Drudge: Hillary may quit!
Drudge is reporting that Hillary Clinton- following her third-place finish here in Iowa, and facing a double-digit defeat by Barak Obama in New Hampshire tomorrow- is seriously considering withdrawing from the race!
Her staff is said to be divided on the issue, with James Carville arguing that she should stick it out through Tsunami Tuesday, while others maintaining that "the Clinton brand"(?) should not be damaged by her name being associated with the avalanche of one-sided primary defeats the polls now project for her.
I've maintained all along that Hillary is the most beatable of the Democratic candidates, with negatives far too high for her to have a realistic chance of winning in November if the Republicans nominate a half-way decent candidate (John McCain has been giving her a consistent thrashing in the polls of late, and Huckabee and Romney have shown occasional recent success against her as well). Now, I don't necessarily buy the notion that Hillary is on the point of withdrawing, no matter how bleak her prospects seem at the moment. She is, after all, the candidate of the party establishment, and my impression of her is of a woman who is strong enough willed that she just isn't going to give up easily. I think the Carville faction will win this argument.
But the rumor reinforces something that has become obvious this week, between her third-place finish in Iowa and what seems to be an impending disaster for her in New Hampshire: that after all this time assuming that we're going to be running against Hillary, it's looking more and more likely that the Democrats are going to nominate Barak Obama instead.
And that's a whole different kind of race. On one level, I think it represents an intensification of the case for John McCain; Obama is a former state legislator who has served only four years- less than a single term- in the U.S. Senate.
The man is absolutely unqualified to be President of the United States. That's a weakness that it seems to me needs to be exploited, especially in an election in which the Republicans are going in as underdogs.
Now, Obama is an amazingly charismatic man. The themes he sounds are enormously attractive. He is especially effective when he tries to present himself as the candidate of American unity ("We need to get past this business of red states and blue states; this is the United States!"). The thing is, though, that Obama's actual positions are on the far Left of the American political spectrum. Rhetoric aside, he would be an exceedingly divisive president- and the more he can be enticed to talk about the issues rather than weaving his glittering gossamer web of insubstantial- if inspiring- rhetoric, the more clear this is going to be.
Mike Huckabee would certainly be less outclassed by Obama than by Hillary, record and qualifications-wise; Huckabee, after all, has been the governor of a state, and (attacks by Romney and others to the contrary) was in fact generally acknowledged to have been one of America's best governors. Neither candidate in an Obama-Huckabee race would have any real foreign policy experience. Still, if he gets the Republican nomination, it would behoove Huckabee to gather around himself the very best experts on defense, security and especially foreign policy from the other campaigns as quickly as possible. Obama has already assembled an impressive staff of former (Bill) Clinton advisors in these areas.
John Edwards is said to be optimistic because Hillary's money is about to dry up, leaving him- Edwards- as Obama's only Democratic antithesis. He shouldn't be. If Hillary quits, I think Obama's nomination is assured.
This is going to be a wild and crazy election year, and perhaps one of the most exciting in our nation's history. Hopefully it will end with a socially conservative Republican being inaugurated next January. But however it ends, it's going to be a fun ride.
Her staff is said to be divided on the issue, with James Carville arguing that she should stick it out through Tsunami Tuesday, while others maintaining that "the Clinton brand"(?) should not be damaged by her name being associated with the avalanche of one-sided primary defeats the polls now project for her.
I've maintained all along that Hillary is the most beatable of the Democratic candidates, with negatives far too high for her to have a realistic chance of winning in November if the Republicans nominate a half-way decent candidate (John McCain has been giving her a consistent thrashing in the polls of late, and Huckabee and Romney have shown occasional recent success against her as well). Now, I don't necessarily buy the notion that Hillary is on the point of withdrawing, no matter how bleak her prospects seem at the moment. She is, after all, the candidate of the party establishment, and my impression of her is of a woman who is strong enough willed that she just isn't going to give up easily. I think the Carville faction will win this argument.
But the rumor reinforces something that has become obvious this week, between her third-place finish in Iowa and what seems to be an impending disaster for her in New Hampshire: that after all this time assuming that we're going to be running against Hillary, it's looking more and more likely that the Democrats are going to nominate Barak Obama instead.
And that's a whole different kind of race. On one level, I think it represents an intensification of the case for John McCain; Obama is a former state legislator who has served only four years- less than a single term- in the U.S. Senate.
The man is absolutely unqualified to be President of the United States. That's a weakness that it seems to me needs to be exploited, especially in an election in which the Republicans are going in as underdogs.
Now, Obama is an amazingly charismatic man. The themes he sounds are enormously attractive. He is especially effective when he tries to present himself as the candidate of American unity ("We need to get past this business of red states and blue states; this is the United States!"). The thing is, though, that Obama's actual positions are on the far Left of the American political spectrum. Rhetoric aside, he would be an exceedingly divisive president- and the more he can be enticed to talk about the issues rather than weaving his glittering gossamer web of insubstantial- if inspiring- rhetoric, the more clear this is going to be.
Mike Huckabee would certainly be less outclassed by Obama than by Hillary, record and qualifications-wise; Huckabee, after all, has been the governor of a state, and (attacks by Romney and others to the contrary) was in fact generally acknowledged to have been one of America's best governors. Neither candidate in an Obama-Huckabee race would have any real foreign policy experience. Still, if he gets the Republican nomination, it would behoove Huckabee to gather around himself the very best experts on defense, security and especially foreign policy from the other campaigns as quickly as possible. Obama has already assembled an impressive staff of former (Bill) Clinton advisors in these areas.
John Edwards is said to be optimistic because Hillary's money is about to dry up, leaving him- Edwards- as Obama's only Democratic antithesis. He shouldn't be. If Hillary quits, I think Obama's nomination is assured.
This is going to be a wild and crazy election year, and perhaps one of the most exciting in our nation's history. Hopefully it will end with a socially conservative Republican being inaugurated next January. But however it ends, it's going to be a fun ride.
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