Hillary's dangerously high unfavorables: The worst of both worlds [View All]

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

Since the Hillary Clinton supporters have started no less than 5 recent threads citing one poll after another, I decided to toss up one myself:
http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=28363
Hillary Clinton: 47% favorable, 49% unfavorable
Barack Obama: 48% favorable, 34% unfavorable
John Edwards: 47% favorable, 35% unfavorable
Rudy Giuliani: 55% favorable, 32% unfavorable
Fred Thompson: 31% favorable, 20% unfavorable

For those who've been squawking constantly about Hillary as the "inevitable" Democratic nominee, in fact both Obama and Edwards have already become quite competitive despite their relative lack of name recognition, with both tied with Hillary in Iowa in a recent poll and Obama leading in South Carolina:
http://presszoom.com/story_139277.html
http://campaignsandelections.com/SC/articles/?ID=444

Obviously individual polls will vary, but the point here is that John Edwards and particularly Barack Obama are competitive with or even surpassing Hillary in primary polls in major states. Furthermore, since many states have open primaries, this introduces the factor of Independent voters who are more favorable toward Obama yet not measured in these intra-party primary polls, so if anything they may be underestimating the prospects for Obama and Edwards in primary season, even more so since they still have not received the level of attention that would increase their name recognition.

Whatever my personal opinion* about Hillary, I attempt to detach my own thoughts toward her when I consider the current electoral map from the standpoint of a cold and calculating political strategist, and the signs for her in terms of electability are absolutely dismal. Her negatives have consistently been around half the US population, the unfavorables exceeding the favorables in fact. She has by far the most name recognition of any candidate in either party, and unfavorables this high for a candidate who is already so well-known to the general public, represent a very bad omen for Hillary and for the Democratic Party if we nominate her. Moreover, these unfavorables are registering before the Republican smear machine against her has even gotten warmed up. She performs the worst against major GOP candidates while Obama and Edwards both draw broader support, and on both foreign and domestic policy, her DLC stands are much further away from our progressive base than those of Obama and Edwards.

That is, with Hillary, we get the worst of both worlds-- our least competitive candidate among the Big 3, and one who is further away from our progressive base than the other two. In fact, Hillary's unfavorables are so high that she would endanger not only the Democrats' prospects for the 2008 election, but for Congressional and gubernatorial elections as well, owing to the extent that she would motivate turnout and campaign contributions among Republicans.

Those unfavorables, as noted in one poll after another, are very much reflected in our own anecdotal interactions. Among Republicans, the enmity toward Hillary is deeper and more vigorous than anything I and my colleagues have ever seen before. Overall, they don't like Edwards or Obama much, but they don't hate them, and many would consider voting for them. OTOH, the prospect of a Hillary nomination provokes an almost primal rage among Republicans and many Independents, and this has very serious consequences for us: Tremendously increased voter turnout among the GOP, massive fundraising contributions, a much more motivated Republican base in general.

One could toss in your favorite Sun Tzu or Karl von Clausewitz war strategy quote here, but fundamentally, you want to divide or at least mollify your enemy, not motivate and powerfully unite them as Hillary would. We would be walking right into a Republican trap with a Hillary nomination, and they're already getting their ugliest smears ready. The Republicans will be wrapping around and completely covering Hillary Clinton with their squirmy tentacles, and they won't stop squirming and writhing. If you thought the Swift Boat travesty was bad, it'll seem like a Caribbean vacation compared to the fury and calumny they'll unleash against Hillary, and they'll have an unprecedented war chest to do it.

Finally, I know some people have opined that "even if Hillary were nominated, social conservatives wouldn't back Giuliani very strongly*. I hate to burst bubbles here, but such thinking is delusional. Many recent surveys have been showing that if anything, Giuliani's strongest support base is among evangelical Christians and social conservatives in general. I think that we sometimes underestimate the pragmatism of the GOP's social conservative base, but they're very smart people, and they know that Giuliani would be far more reliable to their cause than Hillary in particular, especially with regard to federal judge appointments. If we were to nominate a figure as widely detested as Hillary Clinton is, this base would rally as never before to support Giuliani, Thompson or whomever else the GOP might nominate.


*For the purpose of full disclosure, as far as my personal attitude toward Hillary Rodham Clinton, I was once a raucous supporter of hers in her 2000 Senate election, and the night that she won in November of 2000 was one of the most vigorous and excited bar-hopping nights I've had with my political friends. Since then, due to her unflagging support of the Iraq War (not just the IWR but in the many years hence), her support for that awful bankruptcy reform bill (full support for the first one, abstention on the second) that is incomprehensibly cruel toward poor Americans in need from e.g. a workplace injury but which gives a free pass to profligate corporations, the flag-burning fiasco, stabbing John Kerry like that after his misconstrued comments on Iraq last year, her general pro-corporatist stance, and favorable stance toward outsourcing, I have developed the kind of profound anger that a betrayed former supporter feels, as have most of the others who were celebrating in 2000.

I personally would still consider voting for her if she were nominated (although my vote would not be automatic) depending on the match-up-- however, I have been especially disturbed by the large and growing number of Democrats I've contacted who would not vote for her under any circumstances, so deep is the resentment. (This is one reason why her unfavorables are at 49%, it's not just Republicans who are expressing that attitude.) Many Democrats reason that we control both houses of Congress, and that the country would almost certainly be very sick and tired of corrupt Republican rule by 2012, so they would be willing to wait things out-- stay home in November of 2008, vote for a 3rd Party candidate, in some cases even cross the aisle-- in return for the prospect of a non-DLC progressive representing out party in 2012. The thing is, Edwards and especially Obama could do that now in 2008.

Obama and Edwards already have quite favorable ratings. Even more importantly however, they have a lot of room to go up further, which we'll need if we're going to be competitive with the Republicans next year.