Hillary In Trouble?
It sure appears so according to a NY Sun article. Here’s some of the more telling information:
Recent polling underscores some of those worries. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll made public yesterday, 51% of voters said they would definitely not vote for Mrs. Clinton if she chooses to run for president in 2008.
That’s hardly a good starting point if you’re Hillary. The truth is that I’ve always thought that people would have a visceral distrust of her, regardless of how much posturing she does. People had a negative opinion of her when she First Lady. They started resenting her in 1992 when she said “I suppose I could stay at home and bake cookies and have teas.”
That visceral reaction grew when she showed up on Capitol Hill with her Hillarycare plan. They saw her as a big government liberal with way-out-of-touch policies and they haven’t forgotten.
They cringed when they saw her make that assinine “vast Right Wing conspiracy” accusation after Monicagate broke. When she didn’t leave, it left the impression that she was sticking with Bill for purely political reasons. Hillary hasn’t done anything to change that impression.
People heard her speech on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in January, 2005 where she said that Democrats should seek common ground with pro lifers. Then she backed up that speech with inaction. She still hasn’t learned that pro lifers expect actions, not just cheap words.
“There are a lot of people who are conventional Democrats ideologically who think she can’t win, and we’re caught in this bind where she’s unstoppable and therefore our goose is essentially cooked,” a Democratic consultant and former aide to Senator Lieberman, Dan Gerstein, said.
Mr. Gerstein nails it. People who aren’t blind Hillary fans see her weaknesses and they noticed that she’s out of step with the American public. It’s a shame that the Kossacks and MoveOn folk can’t see that their radicalism is running the Democratic Party into the ground. Had the Kossacks and MoveOn activists thought that through and put their pride aside, Joe Lieberman might well be in the White House. He certainly was “more electable” than Lerch, AKA John Kerry.
A former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Richard Harpootlian, is among those who will own up to such misgivings. “Mrs. Clinton, because of some positions she has taken over the years, gets a visceral reaction to her here, both negative and positive. I’m afraid around the South and Midwest the visceral reaction is not good,” he told The New York Sun.
Picturing Hillary winning any states in flyover country is difficult, though not quite impossible, to do. Picturing Hillary connecting with southern voters is impossible.
“What people raise is the nervousness about, to some extent, what they went through with the Clintons, particularly in those last few years,” said Mr. Panetta, who now runs a public policy institute in California. “Can she really bring the country together or is she the kind of lightning rod that would stimulate all of the opposition and the kind of ‘hate’ side of the political agenda resurrecting itself, making it an ugly campaign?”
People haven’t forgotten Hillary’s nasty side. In fact, her most partisan speeches aren’t speeches as much as they’re screaming sessions. People recognize that she shares that trait with Howie ‘The Scream’ Dean, though I’ll give her credit that she doesn’t put her foot in her mouth nearly as often as Scream does.
Mr. Panetta, one of the truly nice guys of Washington, is right in saying that Hillary is a polarizing figure. You’re either for her or against her. There aren’t many undecideds in that equation.
SIDENOTE: If we had more Leon Panettas in Washington and fewer Hillarys, Washington would be alot better off.
Many Democrats and independent analysts believe the most difficult race for Mrs. Clinton would be one against Senator McCain of Arizona. The recent Hotline poll showed Mr. McCain with 47% of the vote and Mrs. Clinton with 32% in such a contest. However, Mr. Lehane said the showdown would be far more competitive because Mr. McCain would have to tack far to the right to win the Republican nomination. “For John McCain to get the nomination he has to be a very different
John McCain than we know today,” the consultant said.
To far left ideologues like Lehane, going further right than Joe Lieberman is tacking “far to the right.” In other words, his opinions are pretty useless to the vast majority of people who comprise the actual mainstream of American people.
Cross-post at Cross-post at LetFreedomRing“>LetFreedomRing
January 25th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
While I’d like the Republicans to spend a lot less money and start repaying the national debt, I still favor them for the next term or twenty over anyone from the Democrats who has even started to begin to consider thinking about maybe possibly running for an elected office with more power than street sweeper.