by Frank James
Ken Rudin, who writes the online Political Junkie column for National Public Radio, asks the question “Is Hillary Clinton electable?” a question that’s taken on new urgency after her less- than-sterling performance at the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia the other night.
He doesn’t answer it because no one can answer that question at this point. As we found in 2000, a president’s election can hinge on less a thousand votes in a single elector-rich state.
Here’s what Rudin writes:
In Clinton’s thus-far charmed and seemingly unimpeded advance to the Democratic nomination, the electability question was always out there. True, in debate after debate, she was supremely prepared on all of the issues and would routinely outwork and outthink her rivals, often leaving the stage completely untouched. But invariably the next day the questions would begin. In an election where everything seems to be pointed in the Democrats’ direction, people would wonder whether she was too polarizing —whether despite the war, despite President Bush’s dismal numbers, the election would be about her. And if that were the case, could she survive a Republican assault that is sure to come? Implied in the questions was concern that maybe she was not the one.
These questions are not trivial. One of the more interesting messages I received in Iowa just prior to the 2004 Democratic caucuses — at a time when I still thought Howard Dean was going to triumph — was the fact that voters thought more with their heads than with their hearts. Many voted for John Kerry, they said, because he was the one who would defeat President Bush — not the mercurial and sometimes intemperate Dean. It was a practicality Democrats completely ignored in 1972 when they let their anti-war passion lead them to nominate George McGovern, who promptly lost 49 out of 50 states to President Richard Nixon that year. Dean may have spoken these Democrats’ language, but the name of the game, to them, was winning. And Kerry was seen as the one who could accomplish that.
I’m not convinced that Clinton’s uneven performance in Tuesday’s debate has jeopardized her chances for the nomination. I’m not even convinced that it made much of a difference. Certainly, Hillary Clinton is not Howard Dean. But if questions about her electability continue to stir Democratic voters, this may be a more unpredictable nominating process than we’ve thus far been led to believe.Rudin’s right about Clinton’s Tuesday-night debate performance. It doesn’t by itself derail her campaign.
But her performance that evening emerged out of her personality and long approach to politics. And because those aren’t likely to change, it’s probable there will be other instances of her trying to have it both ways as the campaign plays out.
Those moments will reinforce for many voters what they don’t like about her: that she often seems calculating and secretive.
That will only serve to drive back up her negatives, which had seemed to be coming down in some recent polls, pushing her more towards the unelectable side of the equation.
