If Hillary Clinton is at all interested in the job of President, she’d be crazy not to run.
She has absolutely universal name recognition, which many in this thread seem ready to undervalue. Think about it. While Mark Warner is going all over the country for three months saying “Hi, I’m Mark Warner, the governor of Virginia”, Hillary can get on-message immediately. In other words, she doesn’t have to spend one minute or one dime introducing herself to the American people. And that’s all the more money and time she can spend changing people’s minds about her.
She may or may not eventually get the nomination, but as of now, she is definitely the frontrunner, if for no other reason than she’s the only name many people know.
Don’t understimate the gun issue. In and of itself, that will keep her from doing anything in the South, and probably most of the West as well. Hillary likes gun control. Presently Red States do not. If she gets nominated, the NRA will have her less popular than a gay Satanist that performs abortions and tortures puppies.
Brain, there’s a nice feature of New York state that allows people to run as members of more than one party. I do tend to vote third party, and yet still have my vote count.
… but you have no idea what the America First party is, do you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party_(2002)
Racist suckers who want to stick their noses in my bedroom as much as the Dems do. Theocrats, too, want to make the Christian Church the state church.
In theory, I can agree with their isolationist stance, in practicality, I can’t.
Frankly, I’d vote with the Libertarians over those freaks. And we all know when you get three Libertarians together, you get five plans, of which none will actually work in the real world.
She was a familiar face on the talk show circuit. Anyone who watches those news/analysis programs would have known her.
But it doesn’t have to be about Condi. Substitute any female Republican politician and it debunks that ridiculous claim that conservative “hate and fear” powerful women who don’t conform to traditional gender roles.
Just being a politician is a break with traditional gender roles. Although I’m sure you’ll want to define “traitional gender roles” as any role that a Republican politician adopts.
I’m still waiting for that cite of when Powell publicly disagreed with Bush on a foreign policy matter, btw.
Forget gender roles. Just name a powerful female Republican politician (and Condi Rice is not a politician…not yet at least).
When he resigned.
A lot of his conflict with the White House wasn’t really on the record, so I shouldn’t have said “public” but it was an open secret that there was a great amount of tension between Powell and the White House and that Powell was especially pissed off at the way he was used in front of the UN.
(Some of this conflict made it to print but some of what I know about it also comes from my father who recently retired after 25 years in the State Department. It was well known, in the DoS at least, that the Secretary and the White House were not on good terms).
Yes, I knew all that. But you wanted a “small government” party. The America Firsters might want more intrusive government in some respects, but they also want smaller government, especially federal government, in terms of budget and personnel. No, it makes no sense to me, either, but there you are.
No, name rec has its proper value here. The more-motivated voters in the primaries know who the names are already. In the general, the major party nominees’ names are inescapable. What matters is the image the spin doctors can hang on those names.
The identity of the media-declared frontrunner more than a couple of months ahead of the election means roughly jack.
It’s my opinion that Lieberman was a goner long before the war started. He lucked out with Kerry for his running mate, but I can’t see him ever topping that.
I also believe that it is a dream that her stance on the war will alienate far left Dems. What are they going to say: “Better (insert anyRepublican name) than a Clinton Democrat!” Yeah, right.
She’s got name recognition, has 30m in her coffers already, ergo a proven fundraiser, and a proven vote-getter. All of her scandals, real or imagined, have been neutralized. Her husband was in far worse media condition in early 96, and it get turned around. Whether the last was by his craftiness, or by a fickle electorate doesn’t matter, he got the credit, and the party machine will capitalize on this (she’s got The Comeback Kid in her Corner!) giving her an aura of great power! Stances, brains, character or statesmanship ain’t what get the nod.I don’t think any of that has ever been the criteria for being elected.
You think far left Dems won’t mind her strong support of the war and opposition to even setting a timetable? On what planet would that happen? There’s already one group of war protestors that follows her everywhere she goes. She has no answers on the issue, and I think it will wind up sinking her.
Proven how? She not only hand-picked New York, but she hasn’t had to run a full campaign yet. Her opponent in 2000 quit six months before the election (Giuliani; as I remember it they were equal in the polls at that time), and Pirro dropped out of the race in December and still hasn’t been replaced. She is in a state predisposed to liking her and still hasn’t had to sustain a real run for office. One reason she has so much money is that she hasn’t needed to spend it on her reelection campaign.
To explain that a little further- the saying is that a candidate has to run to the [side of party] in the primaries and run to the center during the general election. With her record on Iraq and a number of other issues, I think she is not going to be capable of effectively running to the left.
Name a successful female politician of any party who doesn’t conform to gender roles. That’s the baggage women still carry in American society: People see men first as whatever role they are embodying – firefighter, lawyer, plumber, politician – but people see women first as women. We will allow a woman to be successful in a “secondary” professional role, provided she is first successful in the “primary” role of being a woman. Women who are too “pushy” or too “rough” or unattractive do not succeed – so they change their hairstyles and their wardrobes to appear “softer”, because appearance conveys character if we’re talking about women, and so people care about appearance more for women than they do for men.
With the exception of Janet Reno, “manly” women are not successful – and you never saw Janet Reno in anything but a skirt. Ideal political women are ones like Sandra Day O’Connor, Madeline Albright, and Christine Todd Whitman: Attractive, intelligent women who present their POVs without coming across as strident, bitchy, or “unfeminine.”
There’s not a successful female politician out there who is not acutely aware of gender perceptions in American society – what she can get away with and what she cannot, in everything from what she wears to what she says – and is adjusting her image and message accordingly. If she couldn’t do that, she wouldn’t succeed.
I was wrong on Lieberman-Gore-Kerry, right on his good luck/last chance.
The planet Earth. The Far Left, by definition, are marginalized, and even if they hate her guts, and want her in a concentration camp and tortured, will slay to get her in the White House over any Republican. Do you remember any Far Left/Right members that jumped ship because their party had a candidate that did not agree with their war policy? Do you think that the Far Left is called that because they are anti-war only? In the primaries they may attack Hillary, but in a general election, they will swear allegience to her and to the war until the election is over.
a. No answers will wind up sinking her? In an eleciton! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!stop it!!! STOP IT!!!MY SIDES, MY SIDES!!!
Proven vote getter in that she was elected to be Senator of a huge state. Weigh it how you will, at election time anything less that 100% approbation will be transformed into a direct mandate of the entire US. And people will swallow it.
a. Thirty million bucks, regardless of how attained or kept is still…
30
MILLION
BUCKS
!!!
best wishes,
HH
What if McCain looses the Republican nomination, but decided to run as an Independant? He’d have almost no chance of winning, but he’d do better than Nader. I can see him getting on the ballot in all 50 states and DC. He could take enough votes away from the Republican candidate to make Clinton win. Hell he’d probally be able to get into the debates (all Clinton has to do is refuse to debate without him and the Republicans will cave).
But you wanted a “small government” party. The America Firsters might want more intrusive government in some respects, but they also want smaller government, especially federal government, in terms of budget and personnel. No, it makes no sense to me, either, but there you are.