POLITICS: Can We Talk?
Fund, John H.
POLITICS Can We Talk? ~ FTER EVERY MID-TERM ELECTION, establishment Democrats tend to have what they call 'The Conversation." It's effectively about settling on the most liberal presidential...
...says Eleanor Clift, the liberal mainstay on PBS's McLaughlin Group...
...While the article contained no great revelations, a reporter had spent three months and interviewed over 50 people about the relationship...
...A rehash of the Clinton marriage is a recipe for disaster for the Democrats...
...A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 42 percent of voters would definitely not consider supporting her for president...
...In 2000, it was reluctantly A1 Gore, largely ' because he was the sittingvice president during a time of prosperity...
...There is no sentimentality for the Clintons on this issue," one party adviser told me...
...This is one "conversation" that Mrs...
...Gore nostalgia...
...John H. Fund, The American Spectator's Politics columnist, is author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books...
...Party elders also have other concerns about a Hillary Clinton candidacy...
...No one doubts that liberals would fall into line if Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, but until she locks it up you can expect the rumblings of discontent and doubt about her candidacy will get louder...
...News & WorldReportsaid on NBC's ChrisMatthewsShow in May: "[Democrats are] worried that Bill Clinton is going to be the man behind the throne and that could be a problem in terms of running a presidential campaign...
...Clinton is willing to exhibit in order to bury her reputation as the Chief Central Planner of Health Care Reform and the Feminist Takeover...
...Clinton's friendship with Canadian politician and heiress Belinda Stronach, the consensus among party officials is that someone in the Clinton inner circle will have to approach Senator Clinton after the mid-term election for a discussion about how to address the inevitable public curiosity about the state of her marriage...
...Howard Fineman of Newsweek puts it bluntly: "The Democratic Party's savviest veterans-elected officials in their Capitol Hill suites, Hollywood reachers tooling along the Santa Monica Freeway in their Priuses, the New York soft money crowd eating their egg-white omelets at the Regency in Manhattan--are convinced that Hillary Can't Win...
...As the Times noted: "When the subject of Bill and Hillary Clinton comes up among many prominent Democrats these days, topic A is the state of their marriage and how it might affect her possible bid...
...By comparison, only 28 percent said the same about John McCain...
...JULY/AUGUST 2006 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 51...
...That may explain the sudden, completely unjustified giddy coverage of Gore when his new global-warming apocalypse movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival...
...Ironically, it may be easier for liberal purists to abandon Hillary because she's so transparently calculating in her moves to the middle...
...She voted for the war in Iraq, but refuses to detail how she believes it should be fought to a successful conclusion...
...Who'd have thunk it...
...Who do you vote for...
...Liberals complain that there are no limits to the Pander Bear behavior that Mrs...
...Clinton "is 12-to-15 points behind 3ohn McCain and...
...Party insiders aren't talking much about this on the record, no doubt because they fear the wrath of Bill 'n Hil should they talk...
...But the liberal journalists they consort with are happy to channel their thoughts publicly...
...The paper's conclusion was that the state of the Clinton union will be a continuing object of journalistic interest before the 2008 election...
...She has spoken out against illegal aliens and called for tougher employer sanctions, and then backed offboth of those statements when addressing Hispanic groups...
...She backs a bill that would make flag burning a crime and lectures young people for not working hard enough, sounding for all the world like a hectoring female high-school principal out of a 1950s sitcom...
...In 1992, the consensus choice was Bill I Clinton...
...Gloria Borger of U.S...
...F OLLOWING THE Times story, which went so far as to mention Mr...
...They're just not sure if she is too polarizing and frosty a figure to get elected...
...At least you know what you're getting, and he has been proven right on a host of issues...
...former Virginia governor] Mark Warner or somebody else is 4-to-6 points behind John McCain...
...He put the question to them about what they would do if in early 2008, Mrs...
...That helps explain why every Democrat worth his brie and Chablis was buzzing in May about a frontpage New York Times story on the Clinton marriage...
...Michael Duffy of Time magazine says Democratic Party donors are sufficientlyworried about new Clinton stories surfacing that they "have been asking reporters to sort of look into this because I think they don't want to get down the road in a year or two with a front runner who's no longer viable...
...This is a cold political decision, because the party can't afford to lose 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2006 JOHN H. FUND a third straight presidential election...
...Newsweek columnist 3onathan Alter chimed in to say he took an informal survey of women voters who admire Hillary Clinton...
...It's effectively about settling on the most liberal presidential candidate skillful enough to fool enough Americans into electing or her...
...Clinton has to hope doesn't turn into the roar of the crowd...
...For 2008, the conversation is being held several months early, accelerated by the front-runner status ofHillary Rodham Clinton...
...Democrats are convinced that the New York senator can be nominated...
...I'm for Al Gore," says Eric Alterman, a leading liberal writer and MSNBC blogger...
...She calls abortion "a tragic choice," but continues to support practices that subsidize it...
...They don't want to get burned again...
...And every single one I've talked to have said that they would go for Warner or the candidate with the best chance...
Vol. 39 • July 2006 • No. 6
