Hopeless liberal Frank Rich, whose television appearances I can’t bear to watch due to his stereotypical Boomer self-righteousness, proves that liberals are just as nervous about 2008 as many conservatives. His latest notes the similarities between likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and two presidential losers of the past. Money quote:
The Clinton machine runs as smoothly and efficiently as a Rolls. And like a fine car, it is just as likely to lull its driver into complacent coasting and its passengers to sleep. What I saw on television last Sunday was the incipient second coming of the can’t-miss 2000 campaign of Al Gore.
That Mr. Gore, some may recall, was not the firebrand who emerged from defeat, speaking up early against the Iraq war and leading the international charge on global warming. It was instead the cautious Gore whose public persona changed from debate to debate and whose answers were often long-winded and equivocal (even about the Kansas Board of Education’s decision to ban the teaching of evolution). Incredibly, he minimized both his environmental passions and his own administration’s achievements throughout the campaign.
He, too, had initially been deemed a winner, the potential recipient of a landslide rather than a narrow popular-vote majority.
…
Mrs. Clinton wouldn’t repeat Mr. Gore’s foolhardy mistake of running away from her popular husband and his record, even if she could. But almost every answer she gave last Sunday was a rambling and often tedious Gore-like filibuster. Like the former vice president, she often came across as a pontificator and an automaton – in contrast to the personable and humorous person she is known to be off-camera. And she seemed especially evasive when dealing with questions requiring human reflection instead of wonkery.
…
In this context it’s worth noting that Mr. Bush’s desperate lame-duck campaign to brand himself as a reincarnation of Harry Truman is not 100 percent ludicrous. A tiny part of the analogy could yet pan out. In 1948, Washington’s commentators and pollsters were convinced that Americans, tired of 15 years of Democratic rule, would vote in a Republican. Like today’s G.O.P., the Democrats back then were saddled with both an unloved incumbent president and open divisions in the party’s ranks on both its left and right flanks. Surely, the thinking went, the beleaguered Democrats couldn’t possibly vanquish a presidential candidate from New York known for his experience, competence, uncontroversial stands and above-the-fray demeanor.
But they did. What’s interesting about both Gore and Dewey is that both lost the Electoral College by a few votes in a few states. Gore, of course, lost by just over 500 votes in Florida. Tom Dewey, as I just learned from Kavon last week over the R408 Batphone, lost the Electoral College to Truman by only a few votes despite losing the popular vote by four points. As such, Rich is arguing that 2008 — with a divided, embattled incumbent party and a PermaFreeze general election frontrunner — is starting to look eerily similar to the two closest presidential elections of the last century.
I agree. I think we’re looking at another nailbiter of epic proportions. Despite my pessimism, the fact remains that Republicans have a number of strong candidates, many of whom have won tough races in the past and all of whom will run away from Bush after the nod is clinched. But we’re still a deeply divided party presiding over an unpopular war. If the Dems were running Mark Warner, the race would already be over. But they’re not. They’re running a candidate who will perpetuate Boomer polarization, who has high negatives, and who is reminiscent of the stiffest losers of presidential history. But still, the Dems have a ridiculous fundraising advantage and Americans now view them more favorably than the GOP on nearly every issue. This is the formula that almost always leads to an election for the history books.
Moreover, the Electoral College, especially in a Rudy/Hillary race, seems to be looking for ways to produce a 269-269 tie and send Tim Russert into dry-erase-board heaven. That’s because all of the Republicans, Rudy included, are doing worse than Bush in the Midwest and border states while Rudy specifically is upping GOP numbers on the coasts. If Rudy wins New Jersey, Washington, and Oregon, three blue states that are showing statistical ties between Rudy and Hillary right now, and if he picks up the Maine congressional district that Bush lost by only 5 points, he gains 34 EVs for the GOP. But if Hillary wins many of the red states in which she currently leads — New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and Arkansas — she picks up 51 red EVs, which brings the country to, you guessed it, a 269-269 split.
As such, if you liked the aftermath of the 2000 election, complete with chads and lawsuits and Bush v. Gore, you’ll love November and December of 2008. Will future law students be reading about the Supreme Court’s decision in Giuliani v. Clinton in their casebooks? Stay tuned.
September 30th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
What I think Frank Rich misses is that, unlike Gore, Hillary Clinton and sidekick Bill are utterly ruthless, and would stop at nothing to get back into the White House.
September 30th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
She may be somewhat similar to Kerry and Gore, but can you imagine her saying: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it.” And I think that the fact that she’s a woman compensates for the fact that she’s not very exciting personally. Gore and Kerry had no such advantage. And, of course, the political climate is much better for the Democrats now than in either 2000 or 2004. Barring a Democratic implosion or a Bush surge, I doubt that the Republicans will have much of a chance.
And I don’t know whether to trust Frank Rich’s word. He’s very liberal and probably doesn’t like Clinton very much for her moderate positioning. It’s no wonder, really, that he is trying to brand her as a general election loser.
September 30th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
The cackle — I wonder what would happen if any of the other candidates, Democrat or Republican,
would get away with giving that cackle everytime they are asked a question they are trying to deflect.
So much for equality between the sexes.
September 30th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Moderate positioning? Hey, ‘Wakened, just cause some beltwat geeks say its moderate, doesn’t mean it is.
If one were to believe the fawning praise of inside the beltway political pundits, a shrewd strategist devising a plan on November 8, 2006 for a Democrat to win the White House on November 5, 2008 would propose that a candidate:
1) Change positions on the Iraq War with every release of a new Gallup Poll;
2) Vote to cut off funds to the troops in the field;
3) Slander the commanding general of a successful surge of troops in the field on national television by calling him a liar with a cute phrase worthy of those bewildered by the meaning of “is”;
4) Cackle at, instead of jabbing the knee of, Chris Wallace;
5) Express dismay that the Supreme Court upheld the federal law banning partial birth abortion;
6) Take money from a 15-year fugitive from justice;
7) Have her campaign utilize (and remain married to herself) a bitter, angry man that no longer can contain his Stephanopoulos described temper; and
Yeah, the Hillary is really disciplined. The kind of discipline that McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis had.
Many of even the beltway conservative pundits appear to be guilty, with respect to Hillary, of what most of the MSM is guilty of with respect to the Iraq War: boxing themselves in a position where to recognize reality is to discredit their own prior judgments.
Hillary has not been disciplined since she first met Bill in the Yale Law Library or even before, when she first read The Feminine Mystique.
Nor has she been disciplined since her first vote against tax cuts as a senator or her first move towards defeat in Iraq. She has been all over the lot on Iraq. It’s all on tape. Rush plays her varying statements all the time.
Have Fred Barnes and David Brooks and the rest of the conservative writers not heard them? Have they not seen her votes? If they have, then what can explain their obligatory statements that she is disciplined except that they want to be loved by their liberal cohorts in DC?
Discipline for a liberal that wants to be president means disguising ones liberalism. See the successful campaign in 1992 (see also Perot recruitment)
Teaching second graders about sex is not discipline except for those that really want to teach first graders the same.
Even Bob Shrum wouldn’t suggest that kind of discipline.
I contend that these liberal democrats simply cannot help themselves and that they will not allow our Republican candidate to lose in 2008.
I want to make a montage of Hillary Clinton at the Congressional Black Caucus meeting where she was seated to the left of Harry Belafonte when he called her “Our White, Socialist Progressive” to a standing ovation…
…followed by a clip of her recent cackling on the Sunday morning talk shows when she was asked by Schiffer whether or not her new health insurance plan amounted to Socialism…
…segueing into a clip of her saying that she wants to “take the profits” of the the oil companies…
…segueing into a clip of her saying that she’d revive the “tradition” of savings by giving $5,000 to every newborn with government money…
…seguing back into the clip of Belafonte calling her “Our White, Socialist Progressive…” who was going to “cut the legs off” of the Right in this country…
we need to chuck on your own individualism for shared responsibility
General Petraeous is a liar
saying we need to go to war in Iraq; saying she supports the troops; saying Bush misled her; saying we need to remove the troops before jan 2009 or she will; saying she can’t say she would remove troops by 2013
let’s go get some quotes of hers about Reagan from the late 80s and 90s
September 30th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Or maybe Hillary is like the NY Mets?
Just a reminder here folks. CW aside, the Dem race is not over.
September 30th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Gamecock: ‘Moderate positioning? Hey, ‘Wakened, just cause some beltwat geeks say its moderate, doesn’t mean it is.’
I’m sorry, good sir, but merely because you repeat your tired refrain, doesn’t make it true either. In fact, I believe that you are wrong more often than you are right. It is a big mystery to me as to why the people on RedState, who are generally intelligent, keep recommending your diary. Maybe they do so for comic relief.
I was somewhat bothered by your diary, because I’m not used to absolute nonsense being posted on the frontpages of this website – unless it’s done by Jason whatthehellhisnameis and Billy Valentine. Thank you for providing me with an opportunty to respond to it, now.
1) Change positions on the Iraq War with every release of a new Gallup Poll;
The important thing is not whether you change your position, nearly every politician does that. The important thing is whether you can get away with it. Thus far, she has handled it beter than your candidate has.
’2) Vote to cut off funds to the troops in the field;’
John Kerry did that, and he got 48% of the vote in a bad year for Democrats. As long as you can justify your votes, and Clinton is phenomenal at doing that, you’ll not get hurt. Clinton says that she’ll only support providing funds with a timetable. I don’t agree with that, but it’s hardly what you’re portraying it to be.
’3) Slander the commanding general of a successful surge of troops in the field on national television by calling him a liar with a cute phrase worthy of those bewildered by the meaning of “isâ€;’
She said that believing the good General requires the “willing suspension of disbelief”. Not that she didn’t call him a liar, which would require that he knows he’s reporting falsehoods. However, she’s probably just saying that he is reporting everything in too positive a light, since he’s being required to evaluate his own performance. It’s very different from calling him “General Betray Us”. And that is fair game.
She can be faulted, however, for suddenly turning against ‘non-binding resolutions’, after supporting them against the surge. However, the Republican candidates have the opposite problem, Giuliani, the person who blasted Congress for considering non-binding resolutions, criticized Clinton for voting agaist the Moveon.org-one.
’5) Express dismay that the Supreme Court upheld the federal law banning partial birth abortion;’
Her main objection was that it didn’t include an exception for the physical health of the mother, and the fact that the Supreme Court no longer requires that any abortion law include a health exception. Indeed, someone who believes that partial-birth abortion should be legal, isn’t fit to be dog-catcher.
’6) Take money from a 15-year fugitive from justice;’
If it can be proven that she knew that he was a 15-year fugitive from justice, that’s a fair point. However, campaigns don’t have foolproof background checks.
’7) Have her campaign utilize (and remain married to herself) a bitter, angry man that no longer can contain his Stephanopoulos described temper; and’
I’ve heard Bill Clinton be described as many things, but “bitter, angry man”?
‘ Endorse teaching 2nd graders about homosexuality. Teaching second graders about sex is not discipline except for those that really want to teach first graders the same.’
I’ve seen the debate, and she did nothing of the sort. The question was about the candidates’ own children. And Clinton was the only one who muttered something about ‘parental discretion’. And it wasn’t really about ‘sex’, it was about some stupid marriage. It isn’t about sex, any more than any other book in which one character marries another is about sex.
‘I contend that these liberal democrats simply cannot help themselves and that they will not allow our Republican candidate to lose in 2008.’
You’re entitled to your own delusions, but do not expect reality to abide by them.
‘saying we need to go to war in Iraq; saying she supports the troops; saying Bush misled her; saying we need to remove the troops before jan 2009 or she will; saying she can’t say she would remove troops by 2013′
And then? She’ll spin it and say that it shows that she’s for a ‘responsible’ withdrawal from Iraq. If she doesn’t fear that it will hurt her among the very liberal primary voters, how could it hurt her in the general election?
I’m sure that exposing your nonsense means that I’m a liberal Democrat and blah blah. But if you think that you can beat Clinton on the basis of that sorry list you’ve compiled, you’re dead wrong. It’s fun living in one’s own fantasy world, but it does tend to color your judgement. Clinton is formidable. Misunderestimate her at your own risk.
September 30th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Consider the rest of your life an opportunity to respond to me.
smile
September 30th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
Gamecock: ‘Consider the rest of your life an opportunity to respond to me.’
Was this yet another bad joke? Or are you upset that I refuted your silly little post? It didn’t take too much time, really. You make it too easy, and I thank you for that.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
You thanked me for providing you the opportunity, so I gave you more! eternity!
September 30th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Gamecock: ‘You thanked me for providing you the opportunity, so I gave you more! eternity!’
Well, keep up the good work, then. Nailing you is rather entertaining – although it does feel like clubbing a baby seal.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Just promise you won’t go work for Hillary. With you, she might just have a chance.
September 30th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Okay, I’ll offer my services to Alan Keyes. He’ll win with 132%!
September 30th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Yes, the reparation votes!
September 30th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Seriously though, I have a lot of experience losing in the dem party counting on the media to hide liberal views and talking myself into thinking we would win with the very arguments you make. A campaign finds them out once the voters are attentive. It never worked unless perot ran!
September 30th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
I can only laugh at your apparent belief that the GOP nominee will win easily. Kerry was one of the more liberal members of the Senate, and a sitting president only managed to beat him by about 3%. The political climate is very different today, and it is likely to be the same on Election Day 2008. Clinton is a much better politician than Kerry, she isn’t going to make many mistakes (the ‘mistakes’ you cite would look rather petty in a TV commercial), and she’ll likely mop the floor with most of the Republicans. Underestimate her at your own risk.
I have to say, at first I thought that Clinton would be hurt by the Hsu-scandal. But she seems to have weathered it rather well. In fact, her numbers have only increased (not because of that scandal of course) since then, she’s now leading Giuliani 48-43 and Thompson 49-41 (Rasmussen). Her favorables have also increased from about 50-49 to 52-46, although this might well be statistical noise.
September 30th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
carter, mondale and dukakis all led at this point
bush was a terrible campaigner
hillary is a liberal
high negatives
20 years of quotes
calling Petraeous a liar is not minor
and she is a woman
we are at war
we have never elected a woman president
nor have we ever elected an admitted modern day liberal
September 30th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Gamecock: ‘carter, mondale and dukakis all led at this point’
Fair enough. But my reference to poll numbers was only to underscore that the Hsu-scandal hasn’t hurt Clinton, not to assert that she will win with certainty. She will win with near-certainty (70-90%) for entirely different reasons.
‘bush was a terrible campaigner’
I don’t think so. He might be a gaffe-machine, but he’s not a bad campaigner. His ability to stay on message (say the same thing over and over again) is unmatched in modern politics.
‘hillary is a liberal’
That accusation is not going to derail her candidacy.
‘high negatives’
They’re pretty high, but not much higher than other candidates at the end of the election cycle. In fact, Rasmussen now says that Giuliani has higher negatives than Clinton. Of course, the intensity of the anti-Clinton sentiment is much worse, but it doesn’t make much of a difference in anything but turnout.
’20 years of quotes’
You have 20 years of quotes for Giuliani, 13 years for Romney, 30 years for McCain and 15 years for Thompson (including some Watergate baggage).
‘calling Petraeous a liar is not minor’
It won’t stick, for reasons I have already explained.
‘we are at war’
That is the main reason why she’s going to win, unfortunately.
‘we have never elected a woman president’
That really doesn’t prove much. We hadn’t elected anyone who was divorced in 1980, but that didn’t prevent Reagan from getting elected. People who strongly oppose the war and want to surrender won’t all of a sudden vote for the Republican candidate, because she’s a woman. It’s just not going to happen.
‘nor have we ever elected an admitted modern day liberal’
She says she’s a progressive.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:20 am
Awake – see this
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0907/6088.html