Hillary Clinton

Last night we asked Bill Clinton whether he was ready to become America’s first male First Lady (OK, first gentleman.)

“If the American people are ready to elect [Hillary Clinton], I am," the 61-year-old Mr. Clinton told The Transom. "I’ll do whatever I’m asked to do. I hope they will, because I think it’ll be good for America and the world, but whatever happens…” And then he gave a slight shrug.  read more »

Hillary Clinton saved her most energetic appearance of this Labor Day weekend sweep through New Hampshire and Iowa for last.

She just addressed a hall full of union members at the Des Moines Labor Day "Solidarity Fest" bellowing, "Are you ready for change in America?"

She skipped the more nuanced talk about winding down the war in Iraq that she employed earlier in the day, going with, "Are you ready to end the war in Iraq and bring our young men and women home?"

The applause was loud and sustained.  read more »

A new Rasmussen poll has Hillary Clinton thumping Rudy Giuliani in New York, 58 to 33 percent. So does this throw cold water on the Giuliani campaign’s claims that their man is uniquely suited to compete on Democratic turf? Not really.

The size of Hillary’s lead is a little surprising, but it’s not exactly a revelation that New York, which lasted voted for a G.O.P. presidential candidate in 1984, is a lock for the Democrats next year.

A better test of Giuliani’s potential to pick off blue states is probably New Jersey, whose 15 electoral votes haven’t been seriously contested by Republicans since 1992. A Quinnipiac poll last month showed New Jerseyans favoring Rudy over Hillary, 47-44 percent. Compare that to the G.O.P.’s Garden State futility the past three elections – an 18-point win for Bill Clinton in 1996, a 17-point win for Al Gore in 2000, and a 7-point win for John Kerry in 2004.

On a separate note, Rasmussen has a baffling bit of analysis up on its web site, lecturing reporters for “missing what matters” in the G.O.P. race. Rasmussen’s basic claim: That the media overplayed the August 11 Iowa Republican straw poll, where Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were the top finishers:

Both Romney and Huckabee received a minor bounce in the polls for a few days. But, two weeks later, the national polls show that the Iowa event had virtually no impact. Romney remains mired in third place barely ahead of John McCain. Huckabee’s support continues to be measured in the mid-single digits.

I don’t understand Rasmussen’s point. Huckabee’s surprise second place finish was a major development in the campaign, since it opened the door to improved fundraising (a significant challenge for the cash-strapped candidate), increased credibility with party activists, and higher profile and more favorable media coverage, now that he has demonstrated some viability. No one, as far as I know, was under the impression that the actual news of his 8/11 performance would affect national polls. That’s not the point. The point is that 8/11 signaled that Huckabee has some strengths that help him make a splash four or five months from now.

The same is true of Romney, who has focused on the early states. He leads polls in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. He needed his straw poll win to maintain his credibility with the folks who have fueled his rise in those states. If January rolls around and Romney actually wins them, his national poll standing will take care of itself.

Here, via the Washington Post's campaign blog, is Hillary Clinton's response to Alberto Gonzales' resignation as Attorney General and the rumors that Michael Chertoff is in line to replace him:

Without naming him, Clinton also took a swipe at Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who is rumored as a possible choice to lead the department.

"The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is one more reminder that the President must appoint someone to lead the Department of Justice with the leadership and competence necessary to defend the Constitution," she wrote.

Clinton's potential opposition to Chertoff is noteworthy because it could provide her a unique opportunity to tend to personal and political imperatives simultaneously.

Recall that the former First Lady has a history with Chertoff, who served as the lead G.O.P. Counsel to the Senate committee that investigated Whitewater in the mid-1990s -- and perhaps nothing makes Hillary Clinton more irate than the memory of that probe. Indeed, she (Ed. note: woops) cast the lone Senate vote against Chertoff's nomination to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003, citing his Whitewater conduct as her rationale.

If President Bush does nominate Chertoff for Attorney General, Hillary will have plenty of ammunition to go after him, as her Katrina comment today demonstrated. And in going after him, she would undoubtedly score points with the Democratic base (especially if she took a leading role in any nomination fight), thereby burnishing her primary season credentials. At the same time, of course, she'd also be getting even with her old nemesis, especially her effort resulted in the death of his nomination.

It's also worth wondering what effect Clinton's opposition would have on the other Democratic Senators in the presidential race. With Clinton connecting Chertoff to Katrina, wouldn't Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd be obligated to oppose his nomination as well? Perhaps this is why the White House, which seemed initially to be telling reporters that Chertoff was the choice, is now putting out the word that no decisions have been made and other contenders -- Ted Olson, Larry Thompson -- are in the mix.

The next major event on the U.S. political calendar is not in Iowa, New Hampshire or even Florida. It’s actually next week in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, where a the lone open House seat in the country – vacated by six-term Rep. Marty Meehan’s May resignation – will essentially be filled in a Democratic primary. (The primary winner will be the overwhelming favorite against the G.O.P. nominee in what is a solidly Democratic district.)

What makes the contest noteworthy outside of Massachusetts is the identity of the Democratic front-runner: Niki Tsongas, the wife of the late Paul E. Tsongas, the former Massachusetts Senator who very nearly knocked off Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primaries. A decade after his death, Paul Tsongas remains a beloved figure in the district, which is centered in Lowell, the old mill city that he never left (and where a downtown arena now bears his name). That alone figures to be enough to lift Niki Tsongas past her four opponents in next Tuesday’s primary.

Niki Tsongas’ looming elevation to Congress seems like a good excuse to indulge in one of my favorite past-times – the political what if game.

Think back to the 1992 presidential primaries, when every big name Democrat backed off, convinced that George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf triumph would render him invincible in the fall. That left a decidedly B-list cast of Democratic aspirants: Clinton, Tsongas, Jerry Brown, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin and (for a minute) Doug Wilder. The early thinking had Clinton and Kerrey as the front-runner. Tsongas was ignored.

But his message took hold in New Hampshire, whose lead-off primary was even more important than usual, with Iowa – Harkin’s home state – going uncontested. A string of Clinton scandals in January 1992 – Gennifer Flowers and his Vietnam draft maneuvering, basically – sent the Arkansas Governor’s poll numbers plummeting, and Tsongas surged to the lead in New Hampshire. On primary day, Tsongas won by 7 points. Kerrey was essentially flushed from the race. Clinton, though, was saved by the craftiness of his campaign, which sold him to the media as “the comeback kid,” based on his less-awful-than-expected 26 percent showing in New Hampshire.

The race then went south, where polls showed Tsongas faring surprisingly well in Georgia and Florida. The Clinton campaign, though, launched a slick, well-funded stream of negative ads against Tsongas, portraying him as a cold-hearted foe of Social Security, Medicare, and Israel. It was enough to hand Clinton a seemingly decisive series of Super Tuesday victories, which he followed up with wins in Illinois and Michigan the next week – which prompted Tsongas to suspend his campaign.

Then Clinton inexplicably lost the Connecticut primary to Jerry Brown, one of the biggest upsets in the history of presidential primaries. National Democratic leaders, already worried about Clinton’s “character” issues, panicked and began making noise about recruiting a last-minute alternative to Clinton. New York was next on the calendar and Tsongas made it clear that he would re-enter the race if Clinton lost to Brown again. That’s as far as it went, though: Clinton survived New York and the nomination was his.

But what if he’d been tripped up by Brown again? Or what if he’d lost New Hampshire even more decisively – finishing behind Bob Kerrey, say? A change of just a few thousands New Hampshire votes could have derailed Clinton – and made Tsongas the nominee.

Would the country now know Niki Tsongas as a First Lady? And, instead of the headlines she receives every day, would we now be reading after-thought stories about how Hillary Clinton, the wife of a former presidential candidate, is running for Congress in Arkansas?

There seem to be two prevailing but absolutely contradictory attitudes about Hillary Clinton’s ’08 prospects.

One school of thought insists she’s the least electable Democrat, an easy argument to make given that her unfavorable rating has hovered near 50 percent for about 15 years now. But then you take a poll, and Democrats overwhelmingly say that Hillary is their best bet for the fall – and, in fact, that electability is one of the main reasons they support her. (A July poll found Democrats calling her the most electable candidate by a 54-22 percent margin over Barack Obama.)

And yet, as Michael Scherer in Salon points out, Republicans and independents clearly like Obama more than Hillary, or any other Democrat for that matter:

Any political expert will tell you that polls don't mean much five months before the first caucus. But a pattern may be emerging. In part because of Clinton's high negatives among Republicans, it appears Obama is gaining momentum as a fresh candidate with a less divisive approach, by constantly appealing beyond the partisan lines of the last decade. His first television ad buy in Iowa included testimony from a Republican state lawmaker from Illinois talking up Obama and his ability to reach across party lines. As Obama reiterated in an appearance in Iowa last week, "The country is hungry for change. It wants something new. We want to chart a new direction for our nation."

For the record, I don’t subscribe to the notion that Hillary Clinton can not win in the fall of ’08. In fact, I’d probably make her the favorite against any Republican at this point. It’s not that I think her favorable numbers will improve radically – or at all – but the climate is so bad for the G.O.P. that I think Hillary can get 271 electoral votes. (In a sense, she’s like the despised Chuck Robb running for re-election in Virginia in 1994 against the even more despised Oliver North. Under no other circumstances could Robb have won, but the G.O.P. was so weak that he eked out a win.)

But if you’re a Democrat, why even take a chance on Hillary if there are such clear signs that Obama has the kind of cross-over appeal on which landslides are built?

The situation is beginning to remind me of the G.O.P. race in 2000, with George W. Bush running – like Hillary now – as the candidate of the establishment and inevitability. And yet polls were even clearer back then that independents and Democrats loved John McCain. I recall a poll in March that showed Bush essentially running even with Al Gore, while McCain enjoyed a lead of more than 20 points.  Nominating McCain would have produced a landslide for the Republicans, and yet they rallied around Bush, who needed a Supreme Court ruling to beat Gore.

In 2000, the G.O.P. shunned McCain for conspiratorial reasons: Bush told them that McCain’s support was from “mischievous” Democrats trying to install a weak G.O.P. nominee. (Indeed, despite the poll numbers, among Republicans Bush was still regarded as the stronger autumn candidate.) Add to this the love McCain got from the “liberal” media and his campaign finance reform apostasy, and it was all enough for the G.O.P. to turn its back on him.

But why are Democrats resisting the evidence that Obama is the most electable candidate? Are they confusing familiarity – Hillary’s been on the national stage since 1992, while no one had heard of Obama before 2004 – with electability?  read more »

Maybe you've seen this already -- it's been making the rounds on the web all day -- but a heavily-armed Ted Nugent had some tart words for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and (if I'm hearing it right) Barbara Boxer during a recent performance. (No word if this was part of the "Sean Hannity Freedom Concert" series.)

Two pieces of good news for Hillary Clinton’s campaign today:

1) A new Gallup poll shows her shows her wide lead holding steady – a 48 to 25 percent margin over Barack Obama, with John Edwards at 13 percent. Yes, it’s easy to dismiss national polls like this, given the momentum that Obama and Edwards are banking on from success in the early states next January. But…

2) There’s a new early state in the mix, and it’s a good venue for Hillary. Michigan is now set to schedule a primary for January 15, potentially making it the third of the early nominating contests.

Michigan’s pols are unanimous in wanting to move their date up, but the hidden story here is the debate over whether the January 15 contest should be a primary or a caucus. Traditionally, the labor-dominated state has held a Democratic caucus, which has skewed the results in favor of candidates on the left – like Jesse Jackson, whose finest hour as a presidential candidate  came with his landslide win in Michigan’s ’88 caucuses, and Jerry Brown, who finished a surprising second in 1992 (helping to usher Paul Tsongas from the Democratic race).

Not surprisingly, John Edwards’ supporters in the state – most notably U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak and former Rep. (and current Edwards campaign manager) David Bonior – argued for a caucus in ’08. But Republicans and key Democrats – like Governor Jennifer Granholm – wanted a primary, in which labors influence is not as pronounced and non-interest group voters have more of a voice. With today’s 21-17 state Senate vote, Granholm and the Republicans won out – and so did Hillary.

A friend passed along a link to an interesting New York Times Select column from literary theorist Stanley Fish which handicaps the poll of potential running-mates for Hillary Clinton.

This prompted two immediate reactions: (1) How much money has the Times lost on this silly “pay-for-access” thing; and (2) What does Stanley Fish know about politics?

Anyway, chances are you don’t have access to Times Select (unless, like me, you’ve taken advantage of their “free to .edu” policy), so let me recap: Fish cedes the Democratic nomination to Hillary on the grounds that the other candidates “are either running for vice president or just having a good time.” For her Number Two, he says, Hillary can’t pick a woman, a Jew, a Senator (or member of the House), or anyone from the Northeast.

So who does that leave? Fish’s finalists are former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh (who passes muster because he was once a Governor), North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.

(Continued after the jump)   read more »

Every time the Democratic eight gather for yet another debate, it is Mr. Biden who turns in the most consistently presidential performance of any candidate from either party.  read more »

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign debuts its first commercial in Iowa today: a 60-second spot titled "Invisible."  read more »

Drudge links to this AP story reporting that Obama said he would never use nuclear weapons "in any circumstance."

According to the report, "'I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,' Obama said, with a pause, 'involving civilians.' Then he quickly added, 'Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table.'"

And: "When asked whether his answer also applied to the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, he said it did."

Coverage of these reported statements is likely to dwarf the reaction to comments Obama made yesterday about hunting down terrorists in Pakistan. And the criticism he's going to come in for both from his conservative critics and from the Clinton campaign -- both of whom have an interest in fitting this into the "inexperienced" narrative -- is predictable: he's departing from years of established wisdom on leveraging the threat of America's nuclear weapons; he's sending mixed messages by alternately advocating the unilateral projection of power in Pakistan and unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Reaction from the Democratic electorate, I think, is harder to guess.

I (along with the rest of the world, I presume) am waiting for further comment from the Obama campaign.

UPDATE: The AP is now reporting that Obama's comments were limited to the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which changes this story considerably.

The beginning of the AP story now reads as follows.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday he would not use nuclear weapons "in any circumstance" to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance," Obama said, with a pause, "involving civilians." Then he quickly added, "Let me scratch that. There's been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That's not on the table."
Obama was responding to a question by the Associated Press about whether there was any circumstance where he would be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
"There's been no discussion of using nuclear weapons and that's not a hypothetical that I'm going to discuss," Obama said after a Capitol Hill breakfast with constituents.
When asked whether his answer also applied to the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, he said it did.

UPDATE: Obama responds: "If we had actionable intelligence about the existence of high-level al Qaeda targets like Osama bin Laden, Senator Obama would act and is confident that conventional means would be sufficient to take the target
down. Frankly we're surprised that others would disagree." 

I just got off a media conference call with Barack Obama in which he addressed the subject of his burgeoning foreign policy debate with Hillary Clinton.

Asked whether his personal life experience gives him an advantage over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards when it comes to formulating foreign policy, he said, “At this point it is not just about life experience, though that informs my perspective.” The important thing, he said, is how that perspective informs “how the United States should present its interests and ideals around the world.”

Obama also went back to the original argument which started during this week’s YouTube/CNN debate, in which he was criticized by Hillary Clinton for saying that he would be willing to talk to international dictators.

“I think it is a debate over the same conventional thinking that led people to authorize the vote over Iraq without asking questions,” he said. He compared this with a different line of thinking that “asks questions and is not informed by a lot of received wisdom.”

(Shades of Howard Dean's argument in 2004 about John Kerry's vast Senate experience and Kerry's vote, later lamented, to authorize the war.)

Obama did say that he agreed with Clinton’s position on whether America should commit ground troops to Darfur.  “It is absolutely true that given what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is difficult for us to mount the kind of troop strength that would be necessary,” he said. “But more important, it would be disastrous for even our policy in Darfur to send U.S. troops unilaterally into another Muslim country. It’s very important for the sake of our success there that it’s done as part of an international effort.”

Poring over the latest FEC reports, Ben predicts: “It's going to be a good year to be in ad sales in Des Moines.” This morning, the Nielsen Company put out a report that breaks down exactly who’s advertised so far, where they’ve done it, and—perhaps most interestingly, in this day and age—what medium they’ve chosen to get the message out.

According to the report (pdf here) Mitt Romney has advertised far more than all the other candidates, running 4,549 ads, through June 10, “mostly on local broadcast television” in seven markets, including Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s placed “more local TV advertisements than all other candidates combined,” the report says.

(Read the rest of my breakdown after the jump...)

UPDATE: The Nielsen people send along the following correction to the report that I linked above:

There was an labeling error in the chart "2008 Presidential Campaign Television & Radio Spots" on page 2 of the news release. The first column should read TV Total and not TV & Radio Total. The data for that chart is correct.

 read more »

Big news from the Obama campaign on this lazy Sunday afternoon. Barack's second-quarter fundraising number is in, and it's a doozy: $32.5 million. This breaks all kinds of records and is a good $5 million more than Hillary Clinton raised during the same three-month time period. As evidenced by the memo posted below, Obama's campaign is now sounding plenty confident. While tacitly acknowledging that "one of our fellow candidates" is still leading in national polls, it declares: "Time is a friend to our campaign." The tone couldn't be more different from last week's release from the Clinton folks, which mentioned their fundraising number almost as an afterthought.

While the memo takes pains to portray Clinton as a "quasi-incumbent," it's not clear how much longer Obama is going to be able to play the role of David to her Goliath. Ben Smith, in his first take on the news, says Obama's trying to have it both ways. Needless to say, we will have much more to say about this story tomorrow. 

(Full text of the memo after the jump.)  read more »

The rules made it difficult for them to capitalize, but Mike Gravel handed his seven fellow Democrats a golden opportunity for a “Rudy moment” midway through tonight’s presidential forum.

The topic was the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the African-American community, but Mr. Gravel, the scattershot Alaska senator from a generation or two ago, used his time to plead for the legalization of drugs, arguing that those targeted by the federal government’s war on drugs are not criminals.  read more »

In a debate billed as a battle for the black vote, the Democratic candidates generally avoided any confrontation and each sought to present him or herself as the champion of the African American community.

Barack Obama, the first African American candidate with a real shot at the presidency, received a cheer when he walked onto the stage and used his remarks to call for greater accountability within the community. Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has made it clear that she will not concede the black vote, received the night’s only standing ovation for saying that the country ignored the AIDS epidemic because it mostly impacted blacks.

For the most part, the frontrunners had strong showings.

(More on the debate after the jump.)  read more »