In a word: Electability.
I'll pause while you all laugh your heads off.
But there are a few things I want to actually talk about with this hit piece against Mrs. Clinton.
First, there's the explicit acknowledgment that there's a double standard:
While Hillary Rodham Clinton tops every national poll of likely 2008 Democratic presidential contenders, the New York senator is dogged by questions of "electability" -- political code for whether she can win enough swing states to prevail in a general election. It's a gauge typically applied to Democrats, as few question the crossover appeal of the GOP front-runner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona. (italics mine)
Can people please get past this? Thank you, we know the press likes John McCain because he gives them the illusion of straightforwardness - but that's just because the press mistakes a lack of manners for "straight talk." There's so many circumlocutions involved in being polite, that if you're willing to just jettison the idea of being a nice person, then hey! you can speak much more forthrightly.
Second, let's talk about this false dichotomy AGAIN:
"There are people who would write a check and die for her, but there are plenty of others who wouldn't vote for her if she promised to eliminate the income tax and give free ice cream to everyone. People have made up their minds about her, and that doesn't give her much room to maneuver."
Ya know, this might even have the added benefit of being true. But right now there is no way to tell. In late 2002 there was literally no one who would have predicted the story of the Democratic nomination in 2004 as it happened. And no one could have predicted that John Kerry would have had the result he had. People who point to polls trying to suggest that there's an actual frontrunner right now, for either party, have No. Effin'. Clue. I promise. I followed the horserace obsessively, and have since I was a senior in high school government during the 2000 debacle. Based just on that small sample size, I can tell you that the pundits are just like the generals - trying to refight the last war. Whatever happened last time, they're trying to fix it this time around - and the major strength of the Democratic campaign this year was the willingness to jettison the "fixes" for 2004 and attack this year's problems with this year's solutions.
So the whole "too divisive" canard? That's pre-2006. Hell's bells, that's pre-2004 thinking. It's time to play rough and tumble, and listen to a wise man (who may play a role in Mrs. Clinton's campaign), who said in 2004 that people would rather have a President who's strong and wrong then one who's weak and right. Werewolf Cookies to anyone who names that wise man.
Finally, there's Carville and Penn's response to the "Hillary can't win" crowd:
"Certainly she could win the states John Kerry did," they wrote. "But with the path-breaking possibility of this country's first female president ... states that were close in the past, from Arkansas to Colorado to Florida to Ohio, could well move to the Democratic column."
Wait, what? Let's look at this. I don't have any sources to back this up, so give me a big margin of error (somewhere between five and eight points), but the Democratic gender gap is at its worst when it's a female Democrat against a male Republican. The gender gap, for those of you who a) live under a rock or b) have more important things to do than obsess over polls, is the difference in the percentage of women who support Democrats versus the percentage of men who do so. Typically, women support Dems in greater proportions. These numbers are essentially out of my ass, but their based on my remembered exit poll data:
Male D, Male R - gender gap of roughly ten points (55% of women vote D, 45% of men vote D)
Male D, Female R - a smaller gap, call it five points (51 or 52% of women, 45-47% of men)
Female D, Female R - somewhere in between, maybe seven or eight points
Female D, Male R - this is a HUGE gap, close to fifteen points (women vote close to 60% D, men stay around 45%, or drop a little).
You might think GREAT, Carville and Penn are right. Here's the problem. In the states that Mrs. Clinton would need to pick up, women make up a smaller proportion of the participating electorate, and the dropoff in D performance amoung men is staggering in that last scenario (the Hillary v. Johnny Mac scenario). In those states, the gender gap can be as great as twenty points, but Democrats are losing the gender with more absolute votes - by twenty points.
What does that mean? It means that Carville and Penn are deluding you, and themselves, and probably Mrs. Clinton as well. The way for Democrats to win in 2008 is not to mess around in the South (and I say that with a heavy heart, as a Southern boy loud and proud of the South). Especially not the way that Carville wants to do it, which is to play in the South as Republican-lite.
The way to win is to be a Democrat. Obnoxious, unapologetic, hard-hitting, even vicious if necessary. The model should be the common Chicago sewer rat.
Mrs. Clinton, I humbly submit that your reliance on advisors whose last major victory was fourteen years ago is misguided. Might I suggest that you go find yourself some new advisors - ones who, you know, won an election recently?
EDIT: Sorry, I forgot to say this. I don't have an opinion about Mrs. Clinton's potential presidential campaign yet. And I won't form one until she decides to run. My point is, my G-d, how many pieces on "Hillary hasn't made a decision, we're gonna rehash all these old angles AGAIN" are we going to have to tolerate?