Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Washington Monthly has an interesting pair of articles in its recent issue. In one, Carl Cannon argues that Hillary Clinton is not the gawdawful candidate some scared Democrats are worried about, and in the other Amy Sullivan argues that she isn’t as bad as they say, but she’d be a bad idea nonetheless.

I am not a supporter of Hillary Clinton, but Cannon’s article made me rethink the possibility of her candidacy.

Many in the Democratic party’s itelligencia have been trashing her as an unelectable candidate based on anecdotal evidence, probably from their Republican friends. Cannon, however, takes a look at polling data:

The available data do not suggest she is unelectable—they suggest just the opposite. A Gallup poll done a week before Memorial Day showed Sen. Clinton with a favorable rate of 55 percent. True, her unfavorable number is 39 percent, which is high enough for concern—but one that is nearly identical to Bush’s on the eve of his reelection. And the unfavorable rating registered by Republican contender Bill Frist was nearly as high as his favorable numbers, with 32 percent saying they’d never heard of him.

He points out also that the argument that “Yeah, this is before the right wingers attack her,” is rather moot, since few can imagine that the right can come up with more to throw at her.

I haven’t finished the Sullivan article yet, but I was one of those “insiders” (sort of) who always thought that Hillary Clinton would be taken apart by a Republican nominee. I’ve always disparaged the defeatist attidude that many insiders have about our candidates, as if the whole country outside of the east coast are a bunch of slack jawed klansmen that can’t possibly vote for one of our people, so lets nominate someone boring and moderate and hope that no one notices that he or she is a Democrat. As I read the article, I realized that I was repeating their arguments when it came to Clinton.

One thing I found funny about the article that should make any right winger cringe is his comparison of Clinton’s candidacy to that of Ronald Reagan’s in 1980.

I’m still not sure if I support her for the nomination. I worked for Gen. Wesley Clark in the last primaries, and I already have been giving out Clark 08 buttons. The candidacy of Gov. Bill Richardson intrigues me as well, so who knows.

Speaking of General Clark, he had a commentary calling for intervention in Darfur (audio here) last week on NPR. Clark was so disgusted by the massacre in Rwanda ten years ago, that he pressured Pres. Clinton to get involved in Kosovo. Now he is arguing for the U.S. to use its power to stop the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Too bad that it seems the entire military is somewhere else.

On the subject of Kosovo, Billmon has an interesting post on his blog. One thing that has been sticking in my craw is how the right keeps arguing about “supporting our president when we have troops in combat,” but when we were in Kosovo, they tried to have the president impeached. All part of the new “do as I say, not as I do” philosophy of the conservatives.