The Hillary Conundrum

"Antiwar sentiments run high indeed, but when it comes to feminism and feminists, the 'Hillary divide' also mirrors a deeper debate over the relationship between gender and political power. The ambivalence over Hillary's candidacy has just as much to do with increasing skepticism about the value of making it to the top."

Newsweek got at this last week with a piece about whether HRC can close the "likability gap":

"The real problem many Democratic voters have with Clinton is the sneaking suspicion that with so much of the country against her, she can never win a general election. Clinton's fate may well come down to her ability to deal with a vexing question: what is it about me that so many people don't like?

"The answer has eluded both Clinton and her husband throughout their three decades in the arena. They began their national political lives with a miscalculation--the idea that America was ready for a new kind of empowered, ambitious political spouse who would be 'two for the price of one,' in Bill's phrase. The country, however, didn't take to Hillary, especially after she bragged that she'd pursued a career when she could have "stayed home to bake cookies and have teas."

"Installed in Washington, Hillary morphed into a comic-book villain for her detractors--a man-eating feminist, they claimed, who allegedly threw lamps at her husband, communed psychically with Eleanor Roosevelt and lit a White House Christmas tree adorned with sex toys. The narrative of depravity--a tissue of inventions by conservatives--was often hard to follow. Was she, as they imagined her, a secret lesbian who fostered a West Wing culture of rampant homosexuality? Or was she the duplicitous adulteress who slept with former law partner Vincent Foster, ordered his death and then made it look like a suicide?"

Hmmm . . . not sure I would've gone there.

Salon's Walter Shapiro spent some time with the senator and marvels at her preparation:

"If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination (which is far from preordained), it will be as much because of the skills on display at Dartmouth Friday as any other factor. Clinton is relentless, never skimping on her homework, never taking her privileged position (by marriage) in the Democratic pantheon for granted. She may lack what the Bush family used to call 'the vision thing,' but she is the 2008 presidential candidate least likely to make a tactical error . . .

"These realistic views -- which are supported by most members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment -- may not always endear Clinton to the party's antiwar crusaders. More than her rivals for the nomination, she is a candidate who seems as concerned with how her words will appear to swing voters in Ohio and Florida in October 2008, as she is about satisfying the Democratic electorate in the primaries."

She even straddles the question of whether being called Hillary is demeaning.

Plenty of chatter about this NYT piece saying that McCain is having trouble raising money because he's ticked off so many special interests over the years. "It seems John McCain's tepid attempt to woo the Republican Party never had much of a chance," says Time's Joe Klein. "The New York Times reports that the money people don't trust him. He was never a very convincing Bible-thumper, either. But I would guess that the single issue that has sent his poll numbersplummeting in places like South Carolina is immigration.

"This is all very sad. You may disagree with McCain's position on the war (I do), but he's an essentially honorable man--which is why his attempt to pander to his party's base was so unconvincing--who is paying the price for not kowtowing to military contractors and Mexiphobes, two of the more loathsome fragments of the electorate . . .