Her advisers this week have rejected the idea, spreading in Democratic circles, that she would rush to announce as a way to overshadow Mr. Obama, who has engendered intense Democratic interest as a steady critic of the Iraq war and as a skilled orator who comes across as a nonpartisan and unifying force in politics.
Like Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama is also poised to make history. If successful in the primaries, he would be the first African-American to win the Democratic nomination. He is her only real rival at this point in drawing huge crowds of voters at political stops and driving the 2008 political discussion in the media.
This past week alone has shown the ways that the Clinton and Obama candidacies are intersecting: He announced Tuesday and dominated political coverage in the media; she swept in on Wednesday, fresh from her trip to Iraq, and appeared on the network morning shows to talk about the war (pushing the news of his candidacy to second place); later that day, he issued a statement embracing a cap on American troops in Iraq, hours after she had made a similar proposal. And they are now both jockeying for donors in New York, Hollywood, and elsewhere.
January 20, 2007
Hillary's in.
It's official. Did she announce early because of Barack Obama?
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38 comments:
Hillary and Barak don't need to jockey for donors. The country sees the risk of another republican administration and wil be lined up to contribute.
hdhouse, then why do many polls have Giuliani or McCain leading either?
I am rooting for a race between Obama and either Giuliani or, as hinted as a possibility by Instapundit and Bill Hobbs, Fred Thompson. I think that any of those three would be a refreshing change in tenor from the last four administrations.
Political entertainment at its best. My only regret is that I live in [early caucus]Iowa and will probably have to listen to my Democrat friends bragging about meeting one of them.
And some people were ready a while.
Quoting NYT:
“I’m in,” she says in a statement on her new campaign Web site.
“And I’m in to win.”
Another good slogan.
I'm not judging her campaign machine based on two upbeat, politically-seasoned slogans, how could one, but the lady and her staff have come to play.
The good thing about this early announcement on both Obama and her parts, is that they can cannabalise each other early -- giving media something to concentrate about for well over a solid year.
We have very little to go on, in terms of platform, with Obama, and Hillary is a deeply polarising figure, so we'll get a full dosage of "minority" angles, as well as "personality"-driven reports for a while.
(This of course, also allows the Iraq war a respite to work out the kinks of the new escalation plan, and the next stage of the proceedings: dealings with Iran)
The first, is a bad thing in terms of TV content. The second, a good thing.
Watching the news shows on Sunday, will be revealing as to the tone set for the next 18 months.
I say this without one iota of excitement. Let's hope another Althousian, is as giddy as a schoolgirl at this announcement.
Cheers,
Victoria
This ought to be entertaining, even if I do live in [early caucus] Iowa and might have to listen to local Democrats bragging about meeting one of them.
"This stops, at least temporarily, the momentum he was building."
It does?
Enigmaticore -
With money and a race on, McCain's flipflopping and Bush support will be front and center. Please don't forget that Hillary was beating 3-wifeRudy like a rented mule before he dropped out of the NY Senate race. She has his number.
The reason everyone is in is simple. Who gets the democratic nomination will be president.
There's something very sad and very retro about the NYT's glee over the first woman/African American to be nominated. Powell, although a Rethuglican and t/4 child of Satan, almost made it, but apparently his family said no.
The rest of the world has moved on. When will the media realize it's not 1964?
Clinton is in, Obama is in, let the Outhousian(*) begin!
(*) Outhousing := a nasty little smear served with a layer of plausible deniability from Professor Ann Althouse -- serve cold.
"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
Bart,
I agree with the problem, but not the solution. Or at least, I don't think there's any need for so drastic a solution to that problem. It doesn't even require a solution as drastic as my oft-mooted suggestion of (in essence) repealing the 17th Amendment.
What needs to happen is that CSPAN cameras need to be removed from the Senate and its committee rooms. I truly believe that they are a corrupting influence, as much as I enjoy watching CSPAN. If Senators are focussed not on getting face time on cameras but on actually doing the business of the Senate, that will improve the operation of the chamber, and might dissuade Senators from thinking of themselves as important media personalities. I had already reached this conclusion, but the Roberts hearings, and the behavior of Senators on both sides of the aisle, absolutely convinced me of it.
At very least, that should be tried first.
Oh boy. A Senator running for President. Bart is right on.
My Uncle who is a Liberal Democrat from NY (who tried to convert me back in 2003) said he is not voting for Hilary. Here is his reasons:
1) Her hug with Suha Arafat. The amount of Jews her husband killed in unmeasurable. Why kiss the wife?
2) During the Health Care issue, no Doctors were called in (He is a ear, Nose and Throat Doctor).
3) She only goes where the polls are, she does not stand for anything (just like the modern Dem party), so she will fall for anything.
"Please don't forget that Hillary was beating 3-wifeRudy like a rented mule before he dropped out of the NY Senate race"
1) In New York, which is not exactly representative of the country as a whole.
And
2) A quick Google search shows you are wrong with your facts. Here and here.
"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
Reminds me of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
PLEASE!!!!!
Is there any better example - anywhere? - than this partisan puff piece of the New York Times leftward tilt on it's front page? On the front page of a paper that tells us it's editorial pages are completely seperate from it's News pages?
"Six years after making history . . . .a journey that would break yet more political barriers in her extraordinary and controversial career . . . . squarely confronted an issue that concerns many Democrats . . . .Republicans have long attacked and caricatured her"
. . . and that's in just the first 100 words!
I feel like I need a shower after writer Patrick Healy's orgasmic paean to Hillary.
All you Fox News haters - eat this!
"There's something very sad and very retro about the NYT's glee over the first woman/African American to be nominated. Powell, although a Rethuglican and t/4 child of Satan, almost made it, but apparently his family said no.
The rest of the world has moved on. When will the media realize it's not 1964?"
Actually, if the rest of the world had moved on, a woman and / or an African-American would have been nominated to the top of a major party ticket long ago. Unfortunately, in the real world, lots of people haven't been ready for anything other than a white male at the top of the ticket, and still may not be. But hey, don't let little things like the facts get in the way of your criticism of that darn librul media, which isn't as open-minded and so past the issue of race like you, patca.
"Who gets the democratic nomination will be president."
Hell, then let's save the country the expense of having actual elections. We can be like Venezuela, then.
It is noted, however, that you did not even slightly acknowledge that your facts from above were incorrect.
I wonder if the Democratic primary will be settled 6 months before the election. That would certainly effect momentum somewhat. But how and how much is the question.
My thoughts on Senator Clinton always center on her negatives: many people completely loathe her. She is like the President in that way, not much middle ground in terms of acceptance by the voters.
Senator Obama does not have that bipolar support distribution. I cannot think of any personal attack I have heard about him. People have disagreed with his voting record or his lack of national legislative experience, but I have not heard him attacked personally. I listen to a fair amount of conservative talk radio, so I do not need to tell you what I have heard said about Senator Clinton.
These primaries are certainly interesting.
Trey
"Unfortunately, in the real world, lots of people haven't been ready for anything other than a white male at the top of the ticket, and still may not be."
On what facts do you base your statement/condescending response? A recent Newsweek (liberal) poll revealed this:
Newsweek's latest opinion survey asked a national sample of voters the same question AP asked Rice: "Do you think America is ready to elect an African-American president?" A solid majority -- 56 percent -- said yes; only 30 percent said no. But when voters were asked whether they personally would vote for a qualified black candidate nominated by their party, the positive response was beyond overwhelming: 93 percent.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/12/27/wed_elect_a_black_president_old_news/
"The rest of the world has moved on. When will the media realize it's not 1964?"
Quite. People keep bleating about how Obama would be the first black President, or Hillary would be the first female President, but all I see is just another liberal President. They all sound the same in print. A candidate for political office should "be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin" - or their gender.
If the NYT is so desirous of a black or female President, they will presumably be rooting for Michael Steele or Condi Rice to get the GOP nomination. I somehow don't see it.
Hillary's in. It's official.
Heh. Her running in 2008 has been a foregone conclusion for so long that I'd forgotten she hadn't technically declared her candidacy yet.
McCain's flipflopping and Bush support will be front and center
McCain's... Bush support? Heh.
Enigmaticore:
Do not expect an admittance of error on the facts from hdhouse or any liberal, for that matter.
Facts to the liberal mind:
- don't actually have to have relevance to the discussion at hand: hdhouse conveniently forgets the actual Senate race facts and the actual reasons why Giuliani dropped out of the race, a race that you showed was clearly a dead heat at the time.
-are used in the argument to impress conservatives and give the impression to the weaker-minded that the liberal "knows" what he/she is talking about.
- take a backseat to the "righteous" positions that the liberal takes - it's having the right liberal positions that count: "Damn the facts - Full speed ahead!"
- will be twisted to say whatever the liberal needs them to say: "Facts? We don't need no stinkin' facts!"
- will never be apologised for when used wrongly, even when exposed: "Oh THOSE facts! Well, you're just misinterpreting what I said . . ."
Pat CA said:
"The rest of the world has moved on. When will the media realize it's not 1964?"
Pat I am hoping most of that media group is getting damn close to retirement. Can their relacements be as far left? Let's hope not.
As I posted on my blog: http://holdthesenate.blogspot.com/
Hillary Clinton has officially announced (in a surprise to almost no one) her candidacy for president. The one surprise is how she characterized her upbringing:
"I grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America, and we believed in that promise," the 59-year-old Chicago native said."
She, in fact, grew up in an upper-middle class suburb as the daughter of an executive. While not super wealthy, I am sure her father was either in or close to the two percent of wage earners that received a tax cut that she continually rails against.
Then again, she also claimed to be a lifelong Yankee fan:-)
Patca says - "On what facts do you base your statement/condescending response?"
Well, for one thing, I've certainly been around enough people racist or sexist comments (and by "racist or sexist comments", I don't mean non-PC comments, I mean the n-word and various other indisputably bigoted comments) in my presence over the course of my life to know that such attitudes haven't gone away, and one would have to be a fool to assume that such attitudes don't affect political behavior. And the people I've heard say such things aren't marginal rednecks at truck stops, but people with quite a bit of money and influence.
Also, I would also look to the fact that very few minority candidates are elected from non-minority-majority districts. This disparity (which is well-documented among serious analysts of voting rights / voting discrimination issues -- but I guess they're just another group of untrustworthy liberals, right?) cannot be explained away by just a simple matter of a lack of attractive candidates.
In any case, the poll you cite is just one poll, and I wouldn't give it much credence. There's a pretty well-known phenomenon of people saying they will vote for African-American candidates in polls, but who don't do so in the voting booth. Political scientists (egads, another group of biased, meanie liberals!) call this the Doug Wilder effect, though some have suggested renaming it the Harold Ford effect for the new millennium.
I could go on and mention more facts, but that would probably be a waste of pixels.
I realize that the progressive tax system and other fundamentals of U.S. fiscal policy are based on this notion, but I can't see Hillary's bald statement, "We're going to take things away from you for the common good," doing anything but coming back to haunt her in the fall election, if she gets that far. This is Kerry-like in its disastrous tone-deafness.
Also, if the purpose of Hillary's announcement was to detract from Obama's momentum, I think it was a serious miscalculation. In a few days, it will be clear that her announcement won't have any effect on his momentum. At that point, doesn't the story become "Hilary was unable to stop Obama's momentum," hence making her look weaker than she already is? She should have taken care to ensure her announcement would be covered on its own terms.
Finally, raising money from Hollywood is different from raising money from lobbyists. Hollywood people give from their hearts -- and they can be promiscuous. If they're in love with Hilary this week, it won't stop them from falling in love with Obama next week. And they pay no penalty for showing up in the campaign filings has having given Hilary's opponent money. What's Hilary going to threaten them with? That she won't see their next movie? Lobbyists have to calculate the impact on their clients.
Hey Ann -- here's a question for you: now that Hillary is in and her candidacy isn't just a theoretical matter, would you consider voting for her in the Democratic primary and the general election? She's a socially liberal baby boomer white female with generally hawkish foreign policy views. What's not to like?
Somefeller - so you're pitting your "I've certainly been around enough people racist or sexist comments" against his "just one poll"? A personal anecdote against a poll taken by a magazine that can hardly be accused of (relevant) bias? That's not much of an argument.
I have no doubt that most Democratic voters in Maryland and Ohio tell polsters that they will vote for African-American candidates, but I also have little doubt that they didn't do so in the voting booth for, respectively, Senator and Governor last fall. Does their failure to support Steele and Blackwell make Democrats closet racists? No, of course not. It means that the statement "I will vote for an African-American candidate" is shorthand for "I will vote for a candidate I agree with, regardless of their race," not "I will vote for any African-American candidate."
Likewise, with Harold Ford - I think you reveal more about your own psychology than those of voters in Tennessee. If you took a poll before the election and found that a majority of people would support a black candidate, you cannot thus conclude from Ford's defeat that those people must be closet racists who only felt free to express their racism in the privacy of the voting booth. The more natural conclusion is your premise is flawed: when people said "I'd vote for a black candidate," you heard "I'd vote for Harold Ford."
If Obama is the nominee and loses the election, it won't be because he's black, it'll be because he's a liberal.
somefeller said,"call this the Doug Wilder effect, though some have suggested renaming it the Harold Ford effect for the new millennium."
Actually somefeller, Ford did considerably better at the voting booth than independent polls predicted just prior to the election predicted. No independent pollster predicted he would win and the only one that was he close to three point margin he lost by was Rasmussen reports.
So I am not sure where you are getting this from.
She's a socially liberal baby boomer white female with generally hawkish foreign policy views. What's not to like?
Well, for starters, her putative "hawkish foreign policy views" were fashioned from whole cloth after 9/11 made it politically expedient to have hawkish foreign policy views, and she has been in headlong retreat from those views since it first started to seem less politically expedient to hold them. She voted to go to Iraq because the majority of the country was perceived as supporting that, and now the majority of the country is hostile to it, she has become a strident critic of the war. The woman has all the backbone of a jellyfish, and twice the sting.
Those who successfully ran from the office of US Senator for VP or Pres since 1900:
Warren G. Harding 1920
Richard M. Nixon 1952 (VP)
John F. Kennedy 1960
Lyndon B. Johnson 1960 (VP)
Based on this experience, the odds are not good, but hope springs eternal in the Senatorial heart.
Weak, somefeller, weak.
Oh, here's another poll. Respondents favored African American and female candidates over former Bush cabinet members or evangelical Christians, BTW, so be careful before you throw this one out.
Your personal anecdotes are not generally acceptable as proving any hypothesis, except maybe in academia.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2006/12/15/americans-open-to-new-kinds-of-candidates/
"Somefeller - so you're pitting your "I've certainly been around enough people racist or sexist comments" against his "just one poll"? A personal anecdote against a poll taken by a magazine that can hardly be accused of (relevant) bias? That's not much of an argument."
Actually, I mentioned other data points in the paragraphs following the one with my personal observations / anecdotes, so there was something more to my posting than just personal anecdotes. But hey, putting that aside, I guess you're right. We should all toss out our personal life experiences and only look at newspaper public opinion polls when analyzing social and cultural matters. I'll be sure to make note of that.
The need for conservatives to deny the continued existence and salience of racism and sexism in this country, coupled with the demonization or dismissal of those who notice such things (those durn libruls who cheer when a minority "first" occurs are just so 1964!) is always something amazing to see. If you want to know why the GOP vote rarely breaks 10-15% in the African-American community and 30-35% in the Latino community, that attitude is a big part of it.
Actually, to give a little credit where it's due, George W. Bush tried to acknowledge and face such matters when he was Governor of Texas and in his 2000 campaign, and his party reaped some political rewards for his doing so, and most smart Republicans (i.e.: Ken Mehlman) see the need to do some work on the topic. Unfortunately for them, much of their party's base seems pretty thick-headed on the subject.
"Your personal anecdotes are not generally acceptable as proving any hypothesis, except maybe in academia."
Ooo, you got to use a big word like hypothesis and make a dig at academia in a sentence! A big day for you. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, there were other data points in my comment than my personal experiences, namely the lessons we can draw from voting behavior in non-minority-majority districts and a pretty well-known disparity between polling (which is all you've cited -- and the main point of the Wilder Effect is that polling data is unreliable and in any case can't be analyzed without electoral data to compare it with) and actual voting behavior. But I'm not surprised you chose not to discuss that.
Anyway, I'm off to watch a DVD and share a bit of wine with my wife, so that's my last comment for the evening, and probably my last one on this thread. Good night, and school is dismissed.
Uh, SNL just destroyed Hillary's candidacy. That was the fucking funniest political skit I have seen in years. I am waiting for it to be posted on Youtube. BETTER than O'Reilly/Colbert.
Mort, MKH has your back - she has the SNL Hillary spoof here.
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