2006 Mid-Term Elections

[Galactus]

Hilary is has too many preconceptions that already exist, many of her former supporters are leaving becuase she's clearly campaigning and saying "Oh I don't know if I'll run..." and where's she's running is the right. Now, everybody knows Hilary goddamn Clinton is a liberal. She, like John Kerry, had the perfect chance to stand up and say "Your damn right I'm a liberal and it's time that stopped being a bad word" instead she's gladhanding and vote stroking. Charisma she may have what she appearently lost in the last six years is a back bone. If you think they made Kerry look like a flip flopper you ain't seen nothing yet, wait till the pubs go after Hillary. They'll rip her to shreds.

[rockysigman]

What ded said.

I'm not disputing that she has charisma. I'm just disputing that she has any chance whatsoever to get elected. I certainly wouldn't vote for her in a primary unless everyone else was substantially worse than her. If the Republicans run anyone better than Mark Foley against her, she loses. Newt Gingrich would beat her. If she is nominated, I will give up on the Democratic Party forever.

[Kensterberg]

DED highlights Hillary's problem perfectly: to the right, she's the quintessential liberal, but to the folks actually on the left, she's a moderate who is too compromised to really be their candidate.

Hillary will be a formidible force, but I think that by trying to occupy the center, she's lost her natural support on the left without mollifying her conservative critics.

I don't know if I'm really worried about the negative Republican attack ads this next time around. After "we're going to war with Iraq b/c they have weapons of mass destruction" turned into "... b/c they might have WMDs" turned into "... to bring democracy to the Middle East," I think the public has (hopefully) realized that we've had the ultimate flip-floppers in office for the last six years. And in their need to stay massed together, all the Republicans have been a part of this. Just think of the ads that can run against McCaine ... "Torture. John McCaine voted against it before he voted for it. We can't trust John McCaine." And he's one of the cleaner candidates the GOP could trot out.

No, I think the question is just how far the GOP coalition will melt down in the next two years. 2008 is really the Dems election to lose, and it's going to be really hard for them to blow this one.

Running a candidate who would polarize both the right and left against him/her, however, could just do it.

[luke]

Hilary would get creamed by double digits. People in the South and mid-West who would NEVER vote otherwise, not for war or abortion or gay marriage or the attack on Christmas or values or whatever, would come out in DROVES to vote against Hillary Clinton.

I'm willing to bet Mark Foley really could beat her in the election, dead serious. All the 'pubs would have to do is take the focus off that he's that pederast from a couple years ago and focus on that he's some guy running against Hillary Clinton.

[Galactus]

Dude, the pubs could run on the slogan "Even a Pedophile is better then Clintons" and half the country would go "Hell yeah it is".

[Kensterberg]

Yeah, Hillary would be the best "get out the vote" tactic the GOP could possibly have.

Which wouldn't be so bad if she brought out the left in droves, but instead she'd be susceptible to a fringe-left challenge a la Nader. (BTW, Gore had much stronger liberal bona fides than Hillary at this point, and look how he was savaged for not being liberal enough. If those idiots who voted for Nader "b/c there's no difference between Bush and Al Gore" had just stuck w/the Democrats, we'd have been spared a long national tragedy).

I don't think it's going to be Hillary in '08, though. I really think it's gonna be someone who's never been fully on the national stage before ... though I may well be wrong.

[Kensterberg]

ded said:

Dude, the pubs could run on the slogan "Even a Pedophile is better then Clintons" and half the country would go "Hell yeah it is".

But if Bill could have run for a third term, he'd have cleaned Bush's clock. And if he could run today, he'd win in a landslide.

Whoever gets the Democratic nomination needs to not only work with Bill, s/he needs to embrace the man. One of the mistakes that both Kerry and Gore made was in not fully utilizing Clinton's amazing abilities on the stump. If I were running for President, I'd be using Clinton continually. Yeah, you'll piss off the dedicated right wing (about 30 percent or so of the vote), but you'll get the rest of the country. You've got the most accomplished campaigner of the last century sitting on the sidelines -- use him!

[rockysigman]

Indeed. She would get clobbered.

pat, I certainly don't think you're wrong to like her, I just think you're seriously underestimating how many people, and to what degree those people people hate her.

[Galactus]

Yeah, I think the dems nom will go to a name that's not out there yet. The dems need to set up the "new leadership" candidate as much as the GOP. Though the GOP will run a "return to values' guy...my money's still on Mit Romney at momment... and "return to values" is going to be hard to run against. They'll at least go through the motions of cleaning house and I think more people will go for that then a dem's "Candidate for the future".

[Kensterberg]

All this said, I personally could vote for Hillary in a national election. And considering that she'd have Bill stumping for her from Day One of her "real" campaign, I won't underestimate her ability to win either the nom or the general election. But it will be an uphill battle, and (just like with her husband) she's going to have to keep fighting once she's in power.

I dunno ... it still feels really premature to be talking about the next national election. Let's get through this mid-term first, shall we?

Speaking of which, early voting has started here in Texas. Got to make that big decision here soon. I'm really thinking I'm going to vote for Kinky. It's partially a protest vote (obviously), but I also think that a genuinely non-partison administration would be good for Texas. Friedman is the only guy who will do that.

[Galactus]

Well, I think you might be overestimating the wows of Bill abit...he's pretty popular still but he's still too easy for the right rally against.

Here in NC we're just hoping to get rid of Mchenry...holy crap is that guy an idiot.

[Kensterberg]

ded said:

Yeah, I think the dems nom will go to a name that's not out there yet. The dems need to set up the "new leadership" candidate as much as the GOP. Though the GOP will run a "return to values' guy...my money's still on Mit Romney at momment... and "return to values" is going to be hard to run against. They'll at least go through the motions of cleaning house and I think more people will go for that then a dem's "Candidate for the future".

How do you run on "return to values" when that's what Bush ran on and you'll have (hopefully) two years worth of serious investigations into the myriad GOP scandals?

The American public may have a short memory, but it's not THAT short!

[rockysigman]

It's pretty short, Ken.

[Kensterberg]

This is from the Wikipedia entry on Bill ...

In May 2006 a CNN poll comparing President Clinton's job performance with that of successor, President George W. Bush, a strong majority of respondents said President Clinton outperformed Bush on every single issue in question.
The poll of over a thousand random adult Americans was conducted May 5-7 by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN. Margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
When asked which man was more honest as president, 46 percent favored Clinton to 41 percent for Bush. Respondents favored Clinton by near 3-to-1 margins when asked who did a better job at handling the economy (63 percent Clinton, 26 percent Bush) and solving the problems of ordinary Americans (62 percent Clinton, 25 percent Bush).
On foreign affairs, the margin was 56 percent to 32 percent in Clinton's favor; on taxes, it was 51 percent to 35 percent for Clinton; and on handling natural disasters, it was 51 percent to 30 percent, also favoring Clinton.

Here's the CNN story ... edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/12/bush.clinton.poll/index.html ... which was done in May of this year, when Dubya's approval was higher than it is now.

[Galactus]

kenholzman said:

ded said:

Yeah, I think the dems nom will go to a name that's not out there yet. The dems need to set up the "new leadership" candidate as much as the GOP. Though the GOP will run a "return to values' guy...my money's still on Mit Romney at momment... and "return to values" is going to be hard to run against. They'll at least go through the motions of cleaning house and I think more people will go for that then a dem's "Candidate for the future".

How do you run on "return to values" when that's what Bush ran on and you'll have (hopefully) two years worth of serious investigations into the myriad GOP scandals?

The American public may have a short memory, but it's not THAT short!

That's where the facade of cleaning house comes in. Set up a few very visable sacrficial lambs and apologise..."These are not the values the Replucians party was founded on, these are not American values..." in 2000 the values in question were those of Bill Clinton and now that values are that of their own party, it would be serious mistake to think these scandals will keep the GOP down for long. Remember how many people seriously blame Clinton for 9/11 and think Bush is really giving them terrorists what for. Nobody runs on a return to values like the Republicans.