After watching Hillary in various debates, and especially at the presidential candidates’ forum and whatnot at Yearly Kos, and remembering her past record, a few conclusions come to mind.
First, I can't see the netroots trying to oppose her for the nomination, but I don't know that they'd be able to muster any sort of enthusiasm for her for the general election.
Second, estimates of her primary strength are more for people who want the quick headlines, and are not a real indicator on how she'd fare in the general election.
Third, anyone who believes in the dream ticket of Clinton/Obama or Clinton/Edwards is not connected to the way she thinks.
More under the fold:
* At Yearly Kos, you got the general idea that the people there would be delighted to see Edwards and then Obama at the top of the ticket, then maybe Chris Dodd. Dodd gave a surprisingly good account of himself there, and that crowd vastly prefers hell-raisers to Washington Consensus types like Clinton.
* This did not mean that the Netroots would rather die than vote for Hillary. I just can’t see them getting very excited about it if she’s the nominee because she’s become the establishment, militarist and don’t-rock-the-boat person, relatively speaking.
* The general impression I got from the YKos attendees was that they’d be basically OK with any of the main candidates as their nominee, where the GOP has ‘none of the above’ in the lead and likely to stay there. As you can imagine, this is a plus.
* She has Bill as a major plus as a campaigner and strategist, but there’s so much past baggage from his term, either from him or her. And she’s the one person who would drag Republicans out of a torpor to vote against her as a Radical Threat, which mystifies me, since she’s not so damn radical as they make her out to be. There are just a lot of residual negatives about her that will be hard to fight off. And she’s no dummy.
* Hands up for all those who think she’d want a strong vice president? Not a chance. I cannot see her picking Obama or Edwards in a billion years; she’d want someone who would not give her trouble. Tom Vilsack, say.
* Don’t buy all the national polls so much about how far up she is; a lot of that is still name recognition. Watch the polls in the early states for trends, and look at the aggregates in Pollster.com. And remember that it’s still early, and people can still be fond in compromising situations with a goat or Rupert Murdoch.