Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, January 09, 2008 1:28:32 AM
So Hillary "found her voice" this week. What she also found was that many voters seem to be questioning Barack's electability as well.
She will need her organization and money now, in order to swim in a dozen or so television markets at once in the next two weeks.
And her message will continue to change. Hell, it's changed markedly already. It's why it had to change that is her problem.
Before we get specifically into that, let's step back into the recent past. In 2000, a Governor from Texas was running for President as somebody who could work with the other party. And the record showed he did exactly that. He didn't mention that in Texas, many Democrats are GOP lite by the standards of many other parts of the country.
He caught a lot of heat from his supporters for toadying up to Ted Kennedy on No Child Left Behind. But more revealing was an incident that happened when a Justice Department building was named for RFK. Bobby's daughter was invited and when she spoke, she spoke to her child and said "This is not your Grandfather's building"- a slap in the face to both Bush and John Ashcroft as thanks for being asked to speak.
It came to pass that, in the political world of Bush and Karl Rove, they responded to the hostility by essentially developing a coalition government of their core supporters and whatever swing voters they could muster, and ignore the rest. No consultation, no token gestures, no communication. We don't need you to govern, was the message.
In 2002, this calculation paid off, and we had a political atmosphere where Republicans ran everything and they weren't listening to or cooperating with the minority. The entrance into Iraq in 2003 only made this worse.
Then in 2006, the Democrats had an exhilarating election year made possible by the combination of Emmanuel Rahm's brilliant strategy of finding middle road candidates in swing districts and the great GOP civil war over immigration.
The day after Election Day, Nancy Pelosi said, "This election was a referendum on the Iraq War" Over a year later, we are still there, only with more troops and nobody is pulling either soldiers or funding.
So, we have a Democratic base that was out of power and ignored, and they were pissed. Then they were in power and felt ignored again. Now they are frustrated and seething. They are furious.
THAT is Hillary's problem. She spent a good deal of time in the Senate building a track record as a Defense moderate, in part because her experience with her husband taught her that having access to the nuclear trigger was something that gave the voters pause when deciding if you were fit for the job.
Then she starts running for President and finds that the primary voters that are her first obstacle won't even ponder anything but ending the war. The nomination contest becomes a competition between who would pull out the fastest and who never voted for the war in the first place.
Her plan was always to have so much money, endorsements, staff and momentum that she could swim past these people and wade into being enough of a centrist to compete in some red states.
It isn't bad enough that nearly 40% of the likely voters wouldn't vote for her under any circumstances. She has a core base that drives around with bumper stickers like, "If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention", which is a clever ploy to win over the swing voters who still disagree with them by announcing that they are either stupid or asleep at the switch.
I feel her pain. This race will become competitive, because the wagons will circle around her and bring her well within ten points of the Republican candidate, no matter what she does. She will raise her quarter billion $, and will enter November convinced that the White House is one Republican gaffe out of her reach.