Elections Blog

Writing about complaints from the left about Senator Hillary Clinton, Mayor Sam wonders

Along with Hilary’s recent stance against illegal immigration, it leads me to be a bit cynical. Could these be orchestrated attempts to distance Hilary from the extreme left? In order to avoid the fate of Al Gore or John Kerry, to capture the White House, Hilary has to gain at least some of the Southern states her husband won in his elections. By positioning herself as more of a centrist and backing away from her liberal roots, Hilary has the chance to earn some Southern votes. Yes, she runs the risk of alienating some liberals, but come on - where are they going to go?

We don’t know if anyone is really organizing these little flare-ups, but then again, we wouldn’t be surprised if Sister Souljah was a James Carville hand puppet (well, actually we would, but we love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone).

But these are relatively minor incidents in the grand “She’s a centrist” PR campaign. In early August, the Los Angeles Times wrote (link at LATimes.com pay archive, but we have an excerpt here)

In New York, where she is running for reelection in 2006, and in the Senate, where she is shaping her national persona, Clinton is moving to shed the partisan image she acquired as first lady.

She has taken up causes such as economic development and military overhaul that are nonpartisan or more centrist than her work in championing a national healthcare plan while her husband was president. She is teaming with local Republican officials and with some of the Senate’s most conservative members.

Those efforts are beginning to pay off in New York. Her approval ratings have jumped significantly since she was elected in 2000 — even among Republicans. It is a sign that Clinton, one of the most polarizing political figures in America, has found a way to get a second look from New York voters.

She’s also leading the moderate Democratic Leadership Council’s development of a new agenda (a well-worn path — her husband used his chairmanship of the DLC to boost his 1992 campaign).

This month the NYT magazine (behind subscription wall; someone posted a copy here) and Boston Globe noted Senator Clinton’s new centrism. The NYT piece said

In fact, among pundits and strategists of both parties as well as the reporters who cover them, a story line about Clinton has now taken hold, and it goes like this: While she is at heart a more stridently liberal and polarizing figure than her husband, Hillary Clinton is now consciously reinventing herself publicly as a middle-of-the-road pragmatist. According to this theory, she has resolved, along with her cadre of canny advisers, to brazenly “reposition” herself as the kind of soothing centrist that middle-class white voters might actually accept as the first female president. “A couple of weeks ago, certainly a couple months ago, Hillary was off there on the left,” Chris Matthews, a reliable gauge of predictable Washington wisdom, told his viewers on MSNBC in May. “We thought of her with Barbra Streisand, Barbara Boxer, Rob Reiner, Chuck Schumer even. Now I see her as sort of part of this drift toward the center.”

Road-tested in New York 2006, expect to see this same theme coming to a state near you in 2007-8.

There is one glitch in this repositioning. Her voting record — the only way she can really prove her philosophy — does not reflect it. We showed in August that interest groups on the left and right continue to grade her as one of the Senate’s more liberal members.

Can she continue to have it both ways — talking moderate and voting left? The incongruity probably isn’t sustainable for three more years and through the crucible of a presidential campaign. We expect to see Senator Clinton make some highly publicized breaks with Democratic orthodoxy. Reality — such as it is in presidential politics — may catch up to perception.

What will also be worth watching is how the left reacts to this process. She still votes their way in the Senate and she’s already taking fire over minor transgressions from the True Faith. What will happen when she sacrifices them in the general election?

We can’t wait.

tags: 2008 election, hillary clinton