If, in mid-2006, support for the war is a negative, imagine how much more negative it will be after another year and a half of turmoil in Iraq. The Iowa caucusers are going to hand Hillary something- her rear end. New Hampshire primary voters will do likewise. She won’t be around by the time the big states start checking in.
Earth to McCain supporters: your hero is old. As in older than Reagan was when he ran old. As in older than Bob Dole was when he ran old. Another two years of having his lips super glued to the tush of Bush isn’t going to help him at all. Old farts that support the war and are tight with Bush aren’t going to find themselves the darling of voters.
You want some reasons? I dislike her opportunism in moving to my home state just so she could run for the Senate and then use that Senate seat as a springboard for a Presidential run. I dislike some of her compromises with Republicans - I have no problem with compromise, but I don’t like the specific ones she has made. To wit, I felt it was pandering when she said “abortion represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women;” her stance on video games is textbook nannyism, and she voted in favor of a Constitutional amendment banning flag-burning. And her stance on Iraq sucks. She still hasn’t figured out a way to deal with that entire issue, and I think that will be her undoing in the primaries.
I don’t know that any Republicans hate McCain, but I think it’s easy to see that he’s courting the far right because they have historically not been his biggest fans (and vice versa) - witness his appearance at “agent of intolerance” university.
He also loses some of those moderate Democrats every time he puckers up to kiss Bush’s or Jerry Falwell’s ass. That’s a lot of smooching these days.
McCain’s carefully crafted “Maverick” image is quickly coming apart at the seams. There’s no way it can last until 2008.
As for Hillary, she may have all the advantages now, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot. As soon as someone more interesting starts to get a little momentum–say, Mark Warner or John Edwards–Hillary won’t look like such a good option.
It doesn’t matter. It’s a presidential election, not a job interview or a Jeopardy game. John Kerry was smarter and more qualified to be President than George Bush.
Bush won because people liked him. People don’t like Hillary Clinton.
But it’s still an important question to ask, and to answer.
Here’s another idea: If Hillary were not the actual presidential nominee but some male candidate’s running mate, would that help or hurt the ticket in the general election?
I think Hillary’s run to the center has managed to alienate a considerable fraction of the hard left. The hard right thinks she’s the Antichrist. Even the center left might be turned off by her support for the Iraq war, tepid as it’s been, and we’ve seen how strong support for the war has negatively impacted Joe Lieberman.
She might get a sizable fraction of the Dem. party behind her, but I don’t think she’ll wind up being the nominee. I hope the frack not, anyway.
Repubs hate Hillary because they have been told to, and they have been told to simply because she *is *the front runner. If someone else was the Front-runner, the propaganda machine would start churning out HATE for that person. It’s not about how much one likes or respects their candidate, it’s now how much they HATE the other guy. There is nothing about Hillary or her politics which shoud be generating that much HATE (mild dislike, sure. Well, other than the fact she is a woman), so it has to be artificial. Note that the Dems have a HATE propaganda machine too, but so far they haven’t done too well. Sure, they have made W rather unpopular, but *GWB isn’t going to run again.
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Mind you, I am not saying she’s my first choice. I’d like to see Gore back. But whoever is touted here will get plenty of naysayers "loser’ “too liberal” “not liberal enough” etc etc.
What the Dems need to go is get behind a candidate that can win the General election, not just the primary. I’d like to see a team start as a team- maybe Gore and Hillary.
There is no doubt in my mind that W will pass the crown onto Jeb, so the GOP won’t have too much of a problem. The Dem HATE machine better get started on Jeb.
I don’t consider it a run to the center. She’s cherry picking a few completely stupid issues to embrace the right, and it should be insulting to both sides.
Well, Wikipedia’s been sanitized, so no luck there. Eh.
Well, I know she is jumping on the video games are the devil bandwagon, like Tipper’s PMRC in the 80s. I remember disliking her approach to health care, and disliking her approach to education, as well.
I ditto what BrainGlutton wrote. HRC would be a decent president, but she wouldn’t be my first choice. Despite the conservative propaganda against her, she’s strictly a middle-of-the-road politician, slightly left on some issues and slightly right on others. I’ve got similar vibes on John McCain, though I don’t like the faux "maverick John’ personna that gets peddled around.
I don’t know anyone who’d consider themselves “slam-dunk blue” who’d pick HRC as a first-choice candidate. That’s another one of those conservative lies, IMO. “Hillary must be horrible for the country because all the lefties love her!”
It is my hope both parties produce smarter candidates next time around. And that the Democrat is more likeable. (Which disqualifies Hillary, I’m afraid.)
Hillary hate isn’t because Hillary is the frontrunner. Hillary has been hated by the right-wing ever since the Clinton health care reform debacle. And that was waaay back in 1993.
I find the “nanny” allegation laughable when made by people from the same party that says, “you can’t marry the same sex” , “you can’t get an abortion” and “research on embryonic stem cells is immoral”.
HRC has never once said she wants to run for President and I don’t know why so many pundits are so sure she will. I don’t think she will (and I have bet $100 with someone else on this board that she won’t) because I think she knows that too much of the electorate is unreachable to her. The right has been taught that she’s a “nanny,” a “radical liberal” and a “socialist” and they will never believe any differently. Reality has nothing to do with the reasons why she’s hated. It isn’t even really her that they hate. They hate a cartoon, a manufactured caricature of a left-wing, feminist bitch. It’s an artificial image which has always been calculated to appeal directly to the misogyny of the social right. It’s an image which is almost impossible for Hillary to change because she never really had anything to do with it in the first place.
I don’t think she wants to run for prez unless she’s reasonably sure she can win. She doesn’t want to lose and be humiliated. Unless she can somehow miraculously move the poll numbers for a national election, I think she’ll just be content to be a Senator. As much as i would love to see HRC get elected POTUS just to see the sick, stricken looks on conservatives, I don’t think she’s ever going to try.
It goes back even further than that. I’d probably mark the tipping point at somewhere during the '92 campaign when the term “co-president” started being used.
But it really makes no sense to talk about the frontrunner this early in the game. It’s like asking what’s the frontrunner for Best Picture Oscar this year. HRC will be a serioius and strong candidate should she choose to run in '08, and that’s really all we can say at this point. I’m still not conviced she will run, especially if the Pubs maintain control of both Houses in Congress.