Letters to the Editor
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Cornholed in Iowa
I'm a little surprised at the Clinton campaign, by how lackluster it's been. It seems that the strengths it has in money and name recognition just aren't enough to carry it, but they're acting as if it was sufficient (or else are insulated enough from the process not to see that it's not working).
I just don't think Hillary Clinton makes for a very charismatic candidate, particularly in a crowded field -- way, way too safe. Right now, it feels like she's running a Gore 2000 campaign, blithely gliding along in a presumptive "Hey, don't they know it's ME?" kind of mentality, guided by questionable handlers, while other campaigns are actively trying to hit the right notes: more charismatic, more responsive, more engaged, more inspiring, and far bolder.
The Clinton campaign has the telltale feel of triangulation about it, which Gore 2000 and Kerry 2004 should reveal to be an outdated strategy, given the cornholing the Bush League has done to the US.
How a candidate runs a campaign speaks a lot about them, and at the rate that they're going, Hillary, Inc. seems not to get it, whether or not they show up in Iowa.
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Seem to recall that
George Custer went to the Little Big Horn looking for a fight too...
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and just wait...
...until Clinton and Obama vote "yes" for the war spending bill. Edwards' poll numbers will go through the roof.
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yes, the timid folks at the DLC need to wake up and smell the coffee ...
they've feared for YEARS a repeat of the McGovern fiasco (in which a "radical" candidate was nominated as a backlash to the status quo, and then went down in election flames by a public unwilling to embrace a peace candidate.)
It's past time for Hillary to move out of her robotic Manchurian poll-data-processing, triangulating, safe stance ... it's not "flash" or radicalism people are looking for -- it's hope -- Hillary has been perceived as "running for president" for over a decade and the cache of being the "first woman" is no longer sparkly ...
Her war stance may well have already doomed her with DEMOCRATS.
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The best thing that could happen
to this process is if Iowa and New Hampshire are made irrelevant. I think she should concentrate on Florida Jan 29 and then the big enchilada Feb 5. I can't understand why anyone should care about either of those states at this point. Neither one is even remotely representative of the majority of the people in this country. Who needs 'em.