Hillary Clinton faces a very peculiar dilemma in her assumed run for the White House in 2008. After nearly an entire career of being seen as too liberal to be viable, she has studiedly moved rightward over the course of her Senate term. We've seen plenty of prominent examples, with her unshaking support for the war and her abortion speech of about six months ago standing out in particular. At first glance, this strategy seems to make sense, I suppose, in that when seeking the Democratic nomination, one must be perceived as just conservative enough to win while still liberal enough to be pleasing to us -- the activist base. Dean ran into this problem headlong -- regardless of where he actually stood ideologically, he was painted into an ideological corner and portrayed as unelectable. None of this is particularly original or interesting.
But here's where Hillary hits the reefs, and where John Edwards comes in. Almost every politically aware Democrat I talk to has two reservations about Hillary, two reservations which rarely go together about the same candidate:
- She's so far to the right.
- Doesn't she have too much baggage to be electable?
The conventional wisdom has the liberal base wrapped up for Hillary. Here's Bob Novak on her a couple days ago:
"Democratic insiders worried about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's electability for president were cheered by her speech Monday to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council meeting in Columbus, Ohio.
While Clinton's call for an end to internal Democratic strife did not specify who was at fault, it was generally interpreted as hitting the party's left wing. That was seen as a shrewd move, reaching out to Clinton's right. She is considered immune from any presidential rival squeezing in on her left."
(Sorry. I don't know how to do the cool quote thing, despite reading DKos for three years or so now).
But the problem here is that it is precisely the liberal base that is paying close enough attention to pick up on and be turned off by Hillary's move to the right. If someone like Kerry or Bill Clinton seems to far to the right in the primaries, it makes sense to the base -- he had to seem ready for the general election. But for Hillary, moving right just pisses off the base, because her perceived electability problems are not ideological, but personal -- moving right does not fix them. So she ends up in this unenviable situation I mentioned before -- seeming simultaneously both too conservative and unelectable.
And this is a situation that John Edwards, I think, is particularly well-positioned to exploit, although everything I say might go for Wes Clark too, I'm not sure. Essentially, Edwards' position is the inverse of Hillary's. He can move to her left, pleasing the base (look, for example, at his bashing of Roberts, and his assumption of the mantle as the Democrats' anti-poverty crusader, a time-honored liberal role; see the Ted Kennedy 1980 convention speech for a perfect example) while simultaneously seeming more electable. He's Southern, well-spoken, good-looking, as we all know. He's got all the characteristics of the traditional electable candidate, without the traditional weakness of such a candidate in the primaries -- being too conservative for the base.
I have no idea who I'm supporting in 2008. I like Edwards fine, although he probably won't be my pick. I just think he's rather well set up the way things are going right now.