I feel a more pressing issue for the Dems is to have a well-oiled intelligence and counterattack (or preemptive strike) task force primed and ready to go as soon as the candidate, whomever s/he may be, becomes evident. This group should be tasked with sussing out any Roviavellian mudslinging before it has a chance to gain the slightest bit of traction, and whopping it down faster than John Henry on a railroad spike. To me, the Kerry campaign’s anemic response to groups like the Swiftboaters was at least as responsible for his loss as his lack of personality and inability to articulate policy without sounding like a “pointy-headed intellectual.”
This could actually be a point in HRC’s favor. Whatever you may think of the woman, organization has been one of her strong suits.
And note that this group should be focused on defense and counterattack, not offense (the last thing the Democrats need is another “Dan Rather” fiasco). There is certainly a need to detect and deflect these plants, but the offensive should be a separate function.
Y’know, fuck all that noise. The girl’s got what it takes and a Hillary-Obama ticket, while turning off the assholes who wouldn’t vote for a woman, a black, or a Democrat on a bet, would be a kick-ass ticket. Just what we need to convince people that a female or Black politician is just a politician.
I don’t think that they can or will. Hillary and Obama are the most captivating candidates the Dems have (other than Al Gore) and they are pretty captivating. I am excited about either one getting elected (well, not that excited about Hillary) I just don’t think either one can get elected in this election, through no fault of their own. Therefore, I wish some miracle would pop up–don’t ask what-- because things don’t look good right now.
Of the candidates the Dems are pushing right now, Hillary and Barrack are the “best” but as I have said (unpopularly) before, I believe they can’t get enough votes from THIS electorate, at THIS time, to win.
from 2002-January 2004 Howard Dean seemed to be a big favorite. Yes, the others like John Kerry were up there too, but I recall seeing tons more articles headlining "can howard Dean be stopped’ and shit like that than anything even remotely similar about anyone else.
My theory is Dem voters decided to vote for who they thought could win over who they actually liked. And I think they same thing is going to happen again. I think Hillary is going to real pissed after Iowa & New Hampshire. I’m guessing John Edwards but I wouldn’t put any money on it.
Of course, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat and have only a few gripes about the Republicans.
But I live & breathe and I read the papers. If you fuckers can’t win the White House in 2008 you’ll never it win it back again.
And this is clear as day. I just hope it becomes clear to enough people very, very, very, soon. As for what could be done at that point… I don’t know… but all it starts with admitting the obvious-- the Dems aren’t going to win with Clinton or Obama at the head of the ticket.
I want a Democrat to win the next election and will do everything I can to help make it happen.
But yes, I do believe there is a huge voting block of bigoted, racist, homophobic, sexist good ‘ol boys (and girls) who don’t give a flyin’ fuck who wins, as long as they are a white male - preferably with a southern drawl, a gun collection and as dumb about world events as they are. These people don’t vote on issues, they vote for somebody who looks like they could fit in at Billy Bob’s Bar and Bait Shop. They wouldn’t vote for Hillary or Obama even if the opposing candidate was Charlie Manson.
One thing in Hillary’s favor is that they have just about slung all the mud they have to sling…so now it will turn into just a rabid frothing of the mouth and name-calling with little else left to dredge up…“Hillary kissed a negro when she was 7 years old!”
John Edwards no longer has a chance in this election. The people have gotten used to the idea of having a woman or a black candidate (or maybe a resurrected former candidate). Clinton, Obama, and Gore are exciting. Edwards is the normal candidate and if he’s nominated he’s going to look like the first runner up after the real winner withdrew. If the Democrats play if safe with Edwards by figuring he’s “electable” they’re going going to end up looking bland. They’ll need to inspire voters with more than a feeling of “Well, he seems okay and I guess he’s better than the other guy…” If they run Edwards they’re going to have to fight two campaigns; first the usual one of convincing voters that their nominee is better than the other guy - and also convincing voters to care enough to vote.
Would you like to try this again with a black or a woman who has won a major election in the U.S. running as a Republican?
It is all very well to point to the ways that Republicans “love” their Rices, Coulters, Malkinses, Sowells, Thomases, and Powells. Note, however, that every one of them is either a pundit with no political base or an appointee who can be trotted out to demonstrate how “open” the Republican party might be. (While I do not believe that any of them (aside from Thomas) was picked to be the token black or woman in the party–I think they were picked for their credentials–I find it telling that not one of them has held elective office.)
I have no silly belief that anyone who ever casts a vote for a Republican candidate is a misogynist racist. I am sure that a very large number of Republicans are neither racist nor misogynist (and a significant number of Democrats probably are one, the other, or both). However, no Republican woman or black who has wielded power has ever gotten to their position by way of a popular vote. There is no Republican Conyers or Stokes or Pelosi. (There is a Snowe, but she is from Maine where they might not realize how Republicans are supposed to act–certainly, most of her good press is from Democratic sources.) I suspect that that is not a mere accident.
I don’t buy into the “rednecks and rich people” theme that I suspect is fueled as much by emotion as careful analysis, but until the Republicans actually field a woman or black as a major candidate, then I think that the emotion taps into a real aspect of U.S. politics.
Nonsense. The Democrats will control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency. President Hillary will do whatever she damn well pleases and all the rabid right will be able to do is sit on the sidelines and gnash their teeth.
Right now she’s beating Giuliani in the polls. She’s beating Romney in the polls. The fact that the Republican base hates her with the white-hot hate of a thousand suns doesn’t mean squat. Those people aren’t going to vote for a Democrat anyway so it’s pointless to factor them into the equation. She appeals to the Democratic base and she appeals to the independents. That’s all it takes.
This would be more convincing if any of the major Republican Presidential candidates actually were black and/or female.
AFAICT, the closest the Pubs have come to actually running someone other than a white male for one of the top slots was the brief Presidential nomination campaign of Elizabeth Dole in 2000, which fizzled pretty fast.
The problem is not that Republicans in general are opposed to black or female candidates. The problem is simply that there seems to be a non-negligible subset of the Republican base that’s opposed to the idea of having a black or female Chief Exec, and more mainstream Republicans are afraid of alienating that subset.
Yes, it’s certainly true that no mainstream Republican these days would dream of standing up and publicly saying that a black or woman shouldn’t be President. That’s simply not acceptable anymore, and I doubt that any mainstream Republicans even believe it anymore. The stereotype of Republicans as the party of open ideologically committed racism and sexism is indeed dead.
But as long as they don’t actually nominate any non-white or non-male Presidential candidates, they have to expect to be haunted by the ghost of that stereotype. Just insisting on how much Republicans would have liked some non-white or non-male candidate if they had managed to nominate him/her isn’t going to be enough to exorcise that ghost.
I don’t much like her, but that’s a bit beside the point. If the majority of Dems feel like I do about her, she won’t be nominated, but she’s the front-runner, so apparently, they don’t. And I’m not even a Democrat, so I got squat all to say about it. If I wanted to have something to say about it, I could pay the dues that go with it.
My political differences with Hillary are comparatively minor, I simply don’t like her. Well, what of it? I, for one, have had quite enough of people making desperately important decisions based on their “gut feelings”. Fuck that shit! Hillary and a progressive Congress could make great strides. The only thing that could make it better would be a Republican Party no longer in thrall to the Troglodytes and the Neo-Cons, an honest opposition to keep our wilder impulses in check.
I still think Pretty Johnny is a better candidate, but if the Dems want Hillary, well, then, so be it, wouldn’t be the first time my advice has been ignored by people too dim to realize its brilliance.
And another thing to consider: no surprises. Hillary’s life has been gone over by a fine toothed comb by people desperate for a scandal. If she was a member of a Maoist lesbian collective at Wellesley, we’d know it by know.
In times past I’ve expressed absolute certainty that Hillary won’t be the nominee. I even offered to wager money on it; luckily no one took me up on that. I now think Hillary will be the nominee and the president. Here’s why.
First the Clinton family always have been the champions of capturing the middle. That’s how Bill made his career. Now we can see that throughout the 90’s, Bill had higher popularity ratings than Hill. Now why is this? Surely not because of their political positions, as those are nearly identical. Rather because people saw a lot of Bill on TV, but very little of Hill. Bill therefore had a chance to win people over, while Hill did not.
But when Hill started campaigning in New York, she immediately went up in the polls and coasted to an easy victory. She even had some success in upstate New York, which is traditionally quite conservative. So when people actually get a chance to see Hill they start to like her. And they’re going to see quite a lot of her in the next fifteen months.
Hillary is remarkably intelligent, calm, poised, and alert. She has a sound, reasonable answer to every question. She never gets taken by surprise. She never has a Macaca moment. She’s quick to pounce on an opponent’s mistake. She’s the second most skillful American politician alive. (And it can’t hurt that the most skillful one is her husband.)
As for drawing Republican fire and ire, there’s little left that the GOP can lob against her. The 'Pubs have already told every nasty lie they could come up with against the Clinton family, up to and including accusations of rape and murder. None of it has mattered. The only actual crimes they’ve found are that her husband lied about having sex and that she traded cattle futures. (This is apparently a crime in conservative circles. No, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.) Hence they have no new ammo to launch against the Hillary campaign.
Now as for her being female, so what? A year ago we’d never had a female Speaker of the House. Now we do. There’s a first time for everything.
I say that we can gauge the percentage of bigots in the GOP at one percent. Why? Because that’s the percentage that are voting for the GOP’s most prominent bigot, Tom Tancredo. Frankly we have no chance of getting that one percent to vote Democrat, so there’s no need to worry about them at all.
I think one of the problems with the Democrats is that the Democrats have too much respect, not too little. The Democrats seem to often operate under the assumption that "Surely they’ll see through that, surely they see that he’s an idiot/fool, surely the Republicans wouldn’t sink so low, surely they know that ", etc. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, or overestimating the depths to which the Republicans will sink.
Yes, that’s exactly what I believe. The right, in my opinion, is primarily composed of scum. On the whole, they are the ignorant, the bigoted, the stupid, the foolish, the criminal, the greedy, the malignant, and the crazy. The worst America has to offer; that’s the Right. Those are the people the Republicans have spent decades building a power base out of.
I agree, and I’ve heard that that’s what Bill did. He knew that Bush, being a Bush and a Republican, would be completely unprincipled and reach for the dirty tricks first, not last. So he had the dirt on Bush first, and made it clear if the Bush campaign made noise about Clinton’s affairs, Clinton would do the same on Bush’s affair(s) and whatever else he dug up.
Hillary is the least electable of the Democratic candidates. There are plenty of people in the US who simply don’t like Hillary and don’t want to. Many of these folks are swing voters.
Substantively, we have at least 4 terrific candidates: Clinton, Edwards, Obama and Richardson. I’m comfortable with all of their policy positions. All would be fine Presidents.
My first choice is Obama. I don’t buy the inexperience critique. First of all he’s smart – becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review is a remarkable accomplishment. He attracts good advisers. When he speaks in front of crowds, he appeals to their heads, often challenging their most dear assumptions. Yet somehow he can do this without making people dislike him. Magic. Inanity reducing. The sort of skill that can move debate forward.
In Illinois, a common refrain is, “I support Obama, though I often disagree with him.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is how wide bases are made.
He has ample legislative experience at both the national and state level, a firm grasp of the issues and a thoughtful disposition – fully capable of seeing various aspects of public policy.
True. But some can be smeared easier than others. I thought that Kerry --the Northeast Liberal – was a straightforward target and opposed him for that reason. Obama’s campaign hits back pretty quickly: I think he will be a more difficult to smear, relatively speaking.
I think Hillary should be the Democratic candidate. For a few years there, it seemed the Republicans were gearing up to be the first party to nominate a woman (Liddy Dole) and that would have undermined any tattered remnant of a claim the Dems had on a progressive agenda, the shadow of which is the only thing that distinguishes the two parties right now.
She won’t win, of course, but that’s fine too. The Iraq mess is going to blow up horrifically in the next president’s face. Might as well be a Republican, I say.
Absolutely. Why do you think Republican candidates make the quadrennial pilgrimage to Bob Jones University? It’s a coded message “Elect us, and we’ll keep those uppity n*****s in their place.”