Posted on 02/24/2008 8:43:44 AM PST by markomalley
Forty-seven percent. That is the hurdle that has stood in front of Hillary Clinton since the day she announced her intention to run for president.
Forty-seven percent is the portion of Americans who have a negative opinion of Clinton, and getting them to change their minds is extremely difficult.
Not that she hasn't tried. Her campaign began with an effort to "reintroduce herself to the American people," and her claims that she was the most famous person Americans didn't know.
How did that work out?
Overcoming that 47 percent is not an insurmountable task. George W. Bush won both his presidential elections with 48 percent of voters casting their ballots for his opponents.
But going into a race knowing that she had 47 percent of the people against her meant that Clinton had to run a perfect campaign. There was no room for any slippage of support, any gaffes that might push more voters to oppose her.
And for a while, it looked like she was doing just that.
Early in this contest, she was positioned as the front-runner, always on message and riding high above the rest of the field. She was the New England Patriots of presidential candidates.
But then along came Barack Obama. More of a movement than a campaign, Obama created a real challenge to Clinton. And when they lined up to battle for the top prize, the vaunted Clinton Machine fell apart.
These messy primary affairs do have a purpose. They test a candidate for the real game in November. And for Democrats, it looks like they were lucky they didn't buy into the Clinton hype. Not only is she getting beat by a political newcomer with a funny name, her campaign may go down as one of the worst in modern times.
Her strategy was to run as the heir apparent, rack up big victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, and seal the deal on Super Tuesday. But Hillary's campaign took a body blow in Iowa, and fell apart completely after Super Tuesday. They had no contingency plans for dealing with Obama's surge.
Running a country is far more difficult than running a political organization, so one has to question how Hillary would fare as president if she managed the White House the same way she did her campaign.
Texas is an example of how screwed up the Clinton campaign is. Clinton's people declared this was a state she would win big and swing the momentum back their way. Then they actually went to Texas and found out that because of the weird way delegates are awarded there, they had little chance of any turnaround. Even a win in the popular vote for Clinton might give Obama more delegates.
This was information the campaign should have known a long time ago. Clinton spent too many years putting together this campaign, and going through the process twice with her husband, for these kinds of slip-ups to be happening. So much for that "ready on Day One" slogan.
The race isn't quite over, but the numbers aren't looking good. According to calculations from NBC's Tim Russert, Clinton would need to win 65 percent of the vote in the big remaining states (Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania) to have a chance at beating Obama. And in Texas, polls show the two candidates in almost a dead heat. How can she swing 15 percent of the vote in two weeks?
Her only chance to win the nomination now is to go negative, very negative. She would need to channel Bush's Brain Karl Rove and kneecap Obama.
But going negative will make her 47 percent disapproval number go up as well. Sure, she might win the nomination, but doing so could lead to her sitting at home next January watching John McCain taking the oath of office.
You learn more about a candidate when they lose than when they win. With Hillary losing now, will she show herself to be the champion of the people who puts aside personal gain for the good of her party and country? Or will she be the selfish, ambition-driven monster her opponents have painted her as all these years?
In many ways, losing this contest might be the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton's political career. It could give her the chance to truly remake herself, for her to step out of the shadow of Bill Clinton, and maybe in eight more years, she'll be ready on Day One.
Maybe.
I'll look behind curtain number two!
I disagree. The Clintons are not THAT old and Obama is not a shoe-for the White House at this point.
A tactical and honorable retreat for the Clintons who will then cast their votes for McPain is what I expect. They will then look to 2012 and pray for more dead American soldiers.
Of course, the Clintons do not want Obama to win.
They believe McCain is a one termer...
Hillary Clinton is 60 but her face looks closer to 70. That can’t be a positive.
I could almost see that, but I don't know how much a Clinton endorsement would help McCain. Probably they would just continue to attack Obama.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
A tactical and honorable retreat for the Clintons who will then cast their votes for McPain is what I expect. They will then look to 2012 and pray for more dead American soldiers.
::::::::
The Clintons will foreever be a cancerous parasite upon Washington and the taxpaying public. Let us hope they are cast away from the mainstream as far as possible. Maybe they can start running guns to South America, or some other sutiable “profession” for their kind — they just need to be away from our national security secrets, as we so painfully learned with China Gate. Our focus too must be on the Congress which needs a major house-cleaning to get it back on the road to working FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, as opposed to special interests, lobbyists’ dollars, and personal agendas.
People that will not vote the Clinton’s in because they don’t like her, they will not put her in the Oval office because they HATE her. People don’t trust her. The Clinton’s are the best liers in DC and the people of this country know it. They have treated our people as fools, raised our taxes beyond belief and told us that the surplus was a good thing. Four trillion dollars of excess taxes. It was our money and it was spent on our needs. The Clinton’s treat our taxes as if it was their money. We no longer need a Queen or King.
Maybe?
I don’t think she has any chance to make a comeback ala Dick Nixon if she fails this go round.
There is no way she changes our perception of her other than taking the White House silverware or enableing her deviant husband or stealing f.b.i. files for the clinton crime syndicate etc. etc.
This is it. NOw or never sort of like algore or john kerry (who once was in Viet Na,).
I agree that a Clinton endorsement of McCain would be bad for McCain and would be political suicide for the Clintons. But, as far as I know ballots are still secret. What I meant is that the Clintons will “do what is right for the party” but secretly hope that Obama loses. Also a Clintonista might accidentally “drop” whatever damaging info they have against Obama in the vicinity of a McCainiac.
But, the world will be a better place without the Clintons and their network of leftist-mafia in control of the executive branch. -Wb
And when she is 70, she will look like Barbara Bush's mother.
I was re-reading some Cato the Elder the other day, and came across this tidbit; which I’ll paraphrase:
“The Roman (American) people are like sheep; you cannot budge one of them on its own, but when they are in a flock, they all follow their leaders as a single body. In the same way, when you come together in an assembly, you allow yourselves to be led by men whose advice you would never think of following in your private affairs.”
Could be... the American public, AND the MSM, have finally awakened to the horrible truth about the Klintoons?
Yes. If Obama’s the nominee, the Clintons will correctly surmise that McCain will be a one-termer. They can’t endorse him, obviously. They’ll endorse Obama and Hillary will give him a routine endorsement speech at the convention. The speech will focus more on herself than on Obama, though. They’ll then go through the motions of working for Obama, but they’ll likely do some stuff designed to backfire on him.
“American Evita : Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power”
If she does lose the nomination, she needs to look at who did defeat her for the nomination.
She would have been defeated by an empty suit
==who happened to win his first US Senate race (as did HClinton) and then
==who, after servicing in that position only 2 years, declared his intent to run for the presidency.
Clinton did at least finish 1 term and 20 days of her second term before she annnounced.
==
If only 47% of the country disliked her, that really did mean a lot of the country didn't know her.
Hillary Clinton - America’s version of Elena Ceausescu - is finished if she doesn’t win the nomination, whether Obama wins in November or not.
On Hillary’s “outraged” tour 2008 She fired up her fifteen supporters into a frenzied mob, they cheered wildly, took their state provided medication and went back to sleep.
Of the bowel variety, in my opinion. What a vacuous say-nothing piece of work B. Hussein is.
That’s not real. This person has ankles.
Hillary did not and does not have 47% of Democrats giving her a negative rating. The Democrats still like Hillary and would support her, if she won. But Obama is simply dreamy. He's the nanny party's dreamboat candidate.
So, the premise of the article is wrong and the article can be dismissed as stupid.
People can’t stand Hillary.
IMHO it’s 2008 for Hillary or bust. She’s got way too many negatives and history of scandalous baggage for a successful repeat performance in 2012. If she decides to run again in 2012
she will go about as far as Edwards did this year. It’s 2008 or done for Hillary ever being POTUS.
That’s a funny pic, but that Obama poster is downright creepy. Very Big Brother-ish.
Getting rid of the Clintons will be to America what getting rid of Hussein was to Iraq!!!
So could have Gore. Nixon was smart in 1960 to be gracious, and he one the WH 8 years later.
Clinton is losing because of the PC crazy liberalness that she helped create in the Dem Party. The race ‘victim’ is better than the gender ‘victim’. She got out PC’d
Hillary is tired and worn out and will slink away quietly into the night
She is tired because her thyroid is in bad shape. She is jacked up on synthroid and even that ain't helping now
She will quit without much fuss because this is what the party hacks and super delegates will tell her. --- We can win with Barrack in November but not with you. Democrats will ride this vibrant young man's coattails to victory but you are effin' toxic. You look sick you look awful. Take a vacation in Polynesia for say the next year or two or three. We'll keep your Senate seat warm for you--
Nobody wants to vote for a Door Mat.
Just watch her around Bill - who’s “personal life” includes rape allegations.
Chickens coming home to roost.
If she can’t forcefully stand up to her husband the Cheater and Ruffian, how can she be expected to stand up to oppressive and threatening foreign dictators, desperate lobbyists with cash for the DNC, etc.?
Door mat.
I agree, HB. They’ve had their end run around the Consitution planned for years (since the 90s), and for a long time, it looked like everything was falling into place. Obama came out of nowhere and threw a monkey wrench in the machine. If they were to try it again, she’ll be just like Edwards-less votes than this time. Also, don’t forget they hadn’t planned on Bubba;s health failing before this election cycle-the other monkey wrench-and it’s only going to be worse next time.
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