On that day, they believe, the first hard evidence will emerge of an idea they hope Americans (or at least Democratic primary voters) will accept: Hillary’s victory is inevitable.
It’s hard to know whether the Clinton Machine—and it is an impressive machine—is merely methodical or also a little desperate. Probably both.
She is organizing assiduously here, as everywhere, hoping to impress Democrats with the disciplined nature of her bid—as if that, in and of itself, is proof of her suitability to be president.
Her leave-no-stone-unturned attention to detail is characteristic, and understandable.
But it also bespeaks a nagging sense of vulnerability—as if they know that they can’t leave anything to chance, lest it all evaporate in a minute.
So they are concentrating on California.
The moved-up primary Clinton and her allies encouraged state officials, led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to move up the date of the California presidential primary. They succeeded.
It is now scheduled for Feb. 5, 2008, part of a Mega-Primary Day that will include, among other states, New York.
That’s just the beginning of the story.
As Clinton strategists and other Democrats here explain it, state law will require that absentee ballots be sent to voters by January 8, 2008. Within four days of that, by Jan. 12, tracking polls (by the Clinton campaign and, the campaign hopes, by independent news organizations) will yield the first evidence of who is winning the first actual votes in the ‘08 race.
And those results will be available BEFORE Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina hold their pivotal primaries and caucuses.
The Clinton campaign’s aim is to make sure that the lioness’s share of those early votes—an estimated 1.5 million “PABs”, or “permanent absentee ballots” —are for Hillary.
The campaign has studied this universe of voters with great care.
They think that most of the earliest of those absentee voters are women, who are the campaign’s main demographic target to begin with.
A firewall against Iowa? The idea is to build a pre-vote firewall against the possibility that someone—like Sen. Barack Obama, or former Sen. John Edwards—will win the caucuses in Iowa.
“There are going to be more absentee voters in California than voters in all of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada,” said Fabian Nunez, assembly speaker and the lead official Democrat for Hillary.
Quietly, other Democrats here scoff at the notion that early votes here next January will mean anything to the national press corps and pundits who write the stories in Iowa and New Hampshire. “If Hillary gets wiped out in Iowa, no one is going to care,” one of them told me.
The diligence and attention to detail of the Clinton camp is impressive. They are working hard— Hillary and Bill—to line up supporters here early.
Last summer, Nunez, a hungry young pol from LA who took over as assembly speaker after only one House term, was invited to a dinner with Clinton mega-funders Ron Burkle, Haim Saban and Steve Bing. He was impressed with Hillary’s pitch.
Last March, he and other California legislators were wined and dined in Washington—and Nunez endorsed Clinton just before the party’s state convention.
Other key endorsements Obama has not been absent here. He fought hard for Nunez’ endorsement.
Though he lost out, he has some key names here, too, among them former gubernatorial candidate Steve Wesley and Democratic majority leaders in the state house and senate.
The big prize, however, is Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has yet to endorse anyone, though he was at that Burkle dinner, too, and is close to Nunez.
No matter who endorses whom, the Clintonistas are studying how to use the internet to, among other things, reach the female, 30 to 65-year-old middle class women they think are the key to showing the earliest possible signs of momentum.
They have studied their internet-usage patterns, and know that these women use email and listserves, not instant messaging or myspace, to communicate.
The key is to get them off the net and to actual meetings or volunteer efforts.
“What we need to do is generate real touches and asks,” one strategist told me. If they succeed, you can expect to hear Hillary bragging about it next January.
title: “Newsweek Archives Bill And Hillary Clinton” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-24” author: “Donald Mcgee”
The moment has arrived when a woman could well be the Democratic nominee: Hillary Rodham Clinton, smart, experienced, sure-handed. “Help make history!” her Web site says. So how come the response has been so guarded? Where are the cheers and the confetti?
The truth is that Senator Clinton has a woman problem, but it’s not the one we all might have envisioned decades ago. Certainly there may be Americans who covertly balk at the notion of a female president, despite what they may tell pollsters. And every time Clinton is described as calculating or ambitious, you realize that such words are never used for male politicians because for them both traits are assumed—and accepted. Old habits die hard. In the first Republican presidential debate, moderator Chris Matthews asked the contenders how they would feel about having Bill Clinton back in the White House. In a single sentence he turned the Democratic front runner into the Little Woman, a mere adjunct to her husband.
And of course there is that immovable group who have long hated Hillary Clinton for reasons too psychologically complex to be deconstructed, the people who wouldn’t vote for her if she were running against Osama bin Laden. But in some weird fashion, the woman thing, as we like to call it, is playing a larger role among her natural supporters than her opponents. When we imagined a woman president we imagined a new day, a new strategy, a new vision and new tactics. Even when we said it was unfair to hold women to a higher standard than their male counterparts, in our hearts we did, whether they were running companies (more family-friendly policies and humane workplace conditions), editing newspapers (human-interest and service stories) or practicing medicine (patient contact and engagement).
But with Senator Clinton’s candidacy, the brand new is the same old, revolution and throwback simultaneously. She has been part of the political scene for so long that an entire generation of girls have grown up never knowing a world without Hillary, front and center. Although opponents like to paint her as a liberal and a feminist, she is above all a pragmatist; she knows how a campaign is run, the well-oiled machine that must support the standard-bearer. In her case the machine is so well oiled and she is so polished, so practiced, that authenticity seems to have fallen by the wayside. The fantasy was that the first woman president would be someone who would turn the whole lousy system inside out and upside down. Instead the first significant woman contender is someone who seems to have the system down to a fine art.
Recent elections suggest that Americans are often interested in something quite different in a candidate than they ultimately require in a president. That’s how the country wound up with a commander in chief chosen because he was the kind of guy people wanted to have a beer with, a Dude Prez who finds it appropriate to give the female German chancellor a surprise shoulder massage in the middle of a world summit.
Voters may have a hard time imagining bellying up to the bar with Senator Clinton. Her human traits are too seldom on display. At political events, women speak of what it was like when they met her—at a small fund-raiser, in a school auditorium. How personable she was, how she really listened, how she knew everything about the issues that concerned them, from services for the aging to autism. The great conundrum of Hillary Clinton has always been this disconnect between the woman with the bright eyes and the deep belly laugh and the polished debater with the Sermon on the Mount posture and the tight mouth. The human versus the superhuman. Truth be told, that’s another fantasy we had about a woman leader, too, that she would be authoritative and down to earth in equal measure.
Senator Clinton has been described so often as a transitional figure that she must be sick to death of the term. But perhaps that is what she will inevitably be in this race. Since the first Democratic debate her poll numbers have slowly risen. It may be that voters are more convinced of her opposition to the war in Iraq. It may be that Barack Obama seems slightly less magical than his early showing suggested. Or it may be that all those women who dreamed of Ms. President are realizing that there was always going to be a way station between guy politics as usual and a new female style of leadership. The public Hillary Clinton may always seem more presidential than approachable. But perhaps this time around, no matter who runs and who wins, Americans will figure out that they are electing a president, not a drinking buddy.
title: “Newsweek Archives Bill And Hillary Clinton” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-20” author: “Richard Ruiz”
Hillary is strong. Hillary is smart. Hillary is not cool. Even the effort to rebrand her as softer, more heartfelt and more in touch with working-class women may prove impossible. That’s because after two decades in national life, the brand is set. We know her—and him. Or think we do. The threshold question for voters is less about putting the first woman in the White House than the second Clinton.
The obsession with polls, consultants, money—even positions on the issues—obscures the fundamental dynamic of the Democratic primary race: Restoration vs. Inspiration. A Clinton victory would offer the hope of restoring the 1990s, a fat and relatively happy time in America. The sexual politics of the Clinton years were a luxury afforded by peace and prosperity. Voters might be exhausted by the present and ready to recapture the past with more Clintonism. By this logic, the worse President Bush does, the better the Clintons look.
Conversely, for all of Bill Clinton’s popularity, the public could end up tired of the whole bunch of ’em and eager for the shock of the new with Barack Obama, John Edwards (who emphasizes his freshness by all but denying he ever served in the Senate or ran for vice president) or someone else. When Obama refers seven or eight times in his stump speech to “turning the page,” he’s talking about moving forward to the next chapter, not re-reading the last one. It works.
Themes of dynasty and restoration have long provoked ambivalent feelings among Americans. George Washington, appalled by the idea of monarchy, made a revolutionary point by leaving office on his own accord after eight years. But soon the Adams family produced father-and-son presidents, and the Roosevelts, though only fifth cousins, dominated the presidency for two decades in the first half of the 20th century. After FDR, antiroyalists amended the Constitution to prevent presidents from serving more than two terms. But dynastic dreams endured. If he had not been assassinated in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy may well have been the first sibling president; Camelot did not die until Ted Kennedy’s loss in the primaries in 1980.
In the 27 years since, each presidential election has featured a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket. Were Hillary to serve two terms and Jeb Bush to return to politics (even now, he is arguably the most popular Republican in the country) and serve eight years, a two-family dominance of American democracy would have lasted uninterrupted for more than four decades. At a minimum, Hillary’s election would mean BushClintonBushClinton, a line I’m increasingly hearing from voters in a pejorative context.
But family restoration (and vindication) remains a powerful narrative in most societies. In fact, family—even a dysfunctional family—often trumps gender, as the election of wives and daughters as heads of state in highly patriarchal countries like India, Pakistan, Argentina, Indonesia and the Philippines attests.
Unsure of the applicability of that thinking in the United States, Clinton aides are leery of dynastic or restorationist appeals. While they don’t want to make Al Gore’s mistake and underplay the achievements of the Clinton presidency, they know that most elections here are only secondarily about the past and are primarily fights about competing visions of the future. So to make her look fresh, they are emphasizing her credentials as a caring woman. This is risky. There is little or no indication in state and local elections that women vote disproportionately for women. And men sometimes vote disproportionately against them. In fact, Rahm Emanuel fears that several female Democratic candidates lost close House races in 2006 because of hidden gender bias.
A presidential primary could be different, in part because Hillary is tough, experienced and may evoke a pride among women voters that no congressional candidate could. Or maybe she won’t. The impact of gender is as much of a wild card for Clinton as our dynastic ambivalence, which is why the analysts who continue to say that she is a sure winner or sure loser for the nomination may be jamming, but they’re also blowing smoke.
