The Negative of Being Hillary

There is much talk lately about a Clinton team decision to use negative campaigning against her Democratic opponents for President. There are lots of ways to go negative but none of them are positive contributions to a real debate on issues. No one “likes” negative campaigns, least of all the voters, but they persist anyway based on the persuasive argument that negative campaigns often are highly effective in winning elections. While undoubtedly that is true, they are less effective winning Democratic Primary contests. By and large the voters who participate in Democratic Primaries are drawn toward candidates for positive reasons, and they appreciate a substantive discussion on the issues more so than average voters. One thing Hillary Clinton is not is dumb. Why then, at this stage in the Democratic Primaries, has her campaign begun to go negative in selected instances? I suggest it’s because she started out at a disadvantage compared to the other candidates.

It was never an obvious disadvantage that Hillary Clinton faces. Far more obvious are various advantages Hillary held over the rest of the Democratic field when this race for President began, hence the original veneer of “inevitability” that went with her long held front runner status. While Hillary Clinton held substantial leads over her opponents her basic disadvantage was moot. Now it no longer is.

The dirty work on Hillary began long ago, but it wasn’t begun by her current Democratic primary opponents. A negative campaign against Hillary Clinton has been waged in America’s media now for over 15 years, there and in countless “humorous” emailed hatchet jobs that seemed to perennially circulate about her. The lowest blows have long since landed, and now they hardly even get mentioned. They don’t need to be; everyone already has them internalized for easy unconscious reference. By and large Hillary’s opponents for the nomination can stick to the high road themselves now while they hitch hike off the drive to demonize both Clintons that the Right set off on long ago.

They don't have to bring up the attacks against Hillary, just remind folks of them by questioning her "electability", while mentioning how "polarizing" and "divisive" Clinton is with so many people. It's an easy hit, with no ones fingerprints left at the crime scene. Hillary’s negatives are collectively understood, and blandly referred to as her “baggage”.

The trick for Clinton all along has been to turn her negatives into a positive. She does that by stressing how she’s been through the Republican inquisition already and emerged from it in fine fighting form. She does that by stressing how she’s strong enough to win, strong enough to take anything the Republicans may attempt to throw at her. When Republicans attack Democrats, we want Democrats to fight back with a negative offensive of their own. The paradox for Hillary Clinton now is finding a way to show her fighting form without seeming to unfairly beat up on Democratic opponents who inherited the luxury of indirectly attacking her by inference.

When Hillary flashes a smile it outshines her trump card. But if she lashes out that stands out for going negative when voters want positives. Still Clinton is correct. She’s already been battle tested in ways none of the other Democratic candidates have yet had to fully face. But the media now is more interested in horse races than in muck raking, and Republicans for the most part are keeping their best powder dry. From where she stands it has fallen on the Clinton campaign to remind voters that her closet has been strip searched already, while no one can say for sure what “baggage” is still stuffed in that of her opponents. To Hillary that counts as an advantage she offers as a candidate for President, but it is an advantage few will focus on if this campaign stays uniformly “positive” and Hillary alone must lug the baggage.

that all the negatives on the Clintons have been aired; I'm guessing there's plenty since Bill has left office, and the businessmen he's courted and kept company with since leaving office would definitely be something raised in a general election.

I also don't think you can she's been battle-tested - she had two easy elections to the Senate. These primaries are arguably her first real race as a candidate in her own right and from what we've seen in the last two weeks, her ability to battle successfully is an open question.

you are right that as long as a person stays alive and adversaries pay attention new potential "negatives" are bound to emerge, so of course that holds true for Clinton also. But the anti-Clinton memes have all essentially been put into play by now, and she has been under active fire for over a decade. Hell her Republican adversaries literally rigged it so that a special prosecuter could spend hundreds of millions of dollars investigating both Clintons, but primarilly Hillary, over alleged wrong doing with "White Water" and then Vince Foster. That's how Kevin Starr got his start, not over Bill's blow job.

It is a matter of opinion but I think Hillary has been battle tested. You act like it was an automatic cake walk for her to move to New York State and win two decisive victories for Senate, but it wasn't. Republicans tried very hard, especially the first time, to find some handle to pull her down with, and they failed miserably. Everyone thinks New York was so safely Democratic but we just got rid of a three term Republican Governor, we are in the 3rd or 4th (I've lost track) consecutive term of a Republican as Mayor of NYC (OK Blumberg now is Independent but he beat a Democrat the first time running on the Republican line to take over Rudy's old job), and New York's State Senate is still controlled by Republicans.

Meanwhile neither John Edwards nor Barack Obama have ever faced the voters for reelection to a State wide office, let alone won reelection. And the one time Obama did run for a State wide office he had carpet bagger Allan Keyes as his opponent. Hell he didn't even have to worry about losing votes over racism that time.

Once people get in office, they stay there for three or more terms, getting re-elected with big margins - Cuomo, Moynihan, Pataki, etc. So, I think it's less a matter of party (Rep v. Dem) than incumbency. Eventually people get tired of a politician, or the inevitable scandals finally emerge, and we get turnover in a seat. She was endorsed by Moynihan in her first run (he was holding the seat at the time and chose to retire) and (if I remember correctly) did not have a contested primary, so it was pretty close to being the incumbent even on her first campaign.

But whatever it was, no account of her first Senate campaign (and certainly not her second) could be read as being a hotly contested or intense campaign.

in the election that Pataki won for his first term. I suppose you may be right that some people were "tired" of him by then but it's not like he was under any dark clouds, or I doubt Rudy could have gotten away with endorsing Mario, even if he and Pataki were political rivals. I am surprised that Rudy hasn't gotten fried over that move in the debates yet.

And of course Hillary ran for an open seat that had been held by a Democrat for a long time, voters could easily have thought it was time to elect a Republican there too but they chose her. Now it doesn't seem as impressive as it was, but Clinton did do an excellent job of winning over Republican dominated upstate New York during her first run, and lord knows it's not like they hadn't been exposed to all of the Rush Limbaugh type hate Hillary poison before she won them over.

You said before the state votes Republican, which is true, but it also votes Democrat - Moynihan was routinely re-elected with what at least 65% of the vote, without even campaigning. Schumer got what, 77% of the vote in his last campaign? That's not just downstate, that has to include a lot of upstaters. As I said, I don't think party matters much. There's sort of a detente between the Republicans and Democrats in protecting each others majorities in the Assembly and Senate, and maybe that explains why party labels don't seem to carry a lot of meaning. Finally, she ran her first campaign in a presidential year, which means a lot of turn-out, overwhelmingly for Gore, i.e., Democratic ticket.

I just don't think you can use terms like 'battle-tested' to describe Hillary as a candidate herself. Look at Schumer - he beat D'Amato. D'Amato was going for his fourth term, scandals had emerged, he had done too many twists and turns as the wind changed, so the time was right to challenge him...but he is widely considered to have been a good, hard (read: nasty) campaigner. So, Schumer really had to go through something to win his seat. Clinton? Not really - she had to beat Lazio, a two-term congressman from LI who wasn't well known. I live in NYC and read the papers but I had never heard of Lazio before. You can be sure someone in Buffalo or Syracuse had never heard of him, either.

Anyway, nice chatting.

MAIN reasons (in the beginning) I decided NOT to support her. One of my SECOND main reasons is that the Repukes ACTUALLY DO want her to be the nominee! I said it over and over a very very long time ago! And as time passes it becomes even more evident.

I'm not trying to be nasty or divisive, it is what it is! She IS intelligent and has many positives, but I just have many doubts about her actually winning in the GE.]

Even here at DU, we see every day, many just don't like Hillary Clinton. I didn't do it, you didn't do it, but perception is that she lacks a certain quality that many want. I'm not saying WHAT the quality is, kinda of like that saying about pornography, you can't define it, but you KNOW it when you see it.

When I thought about her running some time back I was thrilled until I began looking more closely at how she might be received. Doesn't mean she won't pull it off in the end, but I just don't know!

It is among the reasons why Hillary was never my first choice. I would rather the Democrats had nominated Wes Clark or Al Gore, or perhaps Russ Feingold. Those would have been my ideal candidates factoring in my ideological leanings. Joe Biden or Chris Dodd are both seasoned politicians who I could certainly live with also. But none of the first three ran and the latter two are treated like they are defacto out of the running.

Because of George W. Bush, Iraq, Katrina, corruption and many other issues the Republican base has shrunken dramatically, over the last four years in particular. Rush Limbaugh is not anywhere near as potent and Bill O'Reilly gets laughed at openly. Many who flirted with the religious right now realize they were being used by people at least as immoral as the Democrats who they were taught to hate. Hillary hating may be used to "rally the Republican base" but all the King's horses and Hillary too can't put Humpty Reagan back together again. My fear is less about nominating someone who the Republicans are used to attacking, it is about nominating someone who is not experienced at defending themselve against that type of intense national Republican attack. My fear is nominating someone who gives the Republicans solid grounds to claim that they are too inexperienced to trust with the oval office. Hillary will run as a Democrat with a Democratic platform that is suited to the needs of America's people if she becomes our nominee. I think the only thing that can beat us in 2008 would an untested candidate with new weaknesses for Republicans to exploit, who is not up for that level of battle.

DU is hopelessly anti-establishment which is one of the reasons why I can make myself so at home here, but it does not accurately reflect the general public and the perceptions of most Independent and Democratic voters. Hillary has a lot of genuine support out there, as does Obama also and Edwards to a somewhat lesser degree. If she becomes our nominee we here will no longer be comparing her to Edwards and Obama, we will be comparing her to someone like Huckabee or Giuliani, and Hillary would start looking a whole lot better even at DU

who will not win the presidency..he will not get the votes. He won't even get the nomination. People want someone in the white house to get things done. And if Obama can be led by the nose with a celeb type like Oprah how would he be led around with anybody in the corporations, religious groups he would cave in a second.

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Democrats want a fighter and they want the candidates to prove they are worthy by more than just words.

The polls certainly are trending that way as of late.

I do not believe in "the vast right-wing" conspiracy. I believe Hillary is arrogant, and has a sense of entitlement. I also believe she lacks the kind of personality needed to bring the country together and find common solutions to our problems. She admitted she had a difficulty connecting with voters in Iowa at first, until her advisors told her what to do. That's telling.

This video, which I just watched from yesterday's debate, demonstrates perfectly why voter's will reject her. It's all about her attitude, Tom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nKHBSFSosY

I was paying pretty damn good attention through the 1992 Primary season, through both Bill Clinton terms, and since. I watched how Congressional Republicans pulled off a secret coup that ousted one Republican Special Proscecuter who wasn't compliant enough for them and installed Ken Starr instead, and then let him loose on the Clintons with a 100 million dollar budget. I watched Rush Limbaugh coin the term Femi-Nazi's and use Hillary Clinton as the poster girl for it. I remember all the rumors about her and Vince Fosaer that Rush pumped on his show. I remember all the talk about Hillary only staying with Bill after Monica because she's a bull dyke so sex didn't matter, and neither did love, since it was always just only a marriage of political convenience. But that is the trivial part. I remember a vast right wing conspiracy that tried to pull down the duly elected and popular government of the United States by ramming through only the second impeachment of a President since our Republic began, all over a cover up of a blow job, with the help of a sympathetic national press that later trained it's guns on Al Gore when he ran for President.

Obviously you have your own take on Hillary Clinton's personality, but she has been overall popular in New York State and she has a hell of a lot of support in the Democratic Party also down to the level of grass roots voters, white and black. And I'm sorry but I think you are reading way way too much into that video clip, but obviously we disagree there.

based on this "vast right-wing conspiracy"

Yesterday's gone. The 90s are over and it's time to move on. She just doesn 't have the personality or the persona this country needs right now.

Obama is the future; she is the past.

And I can't stand her arrogance.

this rhetoric about forgetting the past is naivete to the max.

and dangerous. Where did you here that kind of rhetoric?

I believe all intelligent people study the past, and learn from it.

You turn his amateurish missteps into attributes and deny that he started attacking Clinton FIRST. Somebody here at DU posted some of the snarky, slimy comments Obama made about Clinton.

Hillary Clinton is qualified to be president because she's been tried and tested for over 10 years. Maybe you were too young to remember all the abuse heaped on the Clinton's but it was numerous and completely out of proportion to anything I've ever seen or heard. It was surreal.

Now, I'm seeing the same thing happening---from fellow DEMOCRATS---here on DU and it makes me sick. Obama is the one who is arrogant. He's just a little too "smooth" for my taste. Obama is an empty suit who never owns up to his part in the negative politics going on.

You are prejudiced against Hillary Clinton. Fine. Just don't vote for her. You have the right to vote for anybody you choose.

You are attacking the integrity of a woman who has dedicated her life to issues concerning women and children and who has been an exemplary Senator.

Obama doesn't have the maturity to take on such a great responsibility---maybe in 15 years or so---but not now. You think he has such personal charm and charisma but I look beneath the surface and see that there is no THERE, THERE!

A case in point is her mocking, condescending, arrogant laughter during the debate. Obama has class and great leadership skills.

America is looking for mature, inspired leadership, and that's exactly what Obama is offering.

Obama really speaks to you, he inpires you, he represents what is still right in America to you, while Clinton seems petty vincitive arrongant and out dated to you. Probaly I left out a lot of the positives you would ascribe to Obama and negatives you would ascribe to Clinton. But can you give it a rest on this thread now? It's not that those views aren't meaningful, or that they are any less valid to express than anything I've written here, it's just that you've made your point.

Honest, I never expected everyone to agree with me, but I tried hard to avoid making the OP of this thread a standard edition boiler plate yea team post. You raised some points and I responded, but if you want to a full blown Pro Obama thread to mulit-post to could you maybe start a new one?

Honest.

O.K....your thread, your house. See ya!

she's trying to make president the same way. When she announced she would be running for the presidency the first thing she did was to drop the "Rodam" to just Hillary Clinton. She is too corporate connected, Bill has played too much golf with Sr. Bush.

I read it the same. This is why I always thought she had a glass jaw problem. Her trump card has always been that she's inevitable. The problem with that is the perception that creates. First, Democrats love underdogs--always have. Second, the high expectations her "inevitability" create leads to ludicrous conclusions like the notion that she's in trouble because she's only leading in New Hampshire and South Carolina by a "little bit".

For any other candidate, leading in the two most important of the first three primaries would be good news. It reminds me of that joke where a skeptic watches Jesus heal some lepers, raise a couple of dead, and divide loaves & fishes to feed a multitude--then he sorta shrugs and says, "Okay, what else ya got?"

Given the current dynamic, Sen Clinton is in a situation where, if she loses just a couple of times, she's gonna cave. Glass jaw. Looks big, looks hard, looks imposing, but can shatter in an instant. Better we find out now rather than next fall. She's a leader of inestimable talent. A part of me will be sad if she never gets a chance to stuff all that Clinton-hatred into the faces of the Republican smear-masters. She's done it several times and it's always fun to watch.

But I don't think she's our strongest candidate and I don't like the way she's basically a work-around the long standing principle of rotation in office. As the father of a daughter, I want to live to see a woman become president. She's just not the ideal one to break that ceiling.

The real problem is that some of her campaign workers suffer from that same misperception--that she can't afford to lose even once. That's why they're hitting panic buttons as another candidate--inevitably--draws a little closer to her victory margin. They really need to keep on acting like they're out front. Instead they're trying to knock the number two guy down a peg.

That never works. A real pro would know you always punch up, not down.

Its not the candidate, it's her ORGANIZATION, who represent her in that way---the arrogance, they coach that. They live it themselves, as any outsider will tell you. A bunch of arrogant pricks with a nice balance of hubris and entitlement. They are in a bubble of cluelessness. Who else could turn a 30 point lead into a close race / possible loss?

I just don't have the constitution to watch that happen in the general. With Hillary as the nominee, it's a virtual certainty.

I'll grant you that. It's way too tightly managed and controlled for my taste. I felt very naturally at home with the style that Clark personally used and embraced. The Clintons have always very tightly honed their message and attempted to focus it with precision while avoiding too many specifics in content. But it takes a very skilled politician, and a very centered human being, to win in politics now at the highest level without using a tightly managed and scripted campaign model. To be honest Captain that is a reason why I do not support Obama now but likely could four or eight years from now. I think he has the potential to infuse jazz into his message, but he has never had to withstand high caliber withering fire in his political career to date. He did well in local politics, and he won one state wide race against a carpet bagging ideological nut case Allan Keyes who racists couldn't vote for either. Since then no one has been gunning for him to push him off the high road.

I disagree with you. I think Hillary Clinton, like Bill Clinton before her, would stand up well against a Republican opponent. Both she and her team are excellent at fighting back against real enemies. My OP expresses some of the special difficulty I think she is having running against someone like Obama now in the primaries however.

unhopeful.

It's just not for me.

The rhetoric that Obama is somehow "not ready" is nonsense. What the Presidency requires is good judgment, intelligence, and character; a leader who inspires to the people, the nation, and the world to become something better. This nation needs a restoration of hope, and a leader who can show us the way. All else is secondary and largely irrelevant.

I simply do not see that in the cards. What can shatter in an instant is her being the clear favorite to win, and while significant, that is a different type blow than a knock out. If Hillary loses the nomination it will be on points, points tallied across a wide swath of primaries. Not that she wants to face that type of struggle, she had hopes of avoiding that type of fight, but I think she would wage it with a decent chance of victory even if she loses Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. But I agree that she would face a very real chance of losing also if it comes to that. I think it would serously underestimate her to believe she could be knocked out quickly in this race. There are innumberable ways she could retool and recast her campaign, and she would, and she would go down fighting if it came to that.

Personally I am not happy either about the family rotation aspect that you point to in your post, but I think that is a distinctly different matter with very little relationship to whether Hillary is a strong candidate or not. Unfortunately, from my own ideological perspective, I actually think it strengthens her as a candidate, not weakens her.

The punching problem you referenced I think was more in execution. For instance I think the Clinton camp shedding light on the 1996 campaign questionaire that Obama filed but claimed he didn't fill out and won't stand behind was fair and effective politics. That worked. Regarding the mess they just got themselves into, all her staff needed to do in the first place is point out that she's already been investigated by Ken Starr with 40 million bucks behind him, and she went on to win two terms in the U.S. Senate ,while her opponents have not been put under any such microscope. They should then have added that the Republicans will find plenty of material to attack Obama or Edwards on, all they need are their biographies to work with. That is all they ever should have offered. It would have been true and adaquate for their purpose.

Whoever we nominate will be attacked on... wait for it... character issues. Republicans bark character issues at Democrats with the same frequency as my neighbor's dog barks at me pulling up the driveway. It's practically Pavlovian with them.

In some ways I think the best thing that could happen for Clinton is for her to lose Iowa and either New Hampshire or South Carolina (but not both). Once she has to scrap, which she never really has had to do in New York, we'll see her mettle.

A vicious primary season doesn't bother me. It never makes a difference in the fall campaign. Long before the convention, they'll all be hugging each other on stage. It was in the early stages of the campaign, when she was avoiding the scrim and sucking all the money out of the room (and her people were strong arming donors away from helping out other candidates) that she made her biggest error.