Hillary's Dilemma
People are passionate about Senator Clinton. For 2008, is that the problem or the solution?
And Clinton has strong support in the polls. A CNN poll released this month found that 28 percent of Democrats chose her as their favorite candidate, 11 points ahead of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. The problem is how many people won't vote for her: A June 2006 Harris Interactive poll found that 47 percent said they would definitely not vote for Clinton-compared with 34 percent who said the same about John McCain. Those numbers will have centrist Democrats vying for the '08 nomination arguing that, to keep the momentum of last week's Democratic gains, the party should avoid such a polarizing figure. There's already been enough of a "Hillary can't win" drumbeat in Democratic circles to provoke two of her closest advisers, James Carville and Mark Penn, to run a Washington Post op-ed last summer noting that Clinton's unfavorables were in line with those of John Kerry and Al Gore. "The difference with Hillary," they wrote, "is the intensity of her support."
The opposition stems from her White House years. "When you think of the eight Clinton years, there were some very nasty attacks," says Ann Lewis, the spokeswoman for Clinton's sprawling organizational network, popularly known as Hillaryland. "People in the Senate who didn't know her were surprised that she is a nice person with a sense of humor."
Many Americans still associate her with the failed 1993 plan to nationalize healthcare, but Clinton has built a Senate career around bringing her celebrity to bear on legislation that otherwise has little chance of passage, which often involves partnering with Republicans. She worked with Senator Graham to extend government health insurance to members of the National Guard and Reserves, which the Pentagon had opposed. On the campaign trail this year, she rarely mentioned other Senate Democrats but often invoked Graham's name, along with those of other Republicans she has teamed with, like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Clinton's recent cosponsorship of a flag-burning ban was interpreted by some as a further attempt to moderate her image. But advisers insist that Clinton, raised in a Republican home in suburban Illinois and having spent 12 years as first lady of Arkansas, has never fit her liberal caricature.
Ironically, a suspicion that she's not liberal enough could cause her trouble in the '08 primaries. Unlike possible presidential contenders Kerry and John Edwards, Clinton has not renounced her Iraq vote. "The activist wing believes the Democratic Party has become capitulationist," says a top party strategist. "The question is whether Hillary is doing enough to pacify them or whether she becomes the symbol of capitulation." If she does, a Democratic star like Obama or a lesser light could use the Internet to close Hillary's fundraising advantage. At a Rochester rally for antiwar congressional candidate Eric Massa before Election Day, Tara Anacker, 35, tells why she won't back Clinton for president: "She has moved far to the right on the war."
Clinton has condemned Bush's conduct of the war and his refusal to talk directly to North Korea, making the case for a new internationalism. Rather than argue that Democrats have the solution, however, Clinton said last month that the key was "risking a new bipartisanship." Her boosters say last week's Democratic congressional takeover, due largely to the election of party moderates, shows the popular will for that approach. "We can't afford to be the antiwar party in the war on terrorism," says Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, which has strong ties to Clinton. "We need to make the case on what we would do differently." To do that in the general election, Clinton may first have to convert her most skeptical audience yet—her own party.
advertisement
