Monday, August 08, 2005

Hillary Seen as 'Goddess'

Hillary Seen as 'Goddess'

Well, THAT was an intriguing enough headline that I had to check it out. But it wasn't the Weekly World News since they seem to believe that

In a major sign that President Bush believes he has a huge mandate from his reelection, he's changing his name to "God."

"Bush has already remarked that God wanted him to be President," a top cabinet official says. "By changing his name to 'God,' he's just making it official."


No, the headline on the junior senator from New York is courtesy of CNN's Candy Crowley:

2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is considered a "goddess" in Democratic Party circles, CNN's Candy Crowley reported Saturday.

"I honestly hear the word 'goddess' attached to her," Crowley told fellow CNN'er Joe Johns, who asked her to survey the 2008 political landscape.

"She's kind of this – she doesn't have to show up in New Hampshire for another three-and-a-half years, because she's such a presence there," Crowley continued to gush.


NewsMax felt the need to pass this on, implicitly tut-tutting their disapproval. But Crowley's analysis is dead on. It's difficult to envision a scenario where she's not the nominee. And, to repeat my oft-repeated point, she's completely electable. The Hillary-haters are already Republicans and won't vote for anyone else we could concievably nominate.

Which leaves only the lie to the pollster factor. How many men will quietly backlash (now THAT was a buzzword of the early 1990s) in the booth? There's no way to really test for that because there's no benchmarks for "do people lie to pollsters when faced with a female presidential candidate"? We know the lie about matters of race - Doug Wilder's 15 point lead in the last polls translated to maybe a half a point in the election; conversely, David Duke ran better in the real election than in surveys. (I am really fixated on the early 1990s this morning - break out the flannel shirt and turn up the Nirvana.) You're not supposed to admit to being a racist - or a sexist either - though of course many people quietly are.

On the other hand, how many Republican women will silently say "it's time"? It should make for an interesting night of election returns.

Adding to the surreal, not only is Sen. Clinton a goddess, she appear to be a different sort of political heavyweight, quotes the New York Post: "She can beat Bush. She can beat Pataki. She can beat Giuliani. She can even beat Lennox Lewis, " says NY state Sen. David Paterson. I wonder if he got Hillary Clinton mixed up with Hilary Swank.

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