Greg Sergant (The Nation): Brand Hillary

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Nation
Issue of June 6, 2005
Posted online Thursday May 19

Brand Hillary
By Greg Sargent

Not long ago, Senator Hillary Clinton went on a 2006 re-election campaign swing through the North Country, that vast expanse of upstate New York that stretches from Albany to the Canadian border. With its mix of family farms and grubby towns struggling with disappearing manufacturing jobs, the region feels less like the Northeast than like the industrial and agricultural Midwest. In other words, it's not a bad place to gauge how Clinton might play in swing-state America.

It's a question that of late has obsessed the pundits, who frequently, and often quite mindlessly, hold up the most obscure of the Senator's utterances or policies--even ones that echo positions she's held for years--as proof that she's readying herself for a 2008 presidential run. The political classes tend to offer us two tidy Hillary narratives to choose from. The first (courtesy of Dick Morris and company) is that Clinton has given herself a moderate makeover designed to mask the fact that she's really a haughty left-wing elitist, in order to appeal to moderate Republicans and culturally conservative, blue-collar Democrats who are deserting their party. The opposing narrative line (courtesy of her supporters) is that Clinton, a devout Methodist, has revealed her true self as a senator; she's always been more moderate than is generally thought, and, as Anna Quindlen wrote recently in Newsweek, "people are finally seeing past the stereotypes and fabrications."

Yet if you watch Clinton on one of her upstate swings, as I did earlier this spring, it becomes clear that neither story line gets it right. What's really happening is that Clinton, a surprisingly agile and ideologically complex politician, is slowly crafting a politics that in some ways is new, and above all is uniquely her own.

A very interesting critique.

Disclaimer: This is posted as opinion and information for discussion and in no way implies an endorsement on my part of Mrs. Clinton for President in 2008.

While it is way too early for Democrats to commit a candidate in 2008, a discussion of Mrs. Clinton's strengths and weaknesses as a potential candidate is in order.

[Rowdyboy]

1. Exceptional article.....Wish some of the "Hillary Haters" here would take

the time to read it. Perhaps it might soften their disdain a bit.

Thanks so much for the link.

[dave123williams]

2. She took NY by 17 points; she's not to be underestimated, which is

exactly what the GOP is doing right now. The only argument that I hear about her running is that 'she'd be too divisive'...

Guess what? The country is DIVIDED. We should run somebody, like Hil, that actually stands up for what they believe in...you know, an actual Liberal.

Who cares if the Thugs hate her? They'll try to destroy whomever is nominated in 08, but this time...they'll be attacking a woman - that's never pretty.

[zbdent]

3. Hillary Clinton's tougher (and got more balls) than 1/2 of the

Republicans in this country.

Of course, the cowards run the media, so the Swiftization of Hillary will be a huge success . . .