Hillary and the Netroots
There's an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post today: none other than Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos invades the MSM to fire a shot across the bow of the Good Ship Hillary, suggesting that her (a) apparent disdain for the netroots, and (b) her identification with the D.C. Democratic Establishment, could imperil her presumed presidential candidacy in 2008.
Now I don't presume to know a lot about the interactions, positive, negative or neutral, between Team Hillary and netroots worthies; I'll take Markos' word for it that Clinton's advisors haven't been giving bloggers and other cyber-activists a lot of love. I'll also play into the thought experiment that Clinton is definitely running for president; I'm not so sure, but obviously it could happen.
But I do think Markos misses something important in drawing a direct parallel between Hillary Clinton and those "D.C. Establishment" candidates who got thrown off-balance by Howard Dean in 2004. Best I can tell from staring at polls for quite some time, Hillary Clinton has broad and deep support and approbation among actual, grassroots, rank-and-file Democrats around the country, based on many years in the brightest spotlight. Going into the 2004 race, there was no candidate with this kind of catholic appeal or folk-legend visibility, and that's one reason why Dean's incandescent campaign broke through so quickly (and perhaps one reason it collapsed when the contest got into the serious, vote-getting phase). I'm perfectly willing to agree that netroots support specifically, and activist support generally, is important, but in the end, it's all about votes.
Maybe I'm wrong and Markos is right on that score, but the part of his op-ed I have to take greatest issue with is the familiar argument that Hillary is handicapped by her husband's role in the decline of the Democratic Party and the election of George Bush. We've all heard this litany before: Clinton never got more than 50% of the popular vote (nor did the previous three Democratic nominees, or for that matter, two of the three prior to that); Democrats lost Congress during Clinton's presidency (a process any political scientist will tell you had been building for decades, and that began slowly reversing during the last three cycles of the Clinton years); and of course, the usual stuff about Clinton's "third way" policies alienating the all-important activist base (which is probably why he was wildly popular with most activists when he left office, and why so many of them still pine for someone like him). And even Markos concedes that Clinton produced "eight years of peace and prosperity," which ought to make the Clinton name a bit less poisonous than this column suggests.
In any event, Markos' op-ed is a pretty faithful reflection of the attitudes toward HRC you see steadily circulating around the blogosphere like a breeze through a wind farm. So it's probably very useful for those who read WaPo but don't know blogs from hogs to catch a whiff of it today.
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