Letters to the Editor
Picko
Published Letters: 265 Editor's Choice: 11
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Hillary v. Giuliani
[Read the article: How the Christian right could defeat Rudy -- and make Hillary president]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]OK, everything I say here needs to be taken with a pound or ten of salt, because I'm a New Yorker and so I probably have an inherently distorted view of the rest of the country (just as the rest of the country seems to have a distorted view of New York).
So, having made full disclosure, here are my thoughts about Hillary v. Giuliani:
1. I always find it funny that Giuliani boasts that he knows how to take on Hillary. He certainly didn't in 2000. This is a man who ran with his tail between his legs when it became clear that Hillary was likely to beat him for the Senate seat. It's strange that nobody is talking about the prostate cancer which he cited as the reason for leaving the race. I guess 9/11 cured that.
2. The Republicans are so steadfast in their hatred of Hillary that they seem to project it onto the rest of the population - just as they did with her husband. But in 1998 they thought they were going to make hay over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, because they assumed that the country as a whole despised him as much as they did (and everyone knows how that worked out). I imagine that the great middle is a lot more ambivalent than the Republicans give them credit for. And Hillary is a good campaigner. She basically won upstate New York through sheer force of will - by kissing one baby at a time. I was living upstate for a couple of months in 1999, and I remember anti-Hillary sentiment running pretty high. Now, for better or for worse, Hillary pretty much owns that Senate seat - the Republicans have a hard time even finding a candidate to run against her (I literally can't remember who eventually went against her in 2006).
3. Whereas all of Hillary's "dirt" is out in the open from a decade of national exposure and vilification, Giuliani has massive negatives that are barely known of nationally. Giuliani is still running on the fumes of 9/11, but he is very vulnerable to all matter of Swiftboating. Because Hillary is already perceived as a demon from hell by many people, she has nowhere to go in their estimation except up; since Giuliani is viewed as a heroic figure, he has a lot to lose from further scrutiny.
4. I do agree with many of the others that the Salon projections of the electoral map are wildly unrealistic. The South will remain the South. But Hillary doesn't need to completely redraw the electoral map - all she has to do is win what Kerry and Gore won, plus one or two additional states. And in some of these states, a third party could make a difference, because some of those swing states are just so damn close. Remember that Bill's winning map in 1992 was only a shade bluer than Kerry and Gore's losing maps in 2000 and 2004 - and Bill partly has Ross Perot to thank for that, I think.
I'm saying all this as a hopeful Democrat, but not necessarily a Hillary supporter. In many ways, I would prefer Obama to be the candidate, especially since if Hillary became president, we could look forward to four to eight more years of Clinton-hating. It's possible - but not likely - that Obama might be more successful in bridging some of the partisan divides, which I generally think would be a good thing.
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More thoughts on Hillary v. Giuliani
[Read the article: How the Christian right could defeat Rudy -- and make Hillary president]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Someone on the far right - I think it was Richard Viguerie - said something to the effect that they don't mind losing elections so much, because they've made a lot of progress by losing elections. To some - not all - of the right-wing ideologues, winning is secondary to ideological purity. Particularly on the abortion issue. To many, voting for a pro-choice candidate is the equivalent to voting for a genocidal maniac. That's just where they're coming from. In other words, they would feel they had blood on their hands if they voted for Giuliani. I'm not sure that the moral absolutists would automatically become moral pragmatists just because of Hillary.
Add to this the fact that the religious right has a longstanding suspicion that the Republicans have only been paying lip-service to their agenda. As crazy as that sounds - given all the access and influence W. has given them - the taste of power they have enjoyed for the past seven years has only made them hungry for more. A lot of these people think they have been UNDERserved by the Republicans. So to see the Republican party take a step back towards the center - the term "center" being highly relative in this context - would mean a real diminishment for them. They know that the Republican party needs them, but they don't need the Republican party as much.
Also, I think far too much emphasis is laid on how much a Hillary candidacy would energize the Republican base - as if they are the only people who count in American politics. As we are seeing in Bush's poll numbers, the Republican base accounts for about a third of the electorate. On the other side, there's a substantial portion who will vote for a Democrat, no matter what. And, notwithstanding a general lack of ethusiasm for Hillary among almost all the Democrats I know, at this point Democrats are primarily motivated by abhorrance over what Bush has done over the past seven years. The fact is, in 2004 most Democrats were energized not by the thought of a Kerry presidency but by the prospect of getting ridding of Bush. And any Republican is going to be seen as an heir to Bush. People do not have such short attention spans that they are suddenly going to think that voting for Ralph Nader is good idea, even if Hillary is the best the Democrats have to offer.