Hillarys Achilles Heel

Hillary Clinton leads all her rivals in the preseason polls for the Democratic Presidential nomination. She has been holding a double digit national lead for the last eight months. But before we hold the coronation, there is something that is worth taking a look at. It just might not be all over yet. And at least one candidate seems to be getting it.

What might Hillary's Achilles Heel be? And who is going after it? All this and more, below the fold...

Last month the Washington Post had this headline: Clinton Owes Lead in Poll To Support From Women . The lead for the story reads like this:

The consistent lead that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has maintained over Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and others in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination is due largely to one factor: her support from women.

The story goes on to say:

Her 15-point lead in the poll is entirely attributable to that margin.

Entirely attributable to women. Remarkable. Or is it?

A Newsweek poll earlier this year found

86% say they would vote for a qualified woman candidate for president if their party nominated one. But when they were asked whether America is ready to elect a woman president, only 55% say yes.

Interestingly, Newsweek said

men are more likely than women to say the country is ready for a woman president.

To get only 55% support for the ready for a woman president question with men more likely than women to say yes, a majority of women polled must have said no.

And there is this little tidbit from the Washington Post again:

In a Post-ABC News poll conducted in April, 43 percent of female independents said they definitely will not vote for her if she is the Democratic nominee

So in a strange twist of fate, it seems that women are the Achilles Heel of Hillary Clintons' Presidential aspirations. A majority of women don't believe that the country is yet ready for a woman president. And a very significant number of independent women are definitely not ready for Hillary Clinton.

So, do any of the other campaigns seem to understand this about Clinton? Again from the Post:

Harrison Hickman, a pollster for Edwards, said he believes there is potential for Clinton's early bond with these voters to falter. "When you talk to women in more detail, they express doubts," Hickman said. Only when rival campaigns start trying to exploit those doubts, and when Clinton's camp starts addressing them, will the polls start to paint a more meaningful portrait of the race, he said.

So what is the Edwards camp doing about it? They are rolling out their not so secret weapon, Elizabeth Edwards:

The wife of the Democratic presidential hopeful from North Carolina, John Edwards, is taking the starring role in a new campaign commercial for her husband.

“You’re not going to outsmart him. He works harder than any human being that I know, always has, “ says Edwards, in the television ad now playing in the crucial early primary state of New Hampshire.

Elizabeth Edwards is also going directly after Hillary:

she fired away at Hillary Clinton, telling the on-line magazine Salon that “sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women’s issues. I’m sympathetic; she wants to be commander in chief. But she’s just not as vocal a women’s advocate as I want to see. John is.”

Here is something else from John Edwards about his wife speaking her own mind:

it appears he’s just fine with his wife speaking her mind, telling us that “nothing about Elizabeth surprises me. You can’t control what she says, nor would I ever want to, that’s one of the great things about her.”

Seems to me that is the kind of thing women voters would want to hear from a male candidate about his attitude towards women.

YouTube Debate Impressions

The big winner tonight was the format. Questions coming from real people. Yeah, the media (CNN) ultimately picked the ones shown, the universe they picked from was questions submitted by real people.

I went down to a local sports bar to watch the debate. I was told that a bunch of people were going to be there. The bunch turned out to be about 15 folks, and it was a pretty progressive 15 folks at that. Lots of Kucinich fans.

To my mind, John Edwards was the clear winner among the serious candidates tonight. I actually thought Joe Biden did pretty well, but it is hard to take his candidacy seriously. But Edwards was superb most of the night. He talked about taking power away from the special interests as the only way to get big change. He noted that we wouldn't get big change by trading our insiders for theirs. And his answers on Universal Health Care blew the top off the response meters.

Hillary Clinton abandoned the tag liberal, choosing progressive instead. John Edwards rejected reparations for slavery, but noted that there was a lot we could do to make up for the unequal treatment still occurring in our country today. He specifically mentioned predatory lending to blacks. Barack Obama also demurred on reparations, but suggested too that there were investments that could be made, particularly in education, to ease the disparities among the races.

Obama and Clinton got asked the race / gender question. They both tried to shrug it off with humor. Obama suggested that he proves his African American credentials trying to catch a cab in Manhattan. Clinton said she "had no choice" but to run as a woman. But John Edwards still came up with the best answer here. He told folks who were thinking about not voting for Obama because he is black, or for Hillary because she is a woman that "I don't want your vote".

Edwards again led in his answer to a question about who would be a better advocate for women. Edwards pointed out that the issues he stresses in his campaign, poverty and health care have a disproportionate impact on women. He stated that his issues were women's issues. Clinton pointed to her trip to China where she stated that women's rights are human rights.

Edwards got the gay marriage question and promptly fumbled it. He did say that it would be wrong for anyone to use their faith to deny rights to others. However, this was his weal est moment in the debate. Obama hit it on the head by stating that everyone should be equal under the law. As for marriage, that should be left up to the churches. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Edwards shone again on the health care issue. He has the only plan that mandates universal health care coverage. Hillary has the scars from trying in the early 90s. Obama tried to say his plan provides for universal coverage, but it does not mandate it. Round to Edwards.

I still think there are too many people on the stage. Biden, Dodd, Gravel and Kucinich have no chance to win the nomination. What are they doing up there? All they are doing is taking time away from letting us hear from the candidates who have a chance to actually win some delegates.

Floridians are going to have a real voice in the nomination process this time around. Our late January primary is early enough in the process for our votes to count in selecting the nominee. A new Quinnipiac poll has Hillary Clinton with a 22 point lead at 36% over Barack Obama and Al Gore who were tied at 14%. John Edwards registered only 9%.

Here are two things I don't know. I don't know if enough people are paying attention to these debates for them to make much of a difference in anybodies minds. And I don't know enough people who support Hillary Clinton to get her to 36% in a poll of people I know.

George Bush: Democrats + Politics = Bad

You really have to hand it to these guys sometimes. After all this is the administration that has politicized everything from the CIA, to the Department of Justice to the Drug Czar. You think this might keep them from throwing rocks called politics. But no, it seems that it hasn't slowed them down one little teeny tiny bit.

So what does the Bush administration do when the Democrats are trying to move policy in a direction that Herr Bush doesn't want it to go? Why he accuses the Democrats of playing politics with (fill in the blank) serious issue.

How often have they done this? Why do they do it? And is it working? The answers to these and other questions are below the fold...


How often does the Bush administration accuse the Dems of playing politics with an issue? A Google search of

george bush democrats playing politics

produced 1,950,000 hits. That's right. Nearly two million hits. George Bush has accused the Democrats of playing politics with Iraq, Social Security, homeland security, supporting our troops, trade, terrorism, the federal budget and just about anything else you can imagine. 1,950,000 is a lot of Google hits, particularly for just a 6 1/2 year span. That's roughly 300,000 hits per year of the Bush Administration.

Why do they do this? Is there a method to this madness? The Pew Research Center has been polling on Trends in Political Attitudes and Core Values for 20 years. Over that time period, when Republicans have been in the White House, the number of people agreeing that when something is run by the government it is usually inefficient and wasteful went up. When Bill Clinton was President that number went down. When Bush 41 finished the 12 year Republican run in the White House in 1992, 69% of respondents agreed about government run deals being inefficient and wasteful. By the time Bill Clinton left the White House, that number was down to 53%.

That number is now back up to 62%. Republicans create the self fulfilling prophecy about government being inherently bad. They run government into the ground when they are in charge (See Iraq and Katrina) and then they go

see, we told you government was bad.

They also equate government with politics. So whenever the Dems are trying to do something they don't want to happen, they accuse the Dems of just "playing politics", which is bad.

Who is their target audience for this continuous ranting that Dems are "just playing politics"? Not suprisingly, it is the independent voter. The quintessential "persuadable" voter. Again from Pew:

Republicans, Democrats and independents are all more likely today than five years ago to see the government as wasteful, and less likely to say that elected officials care about what regular people think.

61% of Independents now agree with the proposition that government is inefficient and wasteful (remember - government is run by people playing politics). Less than 1/3 of Independents agree with the proposition

Most elected officials care what people like me think

Elected officials. You know those nasty people who "play politics".

How is all this working for the Republicans? Finally, some good news for us, bad news for the Gopers. Here's what Pew has to say:

the Republican Party ... has rapidly lost public support, particularly among political independents. Faced with an unpopular president who is waging an increasingly unpopular war, the proportion of Americans who hold a favorable view of the Republican Party stands at 41%, down 15 points since January 2001.

And who is leading the charge in this change in attitude towards the GOP? Pew has this to say:

perceptions of the GOP have fallen dramatically among political independents: Among voters with no firm ties to either party, favorable views of the GOP have declined from 55% in 2001, to 46% in 2004, to 40% in the current survey.

Despite the Bushco's desperate attempt to paint the Dems as "bad politicians", the independent voters are just not buying it. Good spin can not make up for bad policy forever.

There is a danger here for the Dems however, and Pew spells it out quite clearly:

ratings of the Democratic Party have remained relatively stable. Despite their significant electoral gains in the 2006 midterms, public ratings of the Democratic Party are nearly identical to where they were in 1994, when they lost 52 House seats to the Republicans. And the GOP’s deteriorating image since Bush’s reelection – down 11 points since December 2004 – has not been mirrored by an improved image of the Democratic Party. The 54% favorability rating Democrats receive today is virtually identical to their 53% rating in December 2004.

If the Democrats want to maintain this advantage that the Gopers have handed to us, it is time to stand and deliver.

Bush Plays Politics With Troops Lives

George W Bush vetoed the bill that provided the money to being our troops home safely from Iraq. He did this before the ink was even dry on the bill. There is no way he could have actually read this bill and given this veto careful consideration.

By choosing to veto this bill the President refused the funds needed by our troops to execute a safe and orderly withdrawal from Iraq. The President is playing a political game of chicken with the lives of our troops. Is there a method behind this madness?

Follow along and we'll see what Bush is up to.

George W. Bush thinks he knows how this is going to turn out. He has a model in mind for this very kind of showdown where a President won and the Congress and particularly the Speaker of the House lost. But he is not reading these tea leaves correctly, because the stars are not aligned as they were in 1995 - 1996.

In 1995, a newly elected Republican majority in Congress, led by their brash new Speaker, Newt Gingrich, vowed to slow the growth of government spending and eventually get a balanced budget. The Democratic President, Bill Clinton's approval ratings were bouncing around in the 40% area. (I bet Bush wishes he would see those kind of numbers again.) Gingrich thought he saw his chance.

Gingrich and the President could not agree on a budget. Not only did Gingrich want to slow the growth of the Federal budget, he wanted to change spending priorities at the same time. Since they couldn't come to terms over a budget, they turned to the time honored tradition of passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government running until something could be worked out. However, Gingrich was not content to pass a "clean" CR. That would be one that kept the government running in the same direction and at the same levels as the previous budget. Gingrich insisted that the CR contain the spending priorities he couldn't get the President to agree to in the regular budget bill.

Bill Clinton called his bluff and refused to sign the CR. He was holding out for a "clean" CR, one that would keep the government running as it had been. Gingrich believed that he had the upper hand and the people either wouldn't care if the government shut down, or would blame Bill Clinton. Well, people did care, and they blamed Newt Gingrich. In the end, Gingrich had to cave and passed the clean CR that Clinton wanted. Here's how one analysis puts it:

When push came to shove, Newt got shellacked by a better politician, Bill Clinton... The fatal mistake for Newt was when he bellied up to the bar and called Clinton's bluff on the budget deals which led to the closing down of the Federal Government. Newt underestimated the power of the press as well as the power of Bill Clinton to evoke sympathy.

This is the model George Bush has in mind when he thinks of his big showdown with Congress. But this situation is dramatically different. Bush's job approval rating is currently 32%. He hasn't seen a 40% approval in well over a year. 71% of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling the situation with Iraq. The same poll shows 64% of Americans believe that the United States should set a time line for withdrawal from Iraq in 2008. This is precisely what the Congress just did.

The Congress passed a bill to provide funds for a safe and orderly withdrawal from Iraq. An overwhelming majority of Americans support this move, disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq and disapprove generally of Bush's job performance as President. How does he think this is going to come out in his favor?

George Bush has refused the money to bring our troops home safely from Iraq. He has refused to listen to the will of the American people and their duly elected representatives in the Congress. And he is now playing politics with the lives of our troops.

We should refuse to let him get away with it.

John Edwards 2008 ???

John Edwards announced his candidacy for President of the United States in New Orleans today. To paraphrase a line from my favorite movie, Casablanca, "I'm shocked, shocked to hear there is campaigning going on here. And here are your delegates, Senator." Edwards has been practicallyliving in Iowa for the past two years. It has been paying off for him. He has been leading the polls there until being tied by Barack Obamain the most recent poll.

The line up of Democratic primaries in 2008 is very much in John Edwards favor. He is well positioned to win Iowa and Nevada. He need not worry so much about New Hampshire, but must do well in South Carolina. Winning 3 out of the 4 first contests in 2008 would make Edwards the clear favorite for the 2008 nomination. That kind of success potential should give Edwards a real leg up in the money primary as well.

The Edwards message is one that he has been honing for the past 3 years. His "two Americas" message has been reinforced by his One America PAC. He has already put a video up on >YouTubeand live blogged at DailyKostoday. He is doing a Live on Line Town Hall Meeting tonight, from, you guessed it, Des Moines,Iowa. If this is not a nod to Time Magazine's Person of the Year, you, I don't think we'll ever see one.

I was leaning towards former Virginia Governor Mark Warner until he took himself out of the running before the 2006 mid term elections. Since then, I have been sitting back trying to see if someone will really grab my attention. In 2003, I was intensely curious about Howard Dean. But when it became clear that Bob Graham was going to run, there was no question in my mind who I was going to support.

There are still a few more days in 2006 left. The question now is, do I become a 2006 supporter of (fill in the blank), or do I stay on the sidelines watching the game unfold? It had been my intention to wait a while to see what developed. But I have submitted a question to the Edwards Town Hall meeting tonight. I asked the same question of John Kerry in March of 2003. There is no way that Edwards can fail to give a better answer than Kerry gave, but I am going to reserve judgement until I get an answer to my question:

Senator, the Republicans win because they win a solid South. How do you
plan to win in the South?

Stay tuned.