Suzie
02-24-2008, 07:25 PM
Hillary has a point
David Frum, National Post Published: Saturday, February 23, 2008
http://www.nationalpost.com/328071.bin?size=194x126Jessica Rinaldi, Reuters
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is collapsing, a victim of this one unsolveable problem: Hillary's opponents hate her -- but her supporters do not much like her.
As the Democratic primaries have stretched, former Hillary supporting constituencies have one by one dropped away.
African-Americans -- supposedly so Clinton loyal? They were the first to defect to the charismatic challenger with the odd name and the exotic personal history. Then went younger white men. Then older white men. Then upper-income white women.
In the Feb. 19 Wisconsin primary, Obama beat Clinton in virtually every demographic category, including whites with only high-school diplomas and whites earning less than $50,000 a year: till now core Clinton groups.
Since last fall, Hillary Clinton has plunged from a 20 point lead over Obama to trailing behind him.
Only two elements of the Democratic party electorate still remain faithful: poor white women and Latinos. And even if she holds those groups, that will not be enough. Thanks to the arcane rules of the Texas primary, it is very possible that Hillary could win an outright majority of the state's vote -- and still lose the delegate count to Obama. What ails the Clinton candidacy?
Over the past eight years, Hillary Clinton has compiled a relatively moderate record in the U.S. Senate. She famously voted to authorize the Iraq war, but in other ways too she has moved away from her image as a hard-left ultra-feminist toward the national centre.
Her party's liberal base has noticed -- and resented the shift. Her opponents have not. And so Clinton suffers the worst of both worlds: Conservatives oppose her because they think she is a liberal. Liberals oppose her because they suspect she is not. Add to that her husband's scandals and the larger Evita Peron problem posed by a First Lady running to succeed her husband and the result is …free fall.
Meanwhile, Obama has managed to soothe many conservatives into imagining him as a unifying figure, despite his own clear record as the most consistently liberal member of the U.S.
MORE HERE (http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=328070)
Scary, both of them are way too scary.
David Frum, National Post Published: Saturday, February 23, 2008
http://www.nationalpost.com/328071.bin?size=194x126Jessica Rinaldi, Reuters
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is collapsing, a victim of this one unsolveable problem: Hillary's opponents hate her -- but her supporters do not much like her.
As the Democratic primaries have stretched, former Hillary supporting constituencies have one by one dropped away.
African-Americans -- supposedly so Clinton loyal? They were the first to defect to the charismatic challenger with the odd name and the exotic personal history. Then went younger white men. Then older white men. Then upper-income white women.
In the Feb. 19 Wisconsin primary, Obama beat Clinton in virtually every demographic category, including whites with only high-school diplomas and whites earning less than $50,000 a year: till now core Clinton groups.
Since last fall, Hillary Clinton has plunged from a 20 point lead over Obama to trailing behind him.
Only two elements of the Democratic party electorate still remain faithful: poor white women and Latinos. And even if she holds those groups, that will not be enough. Thanks to the arcane rules of the Texas primary, it is very possible that Hillary could win an outright majority of the state's vote -- and still lose the delegate count to Obama. What ails the Clinton candidacy?
Over the past eight years, Hillary Clinton has compiled a relatively moderate record in the U.S. Senate. She famously voted to authorize the Iraq war, but in other ways too she has moved away from her image as a hard-left ultra-feminist toward the national centre.
Her party's liberal base has noticed -- and resented the shift. Her opponents have not. And so Clinton suffers the worst of both worlds: Conservatives oppose her because they think she is a liberal. Liberals oppose her because they suspect she is not. Add to that her husband's scandals and the larger Evita Peron problem posed by a First Lady running to succeed her husband and the result is …free fall.
Meanwhile, Obama has managed to soothe many conservatives into imagining him as a unifying figure, despite his own clear record as the most consistently liberal member of the U.S.
MORE HERE (http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=328070)
Scary, both of them are way too scary.