Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
February 27, 2005
The Sunday Times, London
New York warms to Hillary... next it could be America
Something quite unusual is happening to Hillary Rodham Clinton. She’s becoming popular.
In New York state, where she is the junior senator, her approval ratings are in the stratosphere. When she became senator, many sceptical New Yorkers — they’re not pushovers — were partly persuaded by the Republican campaign against her.
She was a carpetbagger; she was using New York as a springboard to get back to the White House (this time in her own right); she was a hyper- liberal who campaigned in the more conservative sections of upstate New York purely for cynical purposes. Yes, Hillary won election, but the reservations were there. In late 2002 a third of New Yorkers had an unfavourable view of her.
Last week that number had fallen to a fifth in a New York Times poll. Other polls, by Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, have also recorded a sharp drop in disapproval ratings over the past year.
More tellingly, her approval number is now 69% — an 11-point jump since 2002. That makes her even more popular than New York’s other senator, Charles Schumer, who just won re-election with 71%.
Washington has also noticed. Talk to Democrats in the capital city and you’ll find an astonishing consensus that the Democratic nomination in 2008 is now Hillary’s to lose.
How on earth did this come about? The answer is, I think, that Senator Clinton has finally escaped one of the critical drags on her national reputation. What many people disliked about her was what they perceived as her unreconstructed liberal politics and her use of her marriage to gain and wield political power.
But in 2005 Senator Clinton has recast herself in the public mind as a centrist and she has won election in her own right. That changes everything. Or perhaps more accurately it changes a lot.
Take two recent Hillary gambits. The first was a remarkable speech to pro-choice activists in New York. Clinton is a strong supporter of the constitutional right to a legal abortion and has in the past used these occasions to rally a key constituency.
This time she drew gasps from the crowd. She insisted that opponents of abortion were sincere in their religious faith and deserved a more respectful hearing from pro-choicers. She also declared that abortion itself was always an unfortunate event — and that the Democrats needed to commit themselves more firmly to reducing its prevalence.
The gist: “We can all recognise that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women. The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place.”
So she reclaims the rhetoric of values that Republicans have so cannily deployed these past few years; she strives to occupy a middle ground on a very polarised subject; and she calls the pro-life bluff on access to contraception.
The anti-abortion forces are dominated by evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. The last thing they want to get into is a debate on how contraception can be a check against unnecessary abortions — because they will split into Catholic and Protestant camps. And that’s exactly what Hillary has pushed them gently into. Advantage Clinton.
Then there’s the war. Senator Clinton voted for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She made the usual and fair criticisms of the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war but she never backed away from it. She was certainly more obviously pro-war than John Kerry.
A week ago she toured Iraq, visiting soldiers, checking in with politicians, and doing all of the above with Senator John McCain, a Republican and a genuine Vietnam war hero.
Sure enough, on the Sunday morning political shows, she was broadcast next to McCain, speaking of “cautious optimism” about Iraq’s fitful progress towards self-government. McCain was even asked whether he thought Clinton would make a good president. He said yes.
McCain has also noticed Clinton’s membership of the Senate armed services committee. She is adopting the guise of an “Iron Lady” to undermine visceral hostility to her on the right.
That hostility still doubtless exists. Larry Sabato, a well- respected political analyst, sent out an e-mail last week trying to debunk the Hillary boomlet. He wrote: “Despite her attempts to moderate, Senator Clinton is firmly fixed in the public’s mind as a northeastern liberal from a deep blue state — rather reminiscent of another recent nominee from Massachusetts.”
He thinks the memory of the 1990s, the scandals and the possibility of her husband returning to the White House as a co-president will effectively derail any of Hillary’s attempts to remake herself.
David Geffen, the big Democratic fundraiser and Hollywood bigwig, has also pooh-poohed Hillary’s chances. Although her ratings in New York are sky-high, nationally four in 10 still have unfavourable views of her.
Count me a sceptic of the view that Hillary is irreparably damaged. Time heals. Americans have increasingly fond memories of the 1990s. If Clinton can convince them she takes national security seriously she can overcome the dark side of the legacy.
She has also been talking up her faith, which is genuine. Asked recently by a reporter whether she was running for president, she replied: “I have more than I can say grace over right now.”
As Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, has observed, that’s not the same thing as saying she has too much on her plate.
The other obvious factor is the opposition. Republicans are ebullient right now. But who are the potential candidates in 2008? None appeals. The popular ones — McCain, Rudolph Giuliani — are far too socially moderate to get past what is in effect the veto of the religious right in the primaries. Arnold Schwarzenegger is barred by the constitution.
If Hillary gets to run against a grey, grim apostle of religious conservatism — a Bill Frist or a Sam Brownback — she stands a real chance. What she has shown these past couple of years is that she is, above all else, shrewd.
And what the Republicans have shown is that they can overreach. That’s the formula that helped Hillary’s husband keep the presidency in 1996. It could help her win it for herself in 2008.
The Sunday Times, London
New York warms to Hillary... next it could be America
Something quite unusual is happening to Hillary Rodham Clinton. She’s becoming popular.
In New York state, where she is the junior senator, her approval ratings are in the stratosphere. When she became senator, many sceptical New Yorkers — they’re not pushovers — were partly persuaded by the Republican campaign against her.
She was a carpetbagger; she was using New York as a springboard to get back to the White House (this time in her own right); she was a hyper- liberal who campaigned in the more conservative sections of upstate New York purely for cynical purposes. Yes, Hillary won election, but the reservations were there. In late 2002 a third of New Yorkers had an unfavourable view of her.
Last week that number had fallen to a fifth in a New York Times poll. Other polls, by Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, have also recorded a sharp drop in disapproval ratings over the past year.
More tellingly, her approval number is now 69% — an 11-point jump since 2002. That makes her even more popular than New York’s other senator, Charles Schumer, who just won re-election with 71%.
Washington has also noticed. Talk to Democrats in the capital city and you’ll find an astonishing consensus that the Democratic nomination in 2008 is now Hillary’s to lose.
How on earth did this come about? The answer is, I think, that Senator Clinton has finally escaped one of the critical drags on her national reputation. What many people disliked about her was what they perceived as her unreconstructed liberal politics and her use of her marriage to gain and wield political power.
But in 2005 Senator Clinton has recast herself in the public mind as a centrist and she has won election in her own right. That changes everything. Or perhaps more accurately it changes a lot.
Take two recent Hillary gambits. The first was a remarkable speech to pro-choice activists in New York. Clinton is a strong supporter of the constitutional right to a legal abortion and has in the past used these occasions to rally a key constituency.
This time she drew gasps from the crowd. She insisted that opponents of abortion were sincere in their religious faith and deserved a more respectful hearing from pro-choicers. She also declared that abortion itself was always an unfortunate event — and that the Democrats needed to commit themselves more firmly to reducing its prevalence.
The gist: “We can all recognise that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women. The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place.”
So she reclaims the rhetoric of values that Republicans have so cannily deployed these past few years; she strives to occupy a middle ground on a very polarised subject; and she calls the pro-life bluff on access to contraception.
The anti-abortion forces are dominated by evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics. The last thing they want to get into is a debate on how contraception can be a check against unnecessary abortions — because they will split into Catholic and Protestant camps. And that’s exactly what Hillary has pushed them gently into. Advantage Clinton.
Then there’s the war. Senator Clinton voted for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She made the usual and fair criticisms of the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war but she never backed away from it. She was certainly more obviously pro-war than John Kerry.
A week ago she toured Iraq, visiting soldiers, checking in with politicians, and doing all of the above with Senator John McCain, a Republican and a genuine Vietnam war hero.
Sure enough, on the Sunday morning political shows, she was broadcast next to McCain, speaking of “cautious optimism” about Iraq’s fitful progress towards self-government. McCain was even asked whether he thought Clinton would make a good president. He said yes.
McCain has also noticed Clinton’s membership of the Senate armed services committee. She is adopting the guise of an “Iron Lady” to undermine visceral hostility to her on the right.
That hostility still doubtless exists. Larry Sabato, a well- respected political analyst, sent out an e-mail last week trying to debunk the Hillary boomlet. He wrote: “Despite her attempts to moderate, Senator Clinton is firmly fixed in the public’s mind as a northeastern liberal from a deep blue state — rather reminiscent of another recent nominee from Massachusetts.”
He thinks the memory of the 1990s, the scandals and the possibility of her husband returning to the White House as a co-president will effectively derail any of Hillary’s attempts to remake herself.
David Geffen, the big Democratic fundraiser and Hollywood bigwig, has also pooh-poohed Hillary’s chances. Although her ratings in New York are sky-high, nationally four in 10 still have unfavourable views of her.
Count me a sceptic of the view that Hillary is irreparably damaged. Time heals. Americans have increasingly fond memories of the 1990s. If Clinton can convince them she takes national security seriously she can overcome the dark side of the legacy.
She has also been talking up her faith, which is genuine. Asked recently by a reporter whether she was running for president, she replied: “I have more than I can say grace over right now.”
As Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, has observed, that’s not the same thing as saying she has too much on her plate.
The other obvious factor is the opposition. Republicans are ebullient right now. But who are the potential candidates in 2008? None appeals. The popular ones — McCain, Rudolph Giuliani — are far too socially moderate to get past what is in effect the veto of the religious right in the primaries. Arnold Schwarzenegger is barred by the constitution.
If Hillary gets to run against a grey, grim apostle of religious conservatism — a Bill Frist or a Sam Brownback — she stands a real chance. What she has shown these past couple of years is that she is, above all else, shrewd.
And what the Republicans have shown is that they can overreach. That’s the formula that helped Hillary’s husband keep the presidency in 1996. It could help her win it for herself in 2008.
i'm moving to jersey.
