Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., suggests “the pillars of democracy are shaking”
due to President George W. Bush’s need to avoid “political embarrassment”
over the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the Iraq war.
Sounds like the pronouncement of a candidate seeking his Oval Office,
right? Political strategists and supports think so.
A top Republican strategist said Clinton’s speech delivered to a
conference organized by the Center for American Progress yesterday puts her
in the company of “the nine other Democrats running,” reports the New York
Daily News.
“You’ve got to wonder if she’s keeping her foot wedged in the door,” the
GOP strategist told the paper.
 Sen. Hillary Clinton, D.-N.Y. |
In her sharpest attack on the president’s handling of foreign policy, Clinton
suggested Bush was trying to hide troop casualty figures and was using
national security as a cover for failures. She said the White House’s refusal to
hand over documents to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks
“unnecessarily raises suspicions that it has something to hide.”
“We must always be vigilant against letting our desire to keep information
confidential be used as a pretext for classifying information that is more about
political embarrassment,” the Daily News quotes her as saying.
Clinton said Bush’s foreign policy has been marked by an “aggressive unilateralism.”
“We now go to war as a first resort against perceived threats, not as a necessary final resort,” she said.
Clinton’s venom excites supporters who cling to the hope she’ll pull a
last-minute fast-one and join the race.
“I know for a fact a lot of her supporters are urging her to do it,” Clinton fund-raiser John Catsimatidis, the chief executive officer of the
Gristede’s supermarket chain who is supporting John Kerry, told the paper.
Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines reiterated her repeated denials
she’ll join the 2004 presidential race.
“Sen. Clinton has repeatedly said that she will serve out her full six-year
term,” he said.
WorldNetDaily reported in August that sources close to the former first lady were no longer discounting any chance of her jumping in. Buoyed by polls that showed Bush’s job-approval rating sagging and inspired by the fact that none of the nine declared Democratic presidential candidates’ campaigns had caught fire, Clinton and her closest aides huddled to explore their options.
But days later, a national poll predicted Clinton would lose the contest to Bush. According to the survey released last month by pollster Scott Rasmussen, the junior senator from New York trails Bush 48 percent to 41 percent.
However, her front-runner colleagues fared worse. Leading Democratic candidate, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, would lose in a hypothetical contest 45-34 percent. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., would lose to Bush by 45-36 percent.
The four top current Democratic presidential candidates – Dean, Kerry, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt – each poll between 15-20 percent of the vote in most surveys. When Clinton is thrown into the mix, she gets between 37 percent and 48 percent of the vote, according to national pollsters.
“In other words,” said one insider, “it’s Hillary’s race to lose. The
nomination is hers for the asking. The only question is whether she is ready to
take a risk on beating Bush.”
Hillary’s husband appears to think the risk is worth taking. The former president’s public statements last month suggest he’s recruiting his wife to lead the party to victory.
“That’s really a decision for her to make,” he’s quoted as saying, suggesting the decision still has yet to be made. Time magazine reported Clinton has been urging his wife to get into the race and has been trying to figure out a way for her to be able to rescind her past comments.
Practically, Clinton must decide to run or not before the end of the year to
meet filing deadlines in November and December for the critical early primary
elections.
Analysts believe the nominee will be selected, for all intents and purposes, by March 2 – an election night Super-Tuesday, with primaries in California, New York, Texas, Ohio and eight smaller states.
If one candidate wins both the Iowa Caucuses Jan. 19 and the New
Hampshire primary Jan. 27, it could realistically spell the end of most of the
competition within the Democratic Party.
“Sen. Clinton is in the same high-stakes dilemma as one of her
predecessors was 35 years ago,” wrote Richard Reeves in a column. “In 1968, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was the most celebrated Democrat in the country after President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run – after almost being defeated in New Hampshire by a critic of the war in Vietnam, Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. Kennedy threw caution and old non-candidate promises to the wind and entered the contest against McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey. There are great similarities between then and now, and between New York’s carpetbagger senators – Bobby from Massachusetts, Hillary from Arkansas – beginning with their name recognition, their armies of admirers and enemies and their dominating position in polls.”
Political observers interviewed by the Daily News note that with Iowa’s first-in-the-nation contest just three months away, Clinton is slated to be a featured speaker at a Democratic event there next month.
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