, where an anti-gay marriage proposal was on the ballot. However compelling this story might be, it is wrong. Instead, Bush won because married and white women increased their support for the Republican ticket.... In this article I briefly account for the factors behind Bush's rise in the state-by-state popular vote between 2000 and 2004. This is not the same as identifying who elected Bush. That sort of analysis would put responsibility on white men since they voted 61-38 for Bush and comprise almost half of the active electorate. Instead, I focus on what changed between 2000 and 2004. In this view, it is white women who are responsible because they showed more aggregate change. Identifying a cause for this shift looks for an explanation also in things that changed in the past four years. For example, John Kerry was not exactly Al Gore, so differences between Bush's two opponents could be a factor. But I suggest that such differences are dwarfed by a much larger intervention: the attacks of September 11. Turnout was up in 2004 because the perceived heightening of the stakes after 9-11 and because of intense competition between the candidates in a small number of battleground states. Higher turnout also appears to have helped Bush slightly. But it was the shift of married white women from the Democratic camp to the Republican camp that gave him the edge in 2004. Post Election 2004: An Alternative Account of the 2004 Presidential Election
WHY HILLARY MUST NOT WIN. WHY HILLARY CANNOT WIN. (ICKES + ESTRICH PROVIDE ROADMAP--oops!--FOR HILLARY DEFEAT) |
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COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006 |
To better understand why this move is fatal for missus clinton, we must go back to November 8, 2004, which is exactly six days after the re-election of George W. Bush. 
"If you look at white women, and I think that was the key to this election, Kerry won 45% based on the exit polls--but they're generally in agreement--Kerry won 45%, Bush won 55% of white women. 
Hillary Clinton's revisionist tome notwithstanding, 'living history' begets a certain symmetry. It is in that light that I make this not-so-modest proposal on this day, exactly 64 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor. 