I don’t intend to be a frequent diarist or commenter, I will never use the word "Breaking" in a title, I will not comment on polls, Rush, or Fox and I will militate against providing links – for factual verification, start with Wikipedia, work outbound from there. These are simply my thoughts; do with them as you will.
First, let us set the stage. A Democratic president in 2009 becomes more likely every day, in my opinion, and it has little to do with Iraq and even less to do with the three principal Democratic aspirants. It has everything to do, instead, with each new, distressing wave of economic news, like the cold, January gusts pushing their way inside every time I open my door.
The invasion of Iraq and the GWOT were supposed to pull us all into the Republican tent out of fear or patriotism, it didn’t matter which. When that started to fail, continued easy credit and borrowed money were supposed to make us feel good enough to ignore Iraq, but that failed, too. Unlike the Iraq invasion, which hurt a small number of families and towns and "protected" us against a threat that was, at its peak, speculative, everyone has been hurt by the economic situation. Stocks are down. Home equity is down. Employment is down. Not everything is down, however: wages are flat and debt is up.
Decades of Republican economic and regulatory mismanagement dating back to Reagan with a Bill Clinton "sanity break" have hit home. It's the economy (stupid), and it has always been the economy (stupid). Anyone with an interest in politics said through most of 2007 that the only thing that could help the Republicans in 2008 was good, or at least better, news out of Iraq. To the non-critical among us, the reduction in bad Iraqi news from a constant torrent to a slow drip and occasional splash has filled that prescription.
But in an ironic twist of fate, any improvements in the American military situation in Iraq, whether argued, perceived or actual, will not be met with praise except by the self-congratulatory Bush Administration and the still sycophantic top tier GOP candidates. Rather, the absence of Iraq news, good or bad, has created a current events vacuum and news of the economy has swarmed in to take its place, not that there was any shortage. In any election year, economic concerns will dwarf all concerns over foreign policy. They. Always. Do. Any sane person will gladly gamble on not becoming the victim of a terrorist bombing (or, in days gone by, a Soviet ICBM), but gambling on having a job, well, that's something else, entirely.
This is the worst possible scenario for Republicans. All indications are that the U.S. recession is here and my guess is that it will be long, deep and profound. There are structural problems in our economy that even Bill Clinton saw during his presidency and they haven't gone away. After seven years in the White House and near total control over congress for much of that time, George Bush and the Republicans will get the blame, fair or not. Depending on how bad things get, Mr. Bush may be looking at plummeting approval ratings, dipping into the teens. In an environment of real, personal economic fear, who cares about Iraq? And in a "double-whammy," if things are going so swimmingly there, why are we staying there?
Republican contenders have done a wonderful job of painting themselves into a corner by re-running the 2004 Bush campaign against John Kerry. Except for trying to out-gay-hate each other before select crowds, they have ignored domestic issues, concentrating on the Middle East policy where the best news is that our strategic debacle is not hemorrhaging as much as it once was. On the domestic front, the only answers they can ever provide are lower taxes, less regulation and free trade. But the tax mantra is worn out, lack of oversight got us into a good deal of our current mess, and Americans are, quite frankly, looking for protection from global competition. The sharpest tool the Republicans had in their kit was Iraq and national security. Forget the polls about which party is stronger on the security issue; fewer people care about Iraq as every day passes and they buckle down for bad times at home. Mark down January 22, 2008, the day of the emergency .75% federal rate cut, as The Day the Music Died for Republicans. That wasn't a rate cut, it was a disaster flare. Bye-bye, Miss American Pie.
Democrats, however, are the party of domestic programs and concerns. They are the party of FDR and not-Hoover. They are the party of unions. Some would say they are the party of protectionism, and would gladly embrace that perception. Now that the Bush Snake Oil has lost its appeal, evidently the Democrats are also the party of sound fiscal policy. All this means that the Democratic "brand," as we are fond of calling it this year, will simply trounce the Republican label in 2008. The effect will flow up and down the ticket in federal elections and sideways into state and local contests.
At this point, I don’t think it matters who runs for either party, though I'm thinking John McCain will manage to back into the Republican nomination simply because he has done the best job of not losing it (Thompson is gone; Rudy is going; Huckabee was never a national threat; Romney, is he of the incredible shrinking credibility). So what of McCain? Search your memories. Has he ever said the barest thing, shared the smallest thought, on economic matters? Of course he has: the Bush tax cuts, which he opposed and now wants to make permanent. Nobody cares now. Tax cuts are so 2000. The best national nominee the GOP can offer has had his trump card, national defense, taken out of his hand by Wall Street, Main Street and all points in-between.
As for the Democrats, I was pulling for Edwards but never really believed the fairy tale. I am not a Hilary supporter, so this is not a "here's why I like HRC" diary. Of all the candidates who have vied for the 2008 Democratic nomination and those who were talked about as potential candidates, Sen. Clinton barely made my top 10, counting Gore, Clark, Warner and others among the speculated, current and former declared candidates. Yet she’s the front-runner, and that alone says something about her staying power, her organization and her funding. All of that says she is going to win the nomination in an election year where the Republicans are as disadvantaged as any time since The Great Depression.
I would, however, in the name of logic like to try to put to rest one of the most frequently occurring arguments against Sen. Clinton through most of last year, namely, that we need to get out from under "dynastic politics" in the White House. Of those who frequent this site, who would have opposed the idea of three Presidents Kennedy in succession? How do we explain away FDR, a dynasty unto himself? Or that he was a relative to Teddy Roosevelt? Or John Adams and John Quincy Adams? If Hilary weren’t Hilary, if she hadn’t been a capable lawyer, strong First Lady, and an overwhelmingly elected U.S. Senator, the "dynasty factor" would never have come up. So let’s put it down and move on to the merits.
If a Democrat is destined to win in November 2008, and if that Democrat is Sen. Clinton, pushing all hopes, illusions, preferences, praise and pejoratives aside, has anyone actually stopped to consider what, exactly, the nation, the Democrats and the liberal spheres would get from a Hilary Clinton presidency? Feel free to make your own list of all the bad things this would mean, but remember, with the Dems strong in Congress, we can’t assume a return to "triangulation." President Clinton II would mean a lot of good things. Most of these would come along with any Democratic president but some are particular to her. Here is my short list:
A Democrat in the White House working with a Democratic congress to undo years of damage
Scrutiny of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" from a president who coined the term
Resurgence of the "Clinton Brain Trust" that fixed the Reagan-Bush financial mess
Cabinet and agency appointees who are competent for their positions
Implementation of the Murtha Plan or something like it for Iraq
Funding for NCLB at levels Sen. Kennedy was led to expect
Supreme Court appointments that we can be proud to support
Restocking the rest of the federal judiciary with quality judges
Enforcement of anti-trust, EEOC and environmental laws
Prosecution of vote suppression through an activist DOJ
Regulatory oversight far greater than Bush’s abdication
Progressive legislation not seen since the years of LBJ
A champion of women’s rights like never before
The restoration of actual science in our policies
Steps to make the military religion-neutral
No more tolerance for gay-bashing
A repaired and restored FEMA
No more signing statements
No more torture
Fair taxes
The end of Clintons and Bushes in the White House