 HILLARY DOES A VERY DUMB THING
For years now I've been saying that there's no way that Senator Hillary Clinton of New York would win the Democratic presidential nomination. That was before no one of any stature challenged her for it and every state that matters started moving their primaries ridiculously far ahead in the schedule. Next year, California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan and Florida will all be holding their primaries within two weeks of one another. Unless something truly spectacular happens between now and Christmas, Hillary will be the Democratic nominee. And because President Bush has spent so long antagonizing pretty much everyone, she'll be the odds-on favorite to be the 44th president of the United States. I'm not saying that's an absolute certainty. After all, it was just three years ago that Howard Dean pissed away a thirty point lead in Iowa, 50 million dollars and any hope of ever being elected to anything in less than a month. And I've never been one to discount the likelihood of the Democrats blowing a sure thing, but that's a very dangerous way to bet an election. It's hard to conclude anything other than the fix is in at the state level. Things are set up in such way that the only way Hillary doesn't get the nomination is for her to actively lose it. Obama's support is a mile wide and an inch deep, and everyone else in the race is an amatuer. While it's still possible for an Anybody But Clinton coalition to build around someone like Al Gore, it's getting awfully late in the day for that. Since it's almost a given that Hillary will be the nominee and the odds-on favorite to win the general election, I think we can agree that this race is pretty much her's to fuck up. And ..... She's off! Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday raised the prospect of a terror attack before next year's election, warning that it could boost the GOP's efforts to hold on to the White House.
Discussing the possibility of a new nightmare assault while campaigning in New Hampshire, Clinton also insisted she is the Democratic candidate best equipped to deal with it. "It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord.
"So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that," she added. The former first lady made the surprising comments as she explained to supporters that she has beaten back the GOP's negative attacks for years, and is ready to do so again. That statement is confusing in about sixteen different ways and politically stupid in nine others. The only positive the Republicans have going into next year is that there hasn't been a terrorst attack on the American homeland since 9/11. What else have they got going for them, their brilliant fiscal policy? The stunning success in Iraq? The mystical way that they made corruption in Washington a thing of the past? The way the rest of the world likes the United States so much more than it did when Bill Clinton was president? President Bush is now less popular than Richard Nixon was for a longer sustained period of time. And that hasn't exactly helped the GOP's presidential prospects. The fact that there hasn't been another attack is all the Republicans have. If the US gets hit before November of '08, they literally having nothing to run on. How precisely then would an attack "automatically give the Republicans again? People reasonably gave Bush a pass on 9/11 for the simple reason that he had only been president for just under nine months on 9/11. The first attack on the World Trade Center by Ramzi Yousef occurred within weeks of President Clinton's inauguration. He had a full eight years to respond to al-Qaeda, and he didn't. The only time he mentioned Osama bin Laden's name in public was when he launched cruise missles in the wake of Monica Lewinsky's testimony in August of 1998. But by election day next year, Mr. Bush will have been president for eight years. Furthermore, he will have had a Republican House for six of those years and a Reapublican Senate for five. If the GOP takes credit for the abscence of an attack - which they do - they will also have to take rsponsibility for any attack that does occur. As much as they like to think otherwise, Republicans can't have it both ways. Furthermore, the Republican boogyman campaign strategy doesn't work anymore. In 2002 and 2004, the campaign slogan of "vote for us or you will be murdered by scary Arabs" was smashingly successful. By last November it didn't help them from having their asses kicked right out of Congress. That particular well has been visited far too many times and is now dry. Rudy Giuliani campaigns on that ground because without it, he's just a guy with a funny name who loves fags, hates guns and gets divorced a lot. And even campaigning as the Hero of Ground Zero is starting to backfire on him. If we are agreed that the above is the case, an attack before November 2008 would most probably be a net benefit for the Democrats. But that would require a great deal of subtlety. Unlike pretty much everyone else on the planet, Americans tend to rally around the flag during a national crisis. If Democrats start getting all shrill and blaming Bush out loud, it would backfire. But a quiet, dignified pledge to address the issue on a bipartisan basis would say everything that the Democrats shouldn't say out loud. However, if we've learned anythhing in the last 15 years it is that subtlety isn't Hillary's strong suit. There's something that's always grated me about Hillary's central claim of candidacy, the fact that her "35 year record" makes her the "most qualified candidate" for the presidency. Actually, her record consists of suing people so their kids can divorce them, shady real-estate deals and sleeping (or not) with the president. You may not like him a whole lot, but Joe Biden has been in the U.S Senate since 1977 and has chaired both the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees. His resume impresses me just a touch more than Hillary's. But Senator Clinton is the first serious candidate for the presidency, which poses practical problems for everyone else in the field. Pointing out that Hillary's qualifications consist of little more than being an especially prominent housewife runs the risk of making anyone who does it look like a mysoginst asshole. Unless, that is, she says something so remarkably stupid that it makes reasonable people doubt that she knows anything at all about politics like she did this week. It should go without saying that the Democratic candidates with brains saw this opening and started plowing right through it. "Frankly, I find it tasteless to discuss the political implications when talking about a potential terrorist attack on the United States," Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement. Sen. John Edwards, campaigning in New Hampshire, said, "If we're talking about America being attacked the last thing we should do is be engaged in political calculation." A presidential candidate should "focus on what's good for America, not politics, and what needs to be done to keep this country safe," he said. Seeing that might be well and truly fucked, Team Hillary is now trying to change the context of her original remarks after the fact. Blake Zeff, a Clinton spokesman, said yesterday the New York senator "was making clear that she has the strength and experience to keep the country safe." When reminded that her comments dealt with the political implications of a terrorist attack, Zeff had no further comment. Christ, Hillary isn't even as good as dissembling as her husband is. Although, to be fair, no one is.
Hillary could have made a very reasonable point that if there were another terror attack, the American military is stretched so thin in Iraq that it couldn't respond to it. Instead she threw that away and turned it into a political calculation. And that's not a very smart thing to do in public.
Now Hillary's primary opponents - and the Republican nominee in the general election afterwards - have the perfect TV ad. They have her equating the lives and security of the American people with the electoral calculations of rapid response politics.
Look at the comments of Dodd and Edwards as just the opening salvo. If the Republicans are smart, they'll just stand back and let the Democrats smack her around over this. Then Hillary will explain "what she really meant" in six different ways and she'll get smacked around for that. With other Democrats taking the lead, Hillary won't even have the luxury of saying "Look at what those mean Republicans are saying about me."
Will the Republican candidates be asked about Clinton's remarks? Of course they will. And the smart ones will just smile and say that they're not running for the Democratic nomination and will stay out of their primaries, thank you very much. It would be far better that they keep their powder dry and let the RNC work its magic come the middle of February.
That's why I expect Giuliani to pile on by Tuesday at the very latest.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Tongue-Tied By: Dan Bern From: Breathe
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