There’s only one thing worse in partisan politics than public hand wringing: anonymous public hand wringing. Not by much, though.
Some Democrats fear a Clinton nomination could hurt other party candidates [tiny URL]
….”There’s only one person capable of uniting the Republicans, and that’s Hillary,” said longtime Democratic operative Jim Bergfalk. Unlike the others working their worry beads in the party, he was willing to be quoted by name in this article….
So, what’s the motivation for this public display of angst?
Dave Helling goes on in the same Kansas City Star article:
….But polls suggest Clinton’s margin for error here isn’t large. A recent Survey USA poll, conducted for KCTV in Kansas City, showed Clinton losing Missouri to Rudy Giuliani by three points – the only Democratic front-runner to lose the state to any Republican candidate….
Yes, Dave, let’s talk about Rudy Giuliani in Missouri – as I wrote on MyDD:
…Especially since Rudy Giuliani doesn’t have any family values problems, or “controversial” business associate problems, or hasn’t ever flip-flopped on any major wedge issues important to the republican base….
That’ll all go over really well in Missouri, eh?
And still, we have consultants who talk to reporters who then report what the consultants say (sometimes “anonymously”, sometimes not). A consultocracy as it where.
If you’re really in the know you shouldn’t be telling all to the media, should you? Unless you’ve got an agenda.
that SUSA result was within the MOE so it wasn’t clear that she would lose to Guliani. But I admit that I’ve been concerned about her effect on downticket races for a number of months now. I don’t support Hillary for the simple reason that I want a president that’s not named Bush or Clinton. We’ve had too much “passing the presidency” over the last 20 years. Time to have new blood.
Strangely, I was just reading Jeffrey Feldman’s diary over at DailyKos in which he posits that Guliani was going to get the nomination and very well could win simply by using “security” as the meme (much as Bush did). And I was thinking about that SUSA poll here in Missouri.
I’d like to think that the Guliani couldn’t win here – but the one thing I’ve learned over the last 6 years is that Republicans can delude themselves about anything and never see a double standard. A lot of people respect Guliani because he gave a somewhat coherent press conference on 9/11 while Bush was flying scared around the country. The emotion of that moment isn’t going to go away. Heck, even I remember that moment and wishing that he would never end that press conference and just stand there forever looking in charge.
I don’t know much about Guliani’s campaign so I don’t know if this is true:
Does he have the same team? Does anyone know? I don’t. But I think we need to take every single Republican candidate seriously.
I am convinced a year before the election that Clinton will be the weakest candidate for us in Missouri. Right now, she will motivate their base when their base is splintering. Neither Obama nor Edwards will do that.
That being said, let’s not forget we are a year out. ALL of the Republican candidates have more serious problems than any of the Democrats, including Clinton. Moreover, the two issues that will be front and center in 2008, Iraq and healthcare, all the Democrats are right on and ALL the Republicans are wrong on.
Guilliani, for me, is the scariest of all the Republican choices because I really do believe that he will take the unitary presidency to a level even Cheney could only imagine in his dreams.
As we go forward, Clinton will not seem so scary to the independents who are repelled by the Republican Party. And, let’s not forget, we Democrats will be united and they most definitely will not be.
People are going to snipe at different candidates. That said, I wish the article had more evidence than a couple of quotes and one poll.