A new poll by CNN shows that DailyKos participants’s feelings diverge markedly with Democrats overall about who our next Democratic president should be. Hillary holds a two-to-one lead over her nearest rivals while more than twice as many Democrats don’t want Kerry as those who don’t want Clinton.
Recently re-elected Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is twice as popular as her nearest Democratic rivals in the 2008 presidential race, according to a new CNN poll.
Clinton was favored by 33 percent of people asked who they were "most likely to support for the Democratic nomination for president in the year 2008." CNN POLL
According to the latest CNN poll,
Clinton was ranked first among 10 potential Democratic candidates. (Poll)
Second place for "likely" support was nearly even among Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois (15 percent), former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina (14 percent) and former Vice President Al Gore (14 percent), given the poll's margin of error or plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic nominee in 2004, lost support, dropping from 12 percent in late October to 7 percent in the latest poll.
Worse news for Kerry: a majority of registered Democrats say they do not want to see Kerry win the party's nomination in 2008 . . .
Only 27 percent of registered Democrats say they don't want Clinton as the party's nominee -- just over half the of the 51 percent who said don't want Kerry to get the nomination a second time. CNN POLL
A Philadelphia Enquirer ARTICLE lists four good reasons to doubt those who say Hillary can’t win. For example, Reason #3:
Another rap on Clinton is that she's too polarizing, and that the GOP message machine will hum accordingly, resurrecting memories of past scandals. But that bit of conventional wisdom ignores the fact that those scandals are so 10 years ago. Most of the lurid stuff that would be thrown at Clinton in 2008 has been thoroughly hashed out already.
Yes, there are surely voters still incensed by Whitewater and Monica, but those folks are generally going to vote Republican anyway. Let's also remember that voters under age 30 - 55 percent of whom voted for Kerry two years ago, and 60 percent of whom voted for Democratic congressional candidates this month - probably dismiss the '90s as ancient history. To quote the novelist L.P. Hartley, "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
As for Clinton's rascally husband, it's true that she would be badly hurt if he again got caught acting like a bad boy. But, absent that, he also happens to be a major fund-raising asset, as well as the best strategist in the Democratic Party. (He might have a few insights into how she can carry crucial Ohio - which he won twice.) ARTICLE
(Thanks for this link go to Suzanne, a DK reader who sent this link to my e-mail address.)
HILLARY, THE "CONSUMMATE PLAYER"
In the November issue of Atlantic Online, Joshua Green pens an 11-page piece on Senator Clinton entitled, "Take Two: How Hillary Clinton Turned Herself into the Consummate Washington Player", which discusses how Hillary has blunted criticism and gained friends among Republican colleagues by befriending them during weekly Senate prayer group meetings.
This REPORT should really annoy DailyKos’ atheists, who are not necessarily representative of DailyKos as a whole. As usual, any report that shows Hillary gaining friends among the right will increase revulsion for Hillary on the left, except when these reports are ignored at those times when her detractors argue that she is unelectable because the right hates her.
PROLOGUE - WINNING THE GENERAL ELECTION TWO YEARS EARLY
Qshio’s Blog at TPM Café offers an analysis entitled, "Prologue - Winning the General Election Two Years Early", in which he asserts what I aserted here at DailyKos a few days ago: Analogizing to the "election" of Bush in 2000, he says that the same Clintonian moderation that is infuriating DailyKos readers now is actually increasing the likelihood that a Dem will take the White House in 2008:
In 1999, George W. Bush already looked like the nominee, and behaved like it, too. Before anyone had run an ad or held a debate, then-Governor Bush presented himself as a moderate, friendly guy who had worked well with Democrats in Texas. What Bush was doing correctly was painting an image, well before the primaries, of a man who could conceivably do very well in the general election. By looking like a centrist in the Clinton mold (true to one's party, but not stubborn or zealous), Bush sent the message to the Republican primary voters that he was no Bob Dole, but a guy who could actually win.
. . . Hillary Clinton, since the polls closed in November of 2004, has been following a similar tactic. Mrs. Clinton has been furnishing an image of a centrist progressive, someone who is in touch with the modern world, but who is also sensitive to, and sometimes nostalgic for, older traditions.
The polls don't lie. Hillary Clinton is not only the current front-runner, but she is the runaway favorite at this very early stage. Yes, I know, Joe Lieberman was also ahead at this point last time around, but even being a VP nominee, he did not have Mrs. Clinton's name recognition, or even her perceived chance at electability. Mrs. Clinton may have a tougher case to make to Democrats than Bush did to Republicans that she is the most likely to win in a general election, but she's doing a pretty good job of it, and will probably succeed in the end (just watch her wipe the floor with John Spencer in her recent senatorial debates, and you'll get a better idea of what I mean). QSHIO
Qshio believes Senator Clinton’s years of careful preparation will pay dividends in 2008:
Senator Clinton's years of work laying her centrist foundation, just as Bush had done when governor of Texas, will become the structure she can climb upon during the general election to rise above the taints of ideology. Just as far-left candidates struggle in national races, in 2008 there is no way a hard-right candidate wins the presidency. As long as Mrs. Clinton claims the center, fully, and early, the GOP nominee, battered from their wide-open primary, will have nowhere else to go but to the conservative base. Senator Clinton then needs only to win all the states that Kerry did, plus Florida or the freshly-blue Ohio, and she wins.
Hillary Clinton is, I think, better positioned than anyone in the country, of either party, to be elected president in 2008. She has made the right friends and fashioned the right image. Most importantly, she knows how to be a center-leaning policy maker (like her husband), and she now knows how to appear as one, too (like Bush once did, long, long ago). With Clinton Policy as her substance while using her own, improved version of the Rove 1999-2000 campaign strategy as her vehicle, it's easy to see how she passes the big 270. QSHIO
In the same article, Qshio also discusses how 2000 front-runner Governor G.W. Bush fended off the challenge from Senator John McCain and suggests that these same strategies, minus the dirty ones, may be relevant to another presumptive candidate who finds herself far ahead in polls, money, national organization and party apparatus support.
Meanwhile, The POLITICKER objectively compares the Senate votes of US Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, concluding that there really is little difference between their voting records. THE POLITICKER
ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVISTS SAY HILLARY LED CLINTON RESISTANCE
The anti-abortion right has gotten its hands on some documents indicating that Bill Clinton leaned heavily on Hillary as a leader for advice in terms of defending women’s right to choose. According to LIFE NEWS
New papers obtained from the Clinton Presidential Library show that former First Lady Hillary Clinton apparently was a key decision-maker during Bill Clinton's presidency on the issue of abortion.
. . .
The group said its research into papers at the archive details the Clintons' "strong support – both politically and ideologically – for attacking the pro-life movement and aggressively expanding the ‘culture of death,’ especially with public funding."
Judicial Watch’s special report focuses on three particular documents . . . which includes a two-page discussion of the Hyde Amendment, weighing legislative tactics, public opinion and political strategy.
. . . It ends with President Bill Clinton’s handwritten question, "What does Hillary think?" next to the "decision" section of the memo. LIFE NEWS ARTICLE
HOMESTATE JEWISH VOTERS
The Jewish Week, "Serving the Jewish Community of New York", says
Allies like Hillary and Bill Clinton are essential in keeping support for Israel bipartisan. JEWISH WEEK
This will likely anger those who oppose Israeli policies while comforting those who support them.
THE FIX ON SENATOR BARACK OBAMA
Meanwhile, the Fix says that the absence of media consultant David Axelrod and pollster Paul Harstad from Tom Vilsack’s budding Presidential campaign, even though they worked on Vilsack’s gubernatorial campaigns in 1998 and 2002, may indicate that these professionals are staying available for Senator Barack Obama’s entry into the Presidential race. This, in turn, means that Senator Barack Obama most likely is running.
It seems odd that as he embarks on a presidential bid Vilsack would willingly jettison his longtime consultants. The more likely explanation is that both Axelrod and Harstad believe that Obama is more likely to run than not and want to preserve their ability to work for the rising Democratic star. The Fix tried to reach both consultants today but did not hear back from either. Watch for an update if they respond to my messages. THE FIX
Stay tuned!
UPDATE!! Clinton’s Foundation Brokers AIDS Deal
NYT - MUMBAI, Nov. 30 — The cost of treating children infected with H.I.V. and AIDS is poised to plummet next year, under a deal announced today between two Indian drugmakers and former President Bill Clinton’s foundation. CLINTON DECREASES AIDS DRUG PRICES