I have voiced my concerns about a Hilary nomination before, but an LA times story illustrates very clearly one of my points. The strategic worry that Hilary Clinton is very divisive character in American politics, and that should she win our nomination she would energize the republican base. That division would lead once again to another razor thin election which hinges on one or two states, and her coattails wouldn’t take our down ticket candidates very far.
That concern it seems is shared by highly placed democrats around the country:
The chairman of a Midwest state party called Clinton a nightmare for congressional and state legislative candidates.
A Democratic congressman from the West, locked in a close re-election fight, said Clinton is the Democratic candidate most likely to cost him his seat.
A strategist with close ties to leaders in Congress said Democratic Senate candidates in competitive races would be strongly urged to distance themselves from Clinton.
“The argument with Hillary right now in some of these red states is she’s so damn unpopular,” said Andy Arnold, chairman of the Greenville, S.C., Democratic Party. “I think Hillary is someone who could drive folks on the other side out to vote who otherwise wouldn’t.”
“Republicans are upset with their candidates,” Arnold added, “but she will make up for that by essentially scaring folks to the polls.”
The Clinton campaign tries to spin these negatives by saying that the public already knows a lot about here, and that she has already taken all the battering that the GOP noise machine can give. That isn’t very reassuring to me.
All of the stories about Clinton have had time to seep into our collective subconscious, and true or not they effect the way we see her.
What the Clinton campaign doesn’t say is that her edge over potential Republican candidates is much smaller than it should be, given the wide lead the Democratic Party holds over the GOP in generic polling.
The problem is her political baggage: A whopping 49 percent of the public says they have an unfavorable view of Clinton compared to 47 percent who say they hold her in high regard, according to a Gallup Poll survey Aug. 3-5.
Further I think we can look at several of our losing congressional candidates last time around for a similar pattern. Candidates like Lois Murphy who ran in 2004 and did well, but had high negatives and were unable to move their poll numbers despite a strong democratic year in 2006. Clintonites believe that they can overcome a 49% unfavorable rating. If they do they will be running against the tide of history in more ways than they usually boast.
A candidate’s unfavorability scores almost always climb during campaigns. If the pattern holds, Clinton has a historically high hurdle to overcome.
“For Hillary, who has been on the scene for so long and has had perception of her so ground in … there’s no question it will be really hard for her to change perceptions,” said Democratic pollster David Eichenbaum, who represents moderate Democrats in GOP-leaning states.
Hilary is trying to use electability as one of her strong points, but I think it one of the weakest points of her campaign. Not only is her unfavorable rating high, it is concentrated in several of the states we need to win if we want to change the electoral college to blue. In states like Colorado, which are definitely on the table in a generic mach-up have Hilary with at negative 16 point favorablility gap. It will be hard to win that open Senate seat in Colorado and several other states if Hilary is on the top of our ticket. There are a lot more seats like that.
She is just so polarizing,” the state lawmaker said. Clinton would drag any candidate down 3 or 4 percentage points, he said.
“I’m one of these Democrats who has some legitimate reservations, because the Clintons have in the past invigorated the Republican base,” said Carrie Webster, a leader in the West Virginia state House who served as executive director of the state party when Bill Clinton won the 1992 West Virginia primary.
The generic polls, and party identifications show that the Democratic party has a chance to win and win big in 2008. With luck, skill, and the Republican’s continued failure to govern we could hold them down to around 30 electoral votes, win more seats in the House, the Senate and State Legislatures around the country. But, only if we have the right candidate. With her high negatives concentrated in red states, Hilary will only be able to eek out a slim Blue State victory at the best. At the worst she may be the only Democratic candidate besides Kerry to lose the popular vote in 20 years.
This is not my only reservation, or indeed my primary objection to a Clinton candidacy, but it is one that I think bears discussion.
