Hillary's 'Plantation' And 2008

RealClearPolitics: She's Not The Shoo-In Some May Think

(RealClearPolitics)  Given Clinton's shrewd positioning in Bush's first term and the President's woes in 2005, I had begun to think she was a lock for the nomination and looked like a winner in the general election against anybody but McCain or Giuliani (A narrow winner, mind you, but a winner nonetheless). But this week has made me rethink some of those assumptions. In many ways the gaffe and the conservative counterattack that followed is a pre-season example of what we will see over and over in the 2008 campaign — just on a much larger and more intense scale.

Larry Sabato is correct when he says: Democrats ignore Clinton's image as "'cold,' 'devious,' and 'harsh'…… at their considerable peril." If there is anything we can be sure of about 2008 it will be that after eight years of George W. Bush, if the Democrats are going to agree on anything, it is they want to win. You wonder how many in the Democratic hierarchy are starting to reconsider whether Hillary has to be the automatic nominee.

Mark Warner, while perhaps more conservative than most Democrats prefer, may be looking better and better to party regulars. The reality is Hillary has no chance of winning any southern state, so she is basically running a redux of the Kerry campaign with the race coming down to the state of Ohio, or the trifecta of Nevada, Iowa and New Mexico. Either way, it's hard to make a case she is a stronger candidate to win those states than Mark Warner. Democrats are painfully aware that the only victories they have had since the Vietnam/Watergate days are with southern Governors as their nominee.

Mark Warner isn't Hillary's only problem, either. Whether it is Gore, Feingold or Dean, a candidate will emerge on the left to satisfy the rage among the hardcore base against Iraq and everything that is George Bush. Whoever this candidate ends up being — and right now I'd say Gore is the favorite — they are going to commit to polices and say things that Senator Clinton won't be able to say if she wants to emerge from the primaries with any hope of winning the general election. These two threats, one on the left and one the right, are going to make Hillary's general election strategy for 2006 and 2007 considerably more complicated.

Also, people should not forget that when Bill Clinton won in 1992, the end of the Cold War and Ross Perot's 19 percent were two not-so-insignificant factors. Post 9/11 and without a credible third party candidate disproportionately siphoning away Republican votes, this week's events have made me reevaluate Hillary's odds for both the nomination and her ability to win a general election. The more we see of Monday's Hillary Clinton, the more I return to the analysis that her chances of winning in a general election are low (without a significant third party candidate) simply because she probably starts with 40% of the voting public saying 'NO.'

Monday's "plantation" crack may foreshadow the difficulty Hillary will have in getting beyond her original image with the American people as an unapologetic liberal. And it is this baggage, along with all the other Clinton skeletons, that may subtly work to move pieces of the Democratic nominating apparatus to begin to open up to the possibility that maybe they have a better alternative.

In other words, below the surface, Monday may have been a bigger day than people think.