Posted on 12/13/2007 10:40:46 AM PST by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
ON December 8th Hillary Clinton received what should have been a boost from Andrew Young, one of the giants of the civil-rights movement. Mr Young pronounced that he wants her chief rival, Barack Obama, to be president—but in 2016, not 2008.
The 46-year-old Mr Obama is just too green about the gills for the highest office in the land, Mr Young argued, and lacks a network of political allies that could sustain him in times of trouble. “To put a brother in there by himself is to set him up for crucifixion,” he said. But he could not resist adding a kicker. “Bill [Clinton] is every bit as black as Barack—he's probably gone with more black women than Barack.”
Mr Young's faux pas is a small symptom of the Clinton campaign's troubles. Mrs Clinton's commanding leads in the make-or-break states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have evaporated. And the much-vaunted Hillary machine is looking, for the moment at least, more Heath Robinson than Vorsprung durch Technik. The bad news keeps coming, and even the good news has a way of turning bad.
Mr Obama is proving to be Mrs Clinton's perfect nightmare. He has not only neutralised her most compelling claim for attention—the first black president is a more momentous prospect than the first woman president. He has also shaped the race. His early entry into the contest forced Mrs Clinton to declare her candidacy sooner than she had planned. His fund-raising prowess forced her to make much more use of her husband than she had intended. Last weekend stadium-sized crowds turned up to watch Oprah Winfrey, the only woman in America who can turn “Anna Karenina” into a bestseller, stumping for Mr Obama. Mrs Clinton was reduced to touring Iowa with her daughter, Chelsea, and her mother, Dorothy.
Mrs Clinton's problems have forced her to abandon the high horse of inevitability for the boxing ring. Yet so far she has proved to be no great shakes as a pugilist. She excused her poor performance in a debate in Philadelphia by accusing her fellow (male) candidates of “piling on”. This feebly suggested that she wanted to be given special treatment because of her gender. Then she threw a succession of wild punches that made her look like an amateur. The Clinton campaign's decision to dredge up the fact that Mr Obama had written an essay in kindergarten on how he wanted to be president was particularly misguided. What sort of person quotes a kindergarten essay against a rival?
Mrs Clinton's recent troubles have raised questions about what is arguably her most important selling-point, her competence. The Clintonistas have always presented her as a woman who is “tough enough” to deal with anything that is thrown at her—trained in the Clinton wars of the 1990s and always ready with a counter-punch. She is certainly one of America's most accomplished practitioners of the politics of personal destruction. But the skills that she perfected behind the scenes seem to be far less effective when they are practised in the limelight.
Same old dirty politics Mrs Clinton's troubles have also reminded people of what they most disliked about the politics of the Clinton-Bush era. “She's run what Washington would call a textbook campaign,” Mr Obama argues. “But the problem is the textbook itself.” This is self-serving: all campaigns employ the dark arts of polls, story-planting and character assassination, and Mr Obama is no exception. But Mrs Clinton is vulnerable to the charge that she uses them more than most. She is surrounded by veteran pollsters and lobbyists from her husband's administration. She seems to delight in political warfare—“Now the fun part starts,” she stupidly declared about her battle with Mr Obama. And her campaign seems addicted to spin. Mr Clinton did his wife no favours when he recently declared, despite evidence to the contrary, that he had opposed the Iraq war from the start.
Mrs Clinton's style inevitably raises questions about her character. Discuss her with voters and the same words keep cropping up—“disciplined”, “robotic”, “cold”, “scripted”, “calculating” (if childhoods are to be invoked, even her mother once said that “she just does everything she has to do to get along and get ahead”). Large numbers of voters regard her as slippery and untrustworthy. This inevitably raises questions about her electability. Mrs Clinton sometimes manages to lose in head-to-head polls against leading Republicans, despite a tidal wave of anti-Republican sentiment. A recent Gallup poll showed that, with 47% of people favourably disposed to her and 50% unfavourably disposed, she had the highest “negatives” of any candidate in the race, Democratic or Republican. Those negatives are particularly high in swing states such as Colorado.
None of this means that the former first lady's goose is cooked. Mrs Clinton is still well ahead in national polls and in the often overlooked early state of Nevada. Americans do not necessarily feel that they need to like their presidents. Richard Nixon won a resounding victory in 1972. Nearly as many Americans disliked Bill Clinton as liked him when he ran for the White House. And the (just about) Republican front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, is hardly a likeable chap. Ed Koch once wrote a book about his fellow mayor simply entitled “Giuliani: Nasty Man”.
But Mrs Clinton's problems are slowly shifting the calculus at the heart of the Democratic race. Hitherto most Democrats have calculated, or perhaps been resigned to thinking, that she is the safest bet. The young Mr Obama might deliver a spectacular victory, but he might equally well flame out spectacularly. Mrs Clinton may always have high negatives but, in an anti-Republican year, she would be wily and experienced enough to take on the Republican machine and eke out a victory in the electoral college. The past few weeks have made Mr Obama look a bit less risky—and Mrs Clinton a lot less safe.
The cracks may be showing, so hand her one sheet of TP!
She was only “inEVITAble” in her own little world.........
Bill Clinton could probably have “slicked” his way out of this, but his cold fish wife just doesn’t have it.
The Economist can be oh-so-precious.
Heath Robinson is English for Rube Goldberg.
And Vorsprung durch Technik is German for "progress through technology."
What sort of person quotes a kindergarten essay against a rival?
Nuff said.
actually, Robinson is as quintessentially British as Goldberg is American. I love them both.
Thank you. I thought they were heavy metal bands.
Nothing new here. Same old re-hash of a few standard ideas about the Beast. Mostly true; but nothing new.
What does scare me is that she’s doing so well in Nevada. Kind of a template for red-to-blue conversions.
It makes me want to see the muzzie from Illinois win the nomination over the she-beast from New York.
This begs the question: what kind of person writes an essay in kindergarten?
I struggled to draw a bunny rabbit in kindergarten....forget the text. I could barely spell a few dozen words then, and needless to say, I composed zero essays until a few years later.
Don’t count her out yet.
I wonder if I could take out a large life insurance policy on Obama? Based on the Clinton’s activities in Arkansas, this might be a good investment.
I found this bit particularly noteworthy, since many on another thread were saying that CO might go to the dems. Apparently, that would only be the case if Hillary! is not the dem candidate.
The Democrat race is as much a media contrivance as the Republican race. Just as they want to see Repubs nominate Giuliani, they want to see Dems nominate Hillary. It makes for good touchy-feely, which is all news is nowadays.
If Repubs nominate Rudy to face Hillary, they will be sorry, because Hillary won't be running, and neither will Barak. If Al Gore doesn't get in the race, we will be watching John Edwards and Joe Biden duking it out for the Dem nomination in the later primaries. It really would be Al Gore's race to lose, if he were smart enough to jump in this week. I bet they won't be saying he's too late like they say Fred Thompson is too late.
FWIW, I predict that the Dems will end up with Edwards/Richardson at the end.
Well, Mrs. Clinton is still number one with lesbians and number pooh with most others.
“the cracks begin to show: hillary clinton no longer looks inevitable.”
she may not look inevitable but she most definitely is.
you can thank the “american electorate.” (more than 50% of them.)
Look, Nevada is run by the Mob. Reid is controled by the mob.\
The Clintons are an outlet of and for the mob.
If ya don’t believe it, how many associates and former friends of the Clintons are dead?
She is so full of sh** it will take a crew of industrial waste disposal specialist working for weeks to clean up the mess. The bio hazard nature of her crap means it will have to be shipped to Yucca Mountain. Remember that she travels with her own gold-plated ladies(?)room.
LOL.
"Don't cry for me, bulldyke ladies...."
What sort of person quotes a kindergarten essay against a rival?
Since when do kidergarten kids write essays?
The campaign has gone on so long that Hillary!08 is visibly and audibly more aged than when it started. While we were waiting for her to peak mentally or physically the whole idea became moot.
LOL, too true. She was/is hoping to enlarge that world. I guess we just aren't ready for Evita.
I should have commented on that when I posted the article. There is nothing new in here for conservative Americans. However, the rest of the world — or anyone who gets their information from the liberal MSM — isn’t as aware. The Economist is a global business “newspaper” — it’s less partisan and ideologically driven than most of the MSM in the U.S. It will sway a lot of the world’s elites’ opinion about HRC.
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GOOD CATCH!
< /fake outrage>
Great picture — funny on several levels. (If it weren’t so scarry.)
The public is starting to see what a vicious, cold, calculating bitter marxist she is. Her attempts to destroy Barack Obama have shown everyone that she will do anything at all to gain the ultimate power and rule the country with an iron grip, suppressing her enemies and moving the country into open marxism.
True about the mob and Nevada, but didn’t Bush win Nevada in 2000 and 2004?
He wasn’t running against the Clintons.
The mobs home boy and gal.
You think if Mrs. Clinton needs say chicago or Nevada or New Jersey to place a mobster in the presidency that she won’t get the nod in any of these or other states that are run by the mob?
If she can figure a way to get sympathy out of it or blame republicans. He’s dead.
“And Vorsprung durch Technik is German for “progress through technology.””
And an Audi slogan. Maybe the author just bought an Audi.
“they most disliked about the politics of the Clinton-Bush era”
How does Bush get pulled into this? Has he called anyone Hitler or an idiot??
As long as her crack doesn’t show. My stomach is upset already!
J Forbes would practice writing his name so his signiture resembled JFK’s. According to Howie Carr in Boston, who knows J Forbes as well as anyone.
If Hillary gets elected, we conservatives will be on our way to the camps in cattle cars.
Kind of a high duhh factor on that one.
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According to Intrade, the winner of yesterday’s GOP debate was... Duncan Hunter.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938773/posts
I think I'm going to have to watch the Reese Witherspoon movie Election again. I now remember it as a prescient portrayal of Hillary's campaign style.
Ping
“if hillary! gets elected, we conservatives will be on our way to the camps in cattle cars.”
yup.
Her power comes from her husband. Women who made it on their own - professional women - don’t trust her.
Aw shucks. I do believe I feel a crocodile tear coming on....
Don’t waste your tears, Nic. Leave them for the ones in post #18’s last sentence! LOL!!!
I never thought of her like ‘that’. But, come to think of it, she is as abrasive (to me) as Rosie O’Donnell. Or even more so! Gives me shivers to even look at those cold, evil eyes.
I’ve thought of her thataway...because I keep hearing comments about the possibility of that (not that that means anything, of course; but I’ve been hearing those kinds of comments for some time).
She’s definitely bad, bad, bad, in any event.
Her downfall on the charts is predictible. But, I think in her mind, she's entitled to the WH - once again.
For the rest of her rotten wormy life, she’ll always think she’s entitled to whatever she wants.
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