RogerRabbit
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Joined: 05 Sep 2004
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Location: Oregon
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 Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2005 3:16 am Post subject: Possible Hillary 2008 run has politicians strategizing, worr |
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http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/special_packages/election2004/11516175.htm
| Quote: | BY CRAIG GILBERT
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MILWAUKEE - (KRT) - Between the banquet hall and the overflow room, Hillary Clinton will draw more than 2,000 people Friday night to Madison's Monona Terrace - an event that sold out before a single invitation was sent.
That's a hot ticket.
The 2008 election is more than three years away. But if you have strong feelings about Hillary Clinton (as many do), you don't have to wait. You can donate to "Friends of Hillary." You can sign up to "Stop Hillary." You can follow her ups and downs in the polls with the "Hillary Meter."
You can shell out $50, as 800 people did for Friday night's speech to Wisconsin Women in Government, to sit in a spillover room one floor above the honored guest and watch her on a big screen.
And you can join in the great 2008 political junkie's parlor debate: Is Hillary Clinton electable?
Already there are two Washington truisms about a Clinton candidacy. One is that no one could be more polarizing. That's why she loses. The other is that no one should underestimate her. That's why she wins.
There are people in each camp within each party. Some Democrats think nominating Clinton would be suicide. Some Republicans think she would be a fearful adversary. Sizing her up as intelligent, competent and shrewd, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told an audience of newspaper editors this month that "any Republican who thinks she's going to be easy to beat has a total amnesia about the history of the Clintons."
For many political professionals, it's a tough call, because they find both arguments about the former first lady convincing.
"You give her the regard and respect," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "She is going to be a very formidable opponent. She'll have more money than God."
"She's either going to pass muster or not. I think it's an open question," said Paul Maslin, pollster for one of Clinton's potential rivals for the Democratic nomination, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh.
"What will matter more?" asked Maslin. "All the attitudes people have about Hillary that date back to the Clinton administration - or her on her own, in her own right, as a senator from New York, casting votes, speaking out?"
Because "she's the only person on the stage right now," independent pollster Scott Rasmussen has posted a "Hillary Meter" on his Web site that purports to measure how far to the left of center Sen. Clinton is viewed by voters.
Rasmussen is a relative skeptic about Clinton's chances of being the first woman president. He thinks her image is too liberal for her to win the close battleground states - say, Ohio - that John Kerry lost in 2004.
"The fact we're three years out and 40 percent of the public is saying, `Definitely not' (about voting for her in 2008) - that doesn't leave her an awful lot of room to work with," Rasmussen said. "She does come into this as a very polarizing figure."
But as Rasmussen readily concedes, after President Bush's re-election victory, "polarizing" may not be the handicap it was once thought to be.
"There are people in our party who would love to see her nominated. ... I think she'd be very motivating for Republicans. I don't have any doubt about that," said Wisconsin GOP chairman Rick Graber.
"But what we learned (in 2004) is that not liking a candidate on the other side is not enough," said Graber, referring to anti-Bush feelings among Democrats. "You've got to have your own candidate that you're passionate about, and Republicans were very passionate about George Bush."
In fact, the Bush parallel may be apt on more than one level. Like Bush in 2000, her family name, sprawling support network and ability to raise vast sums make Clinton in most eyes the dominant contender within her party. And like Bush in 2004, she has an extraordinary ability to motivate voters on both sides.
"Most Republicans just presume she's going to be the nominee," McInturff said. "On the Democratic side, it's been a very long time since someone had this much of an advantage (for the nomination) who's not a vice president."
Facing re-election in New York in 2006, Clinton and her aides routinely deflect questions about her 2008 plans. She will hold a fund-raiser at a private home in Fox Point Saturday for her Senate campaign, which raised $3.9 million in the first three months of this year. She has no major opponent yet and enjoys robust approval ratings in her state.
"She's running for Senate and not anything else right now," her pollster Mark Penn told reporters at a Washington breakfast earlier this month.
But asked about her national appeal, Penn made the argument for Clinton's electability: that she has proved in upstate New York she can do well outside the party's core areas; that within the party's base, she generates "unique" enthusiasm; and that being a lightning rod goes with the territory in Friday night's ultra-partisan climate.
"If hard-core Republicans don't like her, and you call that polarizing, then every candidate in America is polarizing," Penn said.
"Obviously she's the front-runner" for the nomination, said Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, who might run himself. "I think anybody that thinks she's not a force to be reckoned with has another guess coming. She's very effective, very smart, very able to assess a situation in a politically savvy way."
Feingold added that "people are going to be very excited if a woman runs for president. Here's one with enormous stature."
Chuck Pruitt, whose Milwaukee firm raises money through the mail for groups and Democratic candidates around the country, said Clinton's assets also include the ability to attract "an extraordinarily talented group of people around her because she's so well known and has a long history."
Like virtually everyone else interviewed, he said it was far too soon to known how hospitable the political climate would be in 2008 to a Clinton candidacy. But Pruitt said that if the economy is soft, "voters in 2008 may actually find it quite attractive to elect another Clinton."
As was the case with both her husband and President Bush, Clinton's firm standing with her party's base might give her added freedom to play to the middle, as she has done on issues ranging from national security to abortion.
For skeptics, however, she has much to overcome. Graber, the state GOP chair, said "you can't discount Hillary Clinton." But he thinks she will be less successful than her husband was in appealing to non-liberal voters in the Heartland.
"I think she is perceived as being far more liberal than her husband. I think she's more shrill than her husband, who I believe was a very, very skilled politician. I think she's just got a sharper edge which she's really trying to soften," Graber said.
"It's going to be very, very difficult for Hillary Clinton to turn the Red south Blue or any of the states that historically have been Republican," he said.
McInturff, the Republican pollster, cites her "unbelievably, uniquely polarizing kind of numbers" and the "New York" next to her name as large hurdles. As John Kerry of Massachusetts was often reminded in 2004, no northern Democrat has won since 1960.
Rasmussen said doubts about her capacity to win a national race would be a potent argument against her in the primaries, where Democratic voters last year showed a keen interest in the candidates' electability.
"If I was a Democrat running against her, I'd be making that argument all the time," Rasmussen said. "But I suspect after the 2006 cycle, they will begin to take a serious look at polling in swing states. And if it looks like she can't win or would have a difficult time winning in states like Ohio, she will not run."
Maslin, the Democratic pollster, suggested that there are so many special aspects to a Clinton candidacy - her sex, her status as former first lady, her husband's role - that the calculations become uniquely tortured.
"It's very interesting, because she is both early and late in her political career," Maslin said. "Early, from the standpoint that she is only 4 1/2 years into being a U.S. senator, with a record that's still taking shape. ... How liberal is she? Is she now a New Yorker or is she from Arkansas or from Illinois? And late, from the standpoint she has now been in a very prominent way on the public stage for almost 15 years, and certainly longer than anybody else that's considering running next time."
Is Clinton, he asked, one of those people capable of remaking themselves and rewriting the political rules?
Or "is she burdened so much by the past, it will be hard for her to sort of step out of that clothing?" |
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