I have expressed the opinion in various threads that there is no way in hell that Hillary Clinton can win the White House. I still believe this to be the case.
I ran across this article on CNN.com today and even though I fervently want a Democrat to be elected President in 2008, it gave me hope.
That is–it gave me hope that Hillary’s obvious (to me anyway) unelectability will start to become clear to more and more Democrats. If the message can get across before it is too late, the Dems still have a chance (provided of course that they don’t nominate Obama either). Now this article by itself doesn’t sound any death-knell for Hillary, but c’mon— use a little foresight here-- can’t you guys see how this is going to play out?
I actually like Hillary OK. I think she would be a good president, and I would love to see a female get elected. But she’s not the one who is going to have the broad-based support needed to set the precedent.
Who does that leave? Boy-- you got me… Edwards is a lightweight and the rest are a big ??? to most Americans. Gore is still the best choice available at this time, and the more time that passes with Obama and/or Hillary as front runners, the more Gore becomes the only person who can come in at the last minute (when, hopefully, people finally realize that Hil or Barrack aren’t going to make it) and turn it around.
I still mourn the loss of Vilsack and Bayh as candidates. They were about the candidates we needed, but they got scared by Obama and Hillary’s money and fame and gave up.
Time is of the essence here. Please let’s not all find ourselves wandering around in a daze the day after the election mumbling: “WHAT in the HELL were we thinking? The WOMAN that so many people despise? The young BLACK Senator still wet behind is ears? I guess we deserve to lose.!!!”
It’s going to be a ground-breaking precedent when the first black and/or female gets elected president. It’s not going to come easy because there is still a LOT of bigotry towards any candidate other than the “older white dude”. It’s going to take a superlative candidate to overcome our society’s bias.
Hillary and Obama are strong politicians, but neither one has the broad-based support to win the WH.
We went with an “electable” candidate in 2004. Screw that. Find the best man (or woman, it appears) for the job and fight like bastards to win the office.
Hillary Clinton is as unpopular now as she will ever be. She has been the target of fifteen years of concentrated right-wing hatred, against all evidence and reason. And she’s still winning in the polls.
She may well be the only person on the planet who’s been inoculated against a right-wing smear campaign. Sounds pretty damn electable to me.
If this were 2000 or 2004 I’d agree with the OP. But the Republicans have screwed themselves hard and none of the GOP candidates seem willing to distance themselves enough from Bush to stand a chance in the general election.
I think Hillary is as electable as any of the candidates out there now. Gore isn’t going to run, so you can forget that. So absent someone coming out of the woodwork in the next few months, I think you should just get used to the fact that Hillary will be your nominee and work towards helping her get elected.
At this point, I’d say she’s at least a 3-1 favorite to get the nomination.
Exactly. For years I have been screaming to anyone that would listen that Hillary was a huge loser of a candidate. I still would prefer Obama or Edwards to get the nomination.
I am now of the opinion that George Bush has been such a disaster of a President that Hillary can win. I would have put her chances two years ago at 2% - now I’d say it is 60%.
I said it in '04, when it looked like a Dem would win, and I’ll say it now: Never underestimate the Dems ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Never.
So if they go with the crowd who can’t get the the public interested compared to the two main candidates…
Edwards is only getting about 15 percent in the polls against those two, who you say can’t win, and everyone else is getting less. Why do you think those other candidates will capture the public’s imagination?
I would vote for Clinton or Obama, but I don’t think they can win. What is important since the last elections were so close, is bringing voters from the other side, and the other side is a bunch of red necks or wealthy bastards who wouldn’t vote for a woman or a Black man if Hell froze over.
I think this degree of contempt for “the other side” has caused the Democrats problems before. In any case, why appeal to voters like that when they could appeal to the independents - who are supposedly leaning toward the Democrats already?
I’m really frightened that my former governor Mike Huckabee came in second in the Iowa straw poll. Baptist Minister, Redneck, Receiver of Wealthy Guy Gifts, Anti-Semite and enemy of the lower class.
Wow. Do you guys really believe that the right is full of queer-hatin’ rednecks and wealthy bastards who are prejudiced against women and blacks?
In case you haven’t noticed, Condi Rice was a favorite of Republicans in the last election, and she’s both black and a woman. She might even be gay, for all we know. So there’s the whole trifecta for you, and I guarantee that if she were the nominee she’d have no trouble getting Republican votes, so long as she espouses conservative principles. You might also note that Republicans love Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell, both of whom are black. Michelle Malkin is a favorite of Republicans, and she’s an Asian woman. And they liked Colin Powell enough in 2000 that he was a shoe-in for the nomination had he decided to run. And Margaret Thatcher is a hero to Republicans. I guarantee you that if the most authentically conservative Republican candidate was a black woman, she’d still be the most popular.
Time to lose the stereotypes. They just make you look extreme and ignorant.
Nope, but a good portion of the core of the Republican party is, and those are the ones you can expect to vote Republican no matter who the Republicans or the Dems run. Many of them also seem to have an undue level of influence in the GOP at the moment, and the front runners of the GOP pack at the moment aren’t doing enough, IMHO, to distance themselves from those folks. I can’t see many of them voting for Romney, either, since by their definition, he’s “not a Christian.” :rolleyes:
If Rudy wins the White House, I won’t be happy, but neither do I think I’ll be as mortified by his performance as I have been with Bush’s. There’s also a couple of GOP candidates on the fringe of popularity, that based on what I know of them, I could be happy with them in the White House.
Truth to tell, the only reason why I don’t want the GOP to to win in '08 is that they’ve been so deeply in lockstep with Bush when he’s been so clearly wrong about things. I want them out of power until they remember that the country, not the party, comes first.
I can see that she’s a cinch to be nominated, and has an excellent chance to win in '08. The party faithful love her, she has a lot of backing in the news media, and the Republicans seem determined to nominate a potato to run against her.
And I’ve said this many times: Never underestimate the Conservatives ability to smear anybody. Anybody.
Sure Edwards looks good now. He’s too small a target to be worth taking shots at. But if he becomes the lead candidate or the nominee? Then two years from now, the “common wisdom” will be that the Democrats blew it again by picking an “obvious” loser like John Edwards instead of picking an electable candidate like Hillary Clinton.
That article touched upon a subject which the Democrats are almost totally ignorant of: You have to consider a candidate’s unpopularity as well their popularity. Many people like Hillary, but at the same time many other people hate her. It’s much better to be less famous, but also less disliked. Even if Hillary manages to get elected, she can’t possibly be an effective president because of all the negative baggage she’ll bring with her right from the start. As much as I think Obama is an empty suit, he’ll fair better than Hillary would.
Chances are, you don’t know much about Obama. I don’t. And we both care about this stuff. Most of the electorate knows NOTHING about him. That’s a blank canvas for the right. Hell, they’ve already had him at a terrorist training academy in his youth. He will be exceedingly easy to smear. Ditto Edwards.
Worrying about how Hillary’s numbers will look once she’s in office is worrying about a problem that’s way, way down on the priority list.
As I said before, Hillary is the only person (except maybe Al Gore) who can withstand the smear campaign. That’s the coming storm, not the February 2009 poll numbers.
Did the Republicans have the electoral success they had for most of the last couple of decades by appealing to the Democratic base? No, they did it by organizing and building their own base, and making sure they got out to vote in big numbers.
If there’s a problem with Hillary, it isn’t that she can’t get Republicans to vote for her, it’s that she can’t excite the Democrats enough to get more of them off the couch and to the polls. I think this will be a problem, but she’ll still win the general if she gets nominated.
I think that barring any big surprises, the Democratic nominee will win the general, so the focus should be on finding the candidate who can be the best President, not the most electable.