Why Hillary Clinton will be elected President in 2008

Because Joe Klein thinks she's unelectable.

This morning I was writing about Adam Cohen's editorial in the NYT and how ridiculous it is for someone who works for the same newspaper as Judy Miller, Jeff Gerth, John Tierney, and David Brooks to be lecturing bloggers on journalistic standards and practices.

I should correct that.

It's ridiculous for anyone who works in the same profession as Joe Klein to be lecturing bloggers on standards.

Now, I don't want Hillary to run.  I don't think she can win if she runs.  I think that all the speculation about her strength as a potential candidate is mistaking her celebrity for popularity.  But mainly I don't think she should be President because her sole claim on the job and her major qualification for it is that her husband was President.

But Joe Klein thinks that the reason she can't win is the reason so many people expect her to run and win.

Klein thinks that Bill will be an albatross around her neck.

And then there is her husband, a one-man supermarket tabloid. A few weeks ago, the New York Post ran a photo of Bill Clinton leaving a local restaurant with an attractive woman, and the political-elite gossip hounds went berserk. Prominent Democrats—friends of the Clintons—were wringing their hands. "Do we really want to go through all that again?" one asked me. I don't know—should the sins of the husband be visited upon the wife? Absent any evidence, the former President should be considered guilty until proved really guilty.

The Moose takes care of Klein's other ideas as well, but he deals with this one most effectively.

As for as Bill being a liability, Klein should read the latest Democracy Corps poll which shows that in a hypothetical 2008 George W. Bush v. Bill Clinton matchup- old Bubba would prevail over W. - 53-43. In '08, the eight years of Clinton peace and prosperity might look mighty fine.

(Thanks to Jack Shannon at CommonSenseDesk for the link.)

I doubt that Bill would be enough of an asset to get Hillary through the primaries, let alone the election, but it is borderline delusional to suggest that the most popular president of the last 50 years---and, yes, he was more popular than Reagan by the time he left office---would drag down his wife's candidacy, unless it happened because Hillary suffered by the comparison.

But Klein lives in a dreamworld.  It's called Washington D.C.  And in that land of hallucination and vaporous illusion George Bush is wildly popular and Bill Clinton never was, Karl Rove can do no wrong, the Republicans are the party of ideas, the Democrats are always out of the mainstream, and everything that is wrong with politics in America is equally the fault of Republicans and Democrats but it is the Democrats who need to clean up their act.

Before this one, Klein's most recent transcription of one of his dreams was his argument that the while polls were showing that close to 80 per cent of Americans thought the Republicans had gone stark raving mad on the Terri Schiavo question, the Democrats had blundered badly and been totally outfoxed by the Republicans and would suffer for it at the hands of the voters.

To which Digby said, Excuse me?

Klein also thought that Clinton would be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail back in 1998, a fact he seems to have forgotten about himself.

You'll notice in his Time column that when he calls Clinton a one-man tabloid he doesn't mention his own book, Primary Colors, which did a lot to convince Washington insiders that Bill was as slick a Willy as his Republican enemies in Arkansas said he was, but which ultimately had no effect on the voters' opinion of Bill, except maybe to make them like him more.

It's not just that Klein apparently doesn't hold himself accountable for his woeful judgment, lazy reporting, stubborn disregard for facts that contradict his theory du jour, and his habit of putting his own opinions forward as if they were other people's objective analysis.

It's that nobody in the national press corps seems to have noticed that Klein is incompetent.

Why not?

Because in the eyes of his fellow "real journalists" Klein is doing not just a good job but an exemplary one.  Klein is the journalist they all want to be---a celebrity with a bestselling book under his belt, regular TV appearances, and a gig at one of the top magazines in the country.

All of what objectively look like Klein's disqualifications for the position he holds in the public eye are intrinsic to the skill set of most "real journalists."

But it's bloggers who need to straighten up, fly right, and start conducting themselves like real journalists...

like Joe Klein.

(A quibble:  In his post, the Moose, pointing out that it really is too early to make predictions about who will turn out to be either party's nominee in 2008, asks who would have predicted in 1989 that Bill Clinton would be the Democratic nominee in 1992.

Well, my father, for one.  But also most of the other Democratic governors, the leaders of the DLC, and just about everybody who'd watched Clinton at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.  Clinton had been a rising star in the party for a long time by that point and the reason he wasn't seen as the inevitable next nominee as soon as Dukakis got into that tank is that most people thought that Mario Cuomo would run and the nomination was his for the easy picking and the still very young Clinton would have to wait until 1996 or 2000.)

Comments

[Douglass Truth]

way to go, lance.

[denisdekat]

I wish I could be a journalist, but instead I am all about rant...

Anyhow, I saw a good clip on Jon Stewart's show (visit my blog for the link). It pretty much says everything about the media and how they handle the theatre of politics that we live with. So I would not expect any real journalism comming from any mainstream media...

That is why blogs are great, I find the best writting is found in blogs (with the exception of mine hehe)...

[Linkmeister]

If there were awards for stupidest advice given to Democrats over the past five years, Joe Klein would be a finalist. Why is that the most obvious hacks have names that start with "K?" I'm thinking of Kaus, Klein and Krauthammer.

[blue girl]

Hi Lance, thanks for making this point about Joe Klein. I could do without him. I catch myself shaking my head and wincing as I read his columns -- anyway -- the right-wing machine has been completely pushing Hillary's nomination in 2008. Joe Scarborough, Laura Ingram, Newt Gingrich, etc. The right would love nothing better than Hillary for President. It's their strategy right now. Specifically because Bill is the "one-man supermarket tabloid!" The masses eat that stuff up! Think "Run-a-way Bride" stories of the last couple of weeks.

(I went to lunch with an 18 year old yesterday, ready to graduate from high school in a few weeks who asked me -- when the Iraq war was brought up: "Is that war still going on? I thought it ended." -- But, she knew all about the run-a-way bride! So sad, I could cry.)

I wish the right's strategy regarding Hillary would have been the point of Klein's article. But, it was more about "don't choose her because she will polarize the nation further." What a crock! The right-winger's first priority when they wake up in the morning is to demonize ANY liberal/Democrat.

We can't worry about polarizing the nation. I'm not sure it could be "further polarized" at this point anyway.

I have to admit, I did agree with a lot of his points regarding Hillary. We can't be talked into wanting Hillary because we've absorbed the buzz that the right has created.

It would be like the Democratic underbelly pushing Bill Frist right now very slyly because we know he would lose.

Do the Democrats have a strategy at all? All I get are lame emails from John Kerry.

I fear -- no one's workin' it for us.

[dave]

Hillary will be elected in 2008 because the Republicans want it. It's the perfect setup to destroy, once and for all, the Democratic party and the Republic: the Republicans will make sure she's elected, then in, say, 2010 (gotta wait a few years so they can blame Hillary and she can't say "It was George's fault!"), another "terrorist attack" will, for instance, wipe San Francisco off the map. The Republicans, who will still be controlling congress, will impeach (and probably imprison) Hillary, then do the same to the vice pres who became pres after she was canned (they'll be able to show how the vice pres was responsible, too), and then the presidency will fall to the Speaker of the House, a Republican. If you think the Dems are sheepish now, imagine them then! They'll close up shop faster that you can say "support our troops".

Food for thought: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/13/nyregion/13hillary.html

An exerpt: "Exactly why Mr. Gingrich has been so effusive about Mrs. Clinton is an open question."

Answers:
1) (see above)
2) he's the perfect guy to present her as "acceptable", at least to moderate Republicans, since he current holds no office and can project an image of eccentricity, shall we say, without losing all credibility. As the months go by, more folks on the right will say, "Gee, maybe she's not so bad". All a set up.

[Kalkratte]

I too think Hillary will win, but that's only because I live in a country that starts with a K. Krautland, also known as Germany.
Judging from the echos of the ricochets we hear over here, I'd say Mrs Clinton laughs like a rabid dog and I trust her about as far as I could throw her. But she has the teeth & nails, the social-visionary touch (remember Universal Health Care? - whatever became of it), the liberal background and the establishment to do it. She will become Democratic nominee (hopefully with Obama in tow) and win the race because no one exactly knows her stable, but everyone knows that Hillary is boss. The US needs a real man after G.W. who, unlike McCain, won't start throwing bombs immediately. Supposing that question is still up then, of course.
Speaking from a country that is ruled by a woman at present (and a great party coalition that drives all old-fashioned socialists to the fringes) I hereby vouch that it has no ill after-effects. Contrary to all clichés, things usually get more rational and less emotional. Ask the Brits, they're still reeling from Mrs Thatcher, but also from Tony No-Brainer Blare.

From our position, what we'd like to see is an end to those rather nasty War(s) on the Subjective Noun, but it's pretty clear that's not immediately going to happen one way or another. Americans can't stand the thought of giving up. They kill plenty of dragons yeah, but also blow up half the world.
The candidate of my choice would be Obama, but he's not going to win the presidency. Why? Ask the line-up of fine black candidates that tried and failed. But he's got charisma, brains and the balls to challenge the corrupt sort of morals the Bushites have imposed on America and us faithful little vassals here, too. There is much more to set straight in the hearts & minds at home than in Iraq - the war can't be undone and Iraquis & Afghans are justified to hate you for generations. By rights the new WTC towers should be inscribed with the names of the lives the US took or ruined in revenge for a few thousand Americans. But the treatment of prisoners and what seems to be a lapse into medieval habits really challenge the ideas and ideals of "western civilisation". At least the modern ones.
So if he becomes Vice President, I'll look foreward to what Obama does to amend the current situation, like flushing Bushites out of the system, abolishing all of Bush's dodgy legislation, bringing the detainees to trial and cutting back on war profiteers, give POW status to "enemy combatants" and make sure they are treated with a civilised minimum of decency. That's what needs to be done immediately.