Salon's Walter Shapiro writes the piece I keep starting but never finishing for the op-eds. (The bastard...) His points are spot on: Democrats who wish to defeat Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination in 2008 had better have strong stomachs, and a trust fund ten times the size of Kathy Harris' ... plus her husband's. The format is a letter to a fictional would-be contender, a border state governor. Read on:
If she somehow bows out at the last moment like Mario Cuomo in 1991, you can consider yourself the luckiest border-state governor in America.
But otherwise, you will face in Hillary the most formidable presidential front-runner in modern political history. (And, yes, I am counting George W. Bush in 2000.) Here are 10 reasons why the junior senator from New York will be a daunting foe:
1) Universal name recognition. (In contrast, JPW, only 3 percent of likely Democratic primary voters know that you were originally the president in the Gershwin classic "Of Thee I Sing.")
2) Her capacity to raise $100 million without once working late into the night cold-calling strangers to beg and grovel for money.
3) The ability to dominate the free media. Hillary will never make a public appearance in this campaign without being tracked by 100 reporters. (In contrast, JPW, imagine how much coverage you will get for your first press conference bragging about your gubernatorial record and the "Tennetucky Miracle.")
4) Her emotional support from a significant percentage of women voters out to make history.
5) Nostalgia for the Clinton era of peace and prosperity in the 1990s.
6) Continuing Democratic resentment over impeachment.
7) Hillary's over-cautious political style that avoids risk and, quite likely, deliberate mistakes.
8) The most potent candidate surrogate in political history in the form of Bill Clinton.
9) The ability of the Clinton name and legacy to attract 75 percent of the African-American vote and a large slice of the Hispanic vote.
10) At least a half-dozen candidates (including JPW) who will divide the anti-Hillary Democrats, so that she could win major primaries with just her hardcore base of, say, 35 percent of the vote.
In other words, Hillary has, from a marketing point of view, everything she needs to win the primary, and I would argue, the general election, too.
Think about it. The notion that she's too polarizing to win ignores the fact of who is in the White House. George W. Bush is arguably the most polarizing American political figure since Barry Goldwater or Richard Nixon (no, most everybody hated Nixon.) He won in 2004 anyway, because Karl Rove threw out the old playbook about sucking up to the vaunted independents. The real way to get into the White House in a stratified country is to divide the electorate into only two parts: our base and the other people about whom we don't give a good goddamn. Increase your base by turning out fellow travelers who typically don't show up on election day, and you rule the rest of the country by force, whether they like it or not. The Rove strategy is about winning a squeaker, not winning a mandate. Hillary doesn't need to win over Joe GOP who currently hates her and thinks she's a dangerous socialist. She isn't going to change the minds of Limbaugh listeners and right wing bloggers. What she needs to do is increase the size of her natural pie: minority voters, women voters, especially young women, but also older women who missed their chance with Ferraro and might frankly be dead before they get another shot at a female president, and lately, Catholic voters whose religion is strong but not evangelical.
Hillary is playing to the latter by tacking to the right on abortion (make it rare), but to the left on immigration (God loves the Good Samaritan).
Her natural base among African-Americans, which really belongs to her husband, is demoralized electorally, but the Clintons are among a very small group of politicians who can bring them back -- especially if Hillary adds to her ticket a certain popular Senator from Illinois...
Hillary's first-name only name recognition is unmatched by any other candidate with the possibly exception of Rudy ... got the last name yet? I'm sure you do. But Rudy is soft on gays and soft on abortion. He'll never get through the southern primaries. Republicans are lemmings, but Schwarzenegger them once ... you fool me can't get fooled again...
Hillary will raise more money than God and George W. Bush. You can't beat money, and it can always beat you.
And Hillary needn't care what the pundits and 40 percent of Americans think about her. Americans elect people they think they know. They thought they knew George because his last name was Bush, so they made all sorts of assumptions about him that made them comfortable seeing him in office. They definitely think they know Hillary, for good or for ill. Everything about her -- true and false, including at one time, murder allegations -- is on the table. The GOP will have very little to work with once she's the candidate. (Think about it, doesn't Hillarycare sound pretty good right about now...?)
If she runs, and I think she will, Hillary Clinton can win the general election (I'm not even thinking about the primary, because who is going to stop her? Vilsack? And Feingold is the MAN, but his decency and courage are precisely what make him an impoosibility as the nominee...). She will be able to buy enough TV ads to hammer home her inevitability to the voters by the summer of 2008, at which point most people will have long since made up their minds about her, for or against.
And if she's running against John McCain, her most formidable potential opponent, she'll be facing the guy who literally sold his soul to obtain Geroge W. Bush's donor list ... the guy who went from supposed maverick to Bush poodle in less than five years ... the guy who won't stand up to Tom DeLay or the other villains in his own party, and won't even stand up to the president to defend his own anti-torture resolution ... the man who's even softer on immigration than Hillary or the current president ... the man most movement conservatives despise, and whom they'll only be supporting because they so desperately want the White House in GOP hands ... and a man whom Democrats and independents will come to know, by virtue of Hillary's money ... as a false maverick, who will continue every hated policy of George W. Bush's (and who only fails to support the one thing Bush does that people like: tax cuts) and who, as a die-hard neocon, could very well escalate the war.
I'd say Hillary has a shot at squeaking that one out.
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
