Going Negative on Clinton Is A Mistake (Scarecrow, FDL) [View All]

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http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/10/31/going-negative-on-clinton-is-a-mistake/

If one of the cardinal rules of progressive politics is that you never repeat the talking points by which your opponents beat up on your own party, then what are we to think of last night’s Democratic debate, in which a principal tactic used by some of the non-Clintons was to repeat Republican talking points about Hillary Clinton?

I can understand why the non-Clinton Democratic candidates, having watched her pull away in recent national polls (though not in Iowa), feel obliged to challenge Senator Clinton on the merits of her positions, her Senate votes on Iraq and Iran, the soundness of her ideas, judgments and statements in contrast to their own. Drawing these contrasts is certainly legitimate, and it probably helps voters make up their minds, though it’s frankly still a mystery to me why voters like or dislike and eventually come to favor one candidate over another.

But the argument that Clinton in unelectable because her “negatives” are too high — that she’s so disliked Americans won’t vote for her — has always seemed one of those unproven Republican talking points that I suspect they only wish were true, even while they ignore the margin of her last Senate election victory. To be sure, early polls have shown high negatives for Clinton, but it’s also true that part of that has been driven by 15 years of incessant vilification by a right wing unable to cope with a strong woman candidate, a liberal or anyone who had the temerity to tackle health care reform before its time. There has always been something deceptive and despicable about the rightwing attacks on the Clintons, the dishonorable Starr prosecutions and the unrelenting, but unsuccessful efforts to link the Clintons to Whitewater “corruption.” Are the Democrats now to feed that hate-filled frenzy by hinting those are valid arguments, or by making undifferentiated attacks claiming, with nothing more specific, that because she swims in America’s money-drenched politics, she is so inherently corrupt as to disqualify her, but not them?

The Republicans can be expected to try this again, but their motivation is as much diversion as anything. What I suspect is that all of the Republican front runners have significantly higher “negatives” — and deservedly so — than Hillary Clinton or most of the Democrats. Wasn’t there a poll not long ago that tested how many voters would refuse to vote for each candidate — and Hillary turned out to have the smallest problem on that score?

. . .

I can’t think of any reason why any Democratic candidate should help the Republicans keep their last hopes alive. Clinton, like any politician who has actually tried to accomplish something against the political tide, has “negatives,” but I think the notion that they’re disqualifying or make her unelectable, or that she can’t overcome them is just nonsense; it flies in the face of her own history, her struggles, and her steady rise in national polls. And I think it’s a mistake for any of the Democratic candidates to buy into this, perpetuate it, and enable it, no matter how badly they want to be President.