Dafydd, you're probably right but I hope you're wrong. Anything that's a disaster for the Dimocratic party is good for the country and watching Hillary suffer through a losing campaign would be an absolute hoot.

As much as I admired JFK as a child -- I was 13 when he was shot and I remember exactly where I was when I got the news -- you forgot to mention the fact that he only became President due to voter fraud; in an honest election Nixon would have carried Chicago, Illinois, and the country.

All means of analyzing presidential elections by the past and trends and the economy are weak because they never take into account the campaigning skill of the candidate. Bill Clinton and JFK(60) and W and RR won because they were superior campaigners to their opponents. Unfortunately, Hillary is an incandescently brilliant campaigner. I expect her to sweep the dems and to provide a really tough opponent to any Republican.

Levi:

Hillary is an incandescently brilliant campaigner.

She is? Based on what?

Dafydd

Based on her campaign for the NY senate seat. She walked in as a carpetbagger from a tarnished administration. She set out on a "listening campaign" which disarmed people. She figured out how to talk to upstaters such that she took upwards of 40% of their vote. She destroyed her opponent in the debate. The day I knew that we were stuck with her was when I saw an elderly Hispanic woman with a pushcart on the way to the el. The lady had an illegal food sales business. Every square inch of the cart was covered with Hillary stickers. NY is not America (thank God), but her ability to turn around people in the reddest parts of New York while retaining the blue sections with zeal was impressive.

That said, a Hillary presidency (while not to be desired) would be immeasurably superior to one from Kerry or Dean or a Kossite. She does know how to listen to the people (as did Bill), and this trait will limit any damage she would inflict. She also has supported the GWOT, notwithstanding the whiny back-biting.

Levi:

Here's an alternative viewpoint:

She was parachuted into New York along with Bill Clinton's entire election team, who blanketed the state. She ran against a lox, Rick Lazio, who ran an absolutely dreadful campaign. He never would have been the candidate except that the real candidate, Rudy Giuliani, dropped out for personal reasons.

During her campaign, she was hermetically sealed away from news interviews, and Lazio turned out to be a terrible debater. Although I live in California, I was beside myself with frustration at his wretched campaign, which was actually as bad as California Republicans' campaigns, though I would not have thought that possible.

Nevertheless, she managed to win by less than half the margin (12%) that Gore won by the same year (25%), and even less than John Kerry's margin (17%) in 2004.

Wikipedia makes a big point that Hillary's margin was marginally better than Schumer's margin (10%) for his first Senate campaign in 1998; they fail to note that Schumer unseated three-term incumbent Al D'Amato, while Hillary was running for an open seat that had been held by the Democrats (by the beloved Daniel Patrick Moynihan) for the previous twenty-four years... which is hardly in the same league as Schumer's race.

By all objective criteria, Hillary Clinton is a mediocre campaigner who, in her only race, relied heavily upon her husband's election team -- which has since dispersed and will likely be working for her Democratic opponents. She did considerably worse than other Democrats did in the same state around the same time, and in fact no better than the senior senator, who had just knocked off a successful Republican incumbent.

She was able to defeat a terrible campaigner -- the replacement candidate -- in the third or fourth most liberal state in the United States (after Massachusetts and either Hawaii and/or California)... in a 9/10 world.

I don't see any of that as indication that she is an "incandescently brilliant campaigner;" in fact, she has never been tested.

Hillary was what I call an "anointed" candidate: the powers that be simply decreed that she would be the next senator, and everyone on the Left -- from the president on down -- moved heaven and earth to plant her there.

She will have no serious opposition in 2006, so she will sweep to reelection. But she will not have any of those angels and advantages in 2008, when she will be running against people who had to claw their way up the electoral ladder claw and fang and won't treat her with the deference to which she has become accustomed.

Dafydd

You are leaving out that Rick Laszlo was lavishly funded by Republicans. While the left may have moved heaven and earth to elect her, the right moved heaven and earth to stop her. Peggy Noonan even wrote a book for the purpose of beating Hillary. Hillary walked into the state with significant negatives with the electorate and managed to materially dissipate those. If she has another 12% margin in 06, I will be proved wrong. I think she may have a 50% margin even with a 3rd party Cindy Sheehanoid candidate to her left.

Somehow, she gets credit for the successes of the Clinton administration but a pass on the failings. I will grant that some of President Clinton's ethical failings are not impputable to Hillary, but an awful lot of them (the Lincoln bedroom stuff, the dealings with the Chinese and Indonesians) should be laid at her feet. This has never been successfully done, and it is probably ineffective to try to do so now -- although if somebody will leak the independent counsel report on the IRS actions,, it might help.

Levi:

You are leaving out that Rick Laszlo was lavishly funded by Republicans.

So were Dan Lungren and Matt Fong here. If a candidate is a bad campaigner, all the money in the world won't make a difference.

I followed Hillary's campaign, and it wasn't bad; but it wasn't good, either. It was thoroughly mediocre, run of the mill.

• She came in with "significant negatives," as you say; but she was up against a very bad campaigner, a replacement candidate (did she even have a primary challenge?)
• She was running in a very liberal state (even Long Island and upstate "conservatives" are liberal compared to most parts of the country)
• She had the help of an incredibly successful campaign team that was lent to her (she had nothing to do with picking them or building them up)... a team she will not have in 2008

She may very well win handily in her 2006 reelection; that again means nothing, because it's entirely dependent upon who runs against her. Once again, she appears to be lucking out and getting another pass. She may well win by more than 12%:

Chuck Schumer won by 10% in 1998 against Al D'Amato, but he buried Howard Mills in 2004, 71%-24%... do you think Schumer has any serious chance to be the 2008 Democratic nominee for president? This despite the fact that Schumer doesn't leave anywhere near the bad taste in the mouths of many Democrats as Hillary does -- and Schumer has a very long liberal track record as an elected official (winning elections), he has been totally in synch with the Democratic-Party mainstream his entire time in the House and Senate, and he has viciously attacked Bush and Bush's appointees, as the red-meat crowd demands -- none of which is true for Hillary Rodham Clinton Rodham.

She is up against very big guns who have won very tough elections -- something she has never done -- and who see 2008 as their last chance... since if Hillary won, they wouldn't have another chance until 2016, by which time most would be too old to run: Joe Biden will be 74, John Kerry will be 74, Daschle will be 69, Gore will be 68; Evan Bayh is younger... he will only be 61; but Howard Dean will be 68. None of them thinks Hillary has earned the right to jump in line ahead of them... and none is going to be gallant and say "after you, Lady Hillary."

Now, if Hillary were to grab the nomination against such a tough field, that would make it far more credible to claim that she is "incandescently brilliant" as a campaigner. That still isn't solid proof; look at John Kerry in 2004: took the nomination because other candidates killed each other off, turned out to be a terrible campaigner.

"Incandescently brilliant campaigner" is an awfully tough standard to reach; but several recent presidents did so: Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon (he had to be to overcome his staggering negatives), Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman (see notation about Nixon), and of course the first campaign superstar of the twentieth century, FDR.

Note I don't include Eisenhower, Ford, Carter, Bush-41, Clinton, or Bush-43, all but one of whom were very good at campaigning -- but not brilliant. From what I have seen in her lone campaign, I would put Hillary somewhere between Ford and Carter as a campaigner.

Dafydd

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