Hillary really is electable
Washington Post - July 2, 2006
The Power of Hillary By James Carville and Mark J. Penn
“Hillary Clinton really is one of the weakest . . . nominees with
whom the Democrats could be saddled.”
“Democrats are worried sick about her chances.”
“Just give someone else a chance, so we in the Democratic Party can
elect a Democrat.”
“She cannot possibly, possibly win.”
Yada, yada, yada.
We’ve heard all this “Hillary can’t win stuff” before. In fact, the
quotes above aren’t from recent weeks but from six years ago, when
many pundits — and Democrats — said there was no way that Hillary
could get elected to the Senate. She won by 12 percentage points.
We don’t know if Hillary is going to run for president, but as
advisers who have worked on the only two successful Democratic
presidential campaigns in the past couple of decades, we know that if
she does run, she can win that race, too.
Why? First, because strength matters. Our problems as a party are
less ideological than anatomical: Our candidates have been made to
look like they have no backbone. But the latest Post-ABC News poll
shows that 68 percent of Americans describe Hillary Clinton as a
strong leader. That comes after years of her being in the national
crossfire. People know that Hillary has strong convictions, even if
they don’t always agree with her. They also know that she’s tough
enough to handle the viciousness of a national campaign and the
challenges of the presidency itself.
One thing we know about Clinton campaigns: Nobody gets Swift Boated.
The woman who gave the War Room its name knows how tough politics at
the presidential level can be. Adversaries spent $60 million against
her in 2000, and she endured press scrutiny that would have wilted
most candidates. She gave as good as she got, and she triumphed.
For those who think that the politics of personal destruction might
be rekindled against Hillary or her husband, we can only remind
people how consistently that approach has backfired in the past. Bill
Clinton would certainly be a huge asset if Hillary decided to run.
In fact, Hillary is the only nationally known Democrat (other than
her husband) who has weathered the Republican assaults and emerged
with a favorable rating above 50 percent (54 percent positive in the
latest Post-ABC poll).
Yes, she has a 42 percent negative rating, as do other nationally
known Democrats. All the nationally un known Democrats would likely
wind up with high negative ratings, too, once they’d been through the
Republican attack machine.
The difference with Hillary is the intensity of her support.
Pundits and fundraisers and activists may be unsure of whether
Hillary can get elected president, but Democratic voters,
particularly Democratic women and even independent women, are
thrilled with the idea.
The X factor for 2008 — and we do mean X — is the power of women in
the electorate. Fifty-four percent of voters are female. George Bush
increased his vote with only two groups between 2000 and 2004: women
and Hispanics. Bush got 49 percent of white female voters in 2000 and
55 percent in 2004. Of his 3.5-percentage-point margin over John
Kerry, Bush’s increase with women accounted for 2.5 percentage
points. The rest came from a nine-point increase among Hispanic
voters: from 35 percent in 2000 to 44 percent in 2004. We believe
that Hillary is uniquely capable of getting those swing voters back
to the Democratic column.
Hillary’s candidacy has the potential to reshape the electoral map
for Democrats. Others argue they can add to John Kerry’s 20 states
and 252 electoral votes by adding Southern states, or Western or
Midwestern, depending on their background. Hillary has the potential
to mobilize people in every region of the country.
Certainly she could win the states John Kerry did. But with the
pathbreaking possibility of this country’s first female president, we
could see an explosion of women voting — and voting Democratic.
States that were close in the past, from Arkansas to Colorado to
Florida to Ohio, could well move to the Democratic column. It takes
only one more state to win.
Finally, for those who believe that Hillary’s electoral chances are
tied to ideology, not leadership qualities, we believe that she is
squarely in the mainstream of America. Some people say she is too
liberal, some that she is too conservative. We think her 35 years of
advocacy for children and families and her tenacious work in the
Senate to help ensure our security after Sept. 11 and to help middle-
class families will serve her well. We think she represents the kind
of change the country is yearning for: a smart, strong leader. She
would take the country in a fundamentally different direction:
closing deficits, not widening them; expanding health care coverage,
not shrinking it. Fighting terrorism without isolating us from the
rest of the world.
We don’t know whether Hillary will run. But we do know that if she
runs, she can win.
James Carville, a Democratic political consultant and commentator,
was chief strategist in Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.
Mark J. Penn was a key strategist in Clinton’s 1996 bid for re-
election and in Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign.