imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
STANDING IN THE SHADOW OF ALGORE
It's difficult to gauge all of the Algore-beats-Hillary articles lately. The MSM, in full lemming mode, has been giving Mr. Green Jeans the full court press, even though he claims he's not running. Why? Is it because Hillary's poll numbers aren't all that great? If polls are to be believed, she's a shoo-in for re-election here in NYS, and she must be re-elected in order to increase her chances of becoming president in '08.
Hillary has been working her entire adult life on becoming president, more specifically the first woman president. I personally believe that that goal was her primary reason for choosing Bill Clinton for a husband, in essence, hitching her political wagon to his. I believe that she believed it was to her political advantage to remain with him throughout her public humiliation with his philandering and all of the other scandals. I imagine her thinking went something like this: If the country is balking at voting for a married woman for president, what chance would a single woman have? So she stayed with her cheating husband and endured all sorts of shame and degradation -- standin' by her man on TV, being photographed in a swimsuit, listening to all the women come forward with their lurid tales as everyone snickered -- because she calculated that staying with him would be a greater asset than divorcing him. Everything she has done, she has done with her eye on the prize.
After a lifetime of planning and pretense, it must grate on her that suddenly Algore is the MSM's chosen one. Lately the press has been rife with pro-Algore prose and anti-Hillary hit pieces.
8 Is Al Gore Ready for His Close-Up?: [H]is greatest attraction for liberals seems to be that in addition to not being John Kerry, he is also not Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton has, as do most potential presidential hopefuls, tacked somewhat to the political center and is now improbably regarded by the left as a war hawk, and worse.
8 Secretary-General Bill Clinton: THE BEST THING HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON could do for humanity is not run for president. Nothing against her personally, mind you; it's just that her aspirations could get in the way of her husband's worthier ones.
8 Hillary Clinton's character gap: A recent straw poll in the liberal blog Daily Kos gave Gore an astonishing 68% of the vote, beating his closest challenger by more than 50 points. Clinton's result? Zero percent. (Actually, she pulled down 77 votes, or 1/100th of Gore's total, but it rounded down to zero.)
8 The Trouble With Hillary: Hillary’s huge fund-raising advantage and the stature gap between her and her Democratic opponents make her a prohibitive early favorite in the primaries. But polls show that, as a national candidate, her support tops out somewhere in the mid-forties. Worse, because she is so well known, there are almost no undecideds. “There is real concern among certain Democrats that she simply can’t win the general election,”
However, there is some hope: Estrich, for one, thinks the right should be concerned. “I was followed around on my book tour by people who’d hold up signs and scream at me, ‘What about Juanita Broaddrick?’ And all the younger people would look at me and say, ‘Who’s that?’ That’s part of the problem with dredging up all that old Clinton stuff. More and more people have no idea what you’re talking about.”
8 Although she will most likely win re-election, there are some NY Dems who are backing an opponent. Hillary pays a price: “She is not in Arkansas anymore," said Yayoi Tsuchitani, campaign chairwoman of the Village Independent Democrats, which voted this month to back Jonathan Tasini, Clinton's little-known Democratic challenger for her Senate seat.
…
"Some people wanted to send a message," said Sylvia Feinman, president of the Gramercy club, which has backed Clinton in the past. "I think there is still support for her, but there were also some feelings expressed that she was moving away from the views of her base." In recent months, as Clinton has geared up for what most believe will be a run for President, she has staked out new, moderate stances on several key issues — alarming some liberals in the process.
It strikes me that the MSM rarely treated Bill Clinton like this. They coddled him and protected and guided him through his maze of "mishaps." They wanted him to win. I remember when Paula Jones had her first press conference to explain why she was suing Bill Clinton. She wanted to clear her name publicly, to let it be known that she wasn't that type of girl. The press conference wasn't televised on TV, but it was reported that the reporters in attendance snickered with amongst themselves -- nudge nudge, wink wink -- and exchanged good-ol'-Slick high fives. While they publicly ridiculed her and cast doubt upon her story, they knew that Bill Clinton was as guilty as Paula Jones had claimed.
Maybe there is some sort of method behind this supposed madness of the MSM. Possibly to reframe HRC as the underdog? Or maybe they think she'll pull the party down.
Whatever is going on, this latest twist has got to hurt HRC as she sees her goal being so close and yet so far. After all that work only to find herself standing in Algore's shadow.
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