Despite the media hype surrounding Barack Obama's presidential bid and John Edwards' recent frankness about his desire to raise taxes and implement a national health-care system-as well as Joe Biden's masterful demonstration of the "open mouth, insert foot" routine with his comments about Obama-Hillary Clinton is still the 900-pound gorilla in the room.
Clinton is certainly running, but as of now it's entirely uncertain as to whether or not she can win. Reading the tea leaves now with any certainty is a daunting fact. But thanks to a front-loaded primary calendar, the Democratic nominee for president will likely be decided less than a year from now-I might as well take a shot in the dark, right?
To begin with what may be the most important measure of relative success (and a sad testament about the state of American politics), Hillary's sitting on the biggest pile of cash of any Democratic candidate. Though her campaign hasn't had to file presidential fundraising reports yet, she has a whopping $11 million in her Senate campaign piggybank, transferable to a presidential campaign. That's far more than any other Democrat running at present has in hand, and it'll only increase. As Senator, she's spent the last six years raising a fortune for the party, not only networking with donors but also fundraising for other Democrats. Now all of those chits will be called in and she'll have the best Rolodex to work out of.
The front-loaded primary calendar also favors Clinton; there will be five primary contests in January 2008 compared to only two in January 2004. While she can afford to spread herself across all of those races, and project into later contests, most of her opponents face the hard choice of concentrating on a handful of states or spreading themselves thinly to counter Hillary.
To put it more bluntly, she can pick the terms of battle and the rest of the field has to follow suit or be consigned to irrelevancy. Right now, only Obama (and maybe Edwards) look to be in a position to play that game and they'll have to break her stranglehold on some major donors to do so.
Clinton's also on top of the pack in the polls, and though these are notoriously unreliable, they still merit a quick glance: she's leading. Everywhere. A recent poll has her beating Edwards by 17 percent in Iowa and Obama by 20 percent in New Hampshire among likely Democratic voters in both states. A December poll found her effectively unopposed in Nevada (the second caucus, between Iowa and New Hampshire); Edwards offers some competition in South Carolina, but he's the state's golden boy. In short, she could lock up the nomination before February (of course things will change a bit).
But let's turn to another statistic pundits love, her favorable/unfavorable numbers. A political scientist and blogger at the University of Wisconsin tracked that statistic for her nationally over the last past decade, and found that since roughly 2000, her favorables have been stable around 50 percent, her unfavorables around 45 percent, and her "don't knows" (who doesn't have an opinion on her?) around 5 percent. Those aren't good for an aspiring president, and they haven't been moving all that much.
Clinton will win the nomination, but she can't win the White House. Why not? First of all, she's Hillary. They seem to support her unofficial status as America's most polarizing figure. To win, she'd have to take one more state than Kerry did in 2004, and my feeling is she just can't do it. I'm aware Democrats made gains in several Midwestern battleground states last year, especially Missouri and Ohio, as well as threw George Allen out of office. But those gains don't indisputably translate into 2008 success (had Allen never uttered "macaca," he'd likely still be in the Senate).
Hillary also seems like the ultimate packaged candidate; almost everyone I talk to, here, in Washington, everywhere, feel that nothing about her is genuine. She's ironically viewed as a moderate or sellout by her party's base, but as a true-blue liberal (and not in a positive sense) by plenty of other Americans. It's an unenviable position-and one she can't win from.
Caveat emptor: I may be a bit optimistic; I'm also projecting into a relatively neutral environment, with a viable Republican conservative. As we near Election Day, things will change. But right now, I'll say this: she's running but she can't win.
Gil Stevens is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Thursday.
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