Dick Morris does a Threesome with Hillary and Condi
As I mentioned before I ran into Dick Morris surprisingly at my Sam’s Club doing a book signing. Well I finally finished the book and as promised I am planning to lay out the wrongology Dick Morris put forward into the book. His major flaw comes from the part of this pair he knows best. He; overestimates her strengths, points out many of the flaws of her candidacy but glosses them over, misses more vital flaws, and disrespects the democrats back bench.
His sections on Rice are interesting in theory, but let’s get to some practical meat.
He also sells up the blogosphere… but lets get to what we all want to see.
The Dick Morris Hillary thesis: this thesis can be summed up by two points. Hillary can raise boatloads of money, and Hillary has the Clinton Cadre to back her up.
Let me start with the second part first. Begala, Carville, and to a lesser extent Lockhart didn’t win a presidential election for Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton won because of a divided electorate. A bland republican people lost faith in, but didn’t really have faith in him. The Clinton machine cannot win an election without a split. So Unless Hillary has a Ross Perot in cold storage some where she would have to get 50%+1 of the vote. Something the Clinton Machine never did. And while Morris and others speak of the Kerry Putsch where the Clintonistas tried to take the Kerry campaign down for a Hillary in 08 role but simply put the conspiracy doesn’t hold much water for me.
Clinton’s triangulation came through the work of Dick Morris and was largely forced on the left in the Democratic Party and they are screaming about it to this day, including many of the members of the Clinton Machine out in the field today. They would bolt when Hillary who is clearly more of their own kind tried to sell herself more like her husband. The grassroots of Moveon.org, the Daily Kos, and Democratic Underground would rally the troops against a centrist Hillary. So Hillary has to run to the left in the Democratic primary and not just leave them on the side when they get to the general election. So we have people who sold moderation but didn’t win on moderation having to sell a progressive agenda when they couldn’t win on moderation. The only way to seal the deal more is appointing Bob Shrum as campaign manager.
To deny the total truth of the first one is to deny reality. Hillary is a rock star in the Democratic Party. Bill is the last 8year long democratic president since going into FDR (Truman and LBJ both held partials). Hillary will rake in the money no question. And she can go on like President John Connolly and President John Kerry to win because she spent the most…..Oh wait neither of those men are President or were President. If you spend an obscene amount of money without a product… you get a New Coke. If you have a product then the money actually can do something. Now I am not calling Hillary a new coke, I am saying her ability to raise money is not the end all be all of her candidacy.
But what makes Dick Morris’s thesis most suspect is he keeps the message of the “Dark Side” of a Hillary candidacy and points out her flaws. A road map for any democrat running in the 08 primary and any republican in the 08 general election.
Here is a taste
- ACLU/AFL-CIO/Etc… You name a core part of the democratic coalition Hillary is seen as a reliable stamp. But not a leader on any of their issues. A good vote but that’s it. Compare that to John Kerry and at least she can say “I showed up”
- A lack of a real legislative record. She has a senate record very similar to John Kerry. But John Kerry at least did something on his own (We all remember the Vietnam stories John) but for a woman who road her own husband’s coat tails into the senate this is a fatal flaw. She has also taken her signature Issue (health care) and made no real effort to push a health care bill in the senate. Morris doesn’t see this as utterly lethal as it should be. And it’s not like he needs to look far to see how this plays out. John Kerry is a prime example.
- Hillary as LBJ on a good day, or Richard Nixon on a worst. Speaking of the enemies lists, the potential to view an attack on her as an attack on (fill in the woman here) Morris has outlined this before. But here is the problem in modern politics the person with the most positive vision in their campaign wins elections. Hillary’s personality makes that impossible but without the martyr factor (LBJ) or the division factor (1968) neither of these highly negative men would have made it into office. The chance of a 68 like Climate that Hillary can use (more on that later) is slim and a martyrdom is nigh impossible.
- Her weak position on Israel. Anecdotally in South Florida the reliable Jewish quarters didn’t turn out their large votes for Kerry. And Kerry had a semi-record on Israel. Hillary has not only none, but her embrace of the widow of Arafat easy to pull out for consumption. Bill tried to assure Jews on Kerry and it just didn’t work. Ed Koch points to the loss of Jewish voters in 1980 as one of the many factors that lead to the fall of Carter and I don’t see a Step grandfather being enough of a fig leaf for Hillary
- She always supports increases in spending, never has supported or gotten out in front of spending cuts.
- Her taking credit for Schumer’s work after 9-11
- The Clinton Scandals. He soft peddled all this… he soft peddles some of her miraculous investments, her consulting work that provided no work… the FBI scandals. The focus before was Bill and the media was never into it because Hillary was a wife. But in the new media climate these will be fair game.
But, these are not the only Flaws Hillary has in running for President. Another flaw she has, he lists as a plus. I didn’t list it with the other pluses because trying to even remotely address it as a plus is patently absurd. As in her entire life (especially if you believe the Previous Morris Narratives) her greatest millstone is Bill Clinton. An Irony that a woman who is such a feminist Icon has both been created by, and undone by the very man she married. In previous books Dick Morris talked intensely about the American people’s distaste for a secret advisor in the bedroom during the Clinton Administration. And they accepted Hillary as an advocate with no power. But Hillary was never president and Bill was (Unless 93-01 was a long bad dream)
Morris talks of Bill as the guarantee. He says it would work like this. “Hey if she doesn’t know it I’ll help her out.” When Morris pointed to the fact the voters in 89 rejected Hillary as a future Governor of Arkansas because they would view her as a place holder for Bill. Yet here we have Bill back in the nucleus of his former glory and power. How could the American people not react to this problem the same way the people in Arkansas did? How they did in 93-94 only this time worse because the secret power broker whispering into the ear is both a man, and a former president.
Another flaw in the campaign to make Hillary president is something Morris calls a strategy. A female candidate’s need to tack to the right on issues of security and criminal justice in a mold akin to Golda, Indra, and the Iron Lady in the UK. The problem with this thought is seen in the 2004 election campaign. When John Kerry was behind in the polls he was embracing the war. When John Kerry rejected the war he marched forward and never looked back. The high poll numbers against the war are even higher amongst the democrats. I am going to be skeptical if a democrat can win as a hawk in 08, nor do I think a Nixon or reverse Nixon (Hawk playing a dove needing to do Hawkish things or a Dove playing a hawk needing to do dovish things) will win in 08. I think the only person who can be the Democratic nominee in 2008 is a legit dove in the mold of McGovern and McCarthy. With this strategy Morris identifies as vital to a woman candidate’s victory spells Hillary out as in 2008 we will still have large numbers of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, even if those numbers are reduced from today to the grass roots of the democratic party it will be unacceptable.
And Hillary has shown signs of trying to play a reverse Nixon with prominent fundraisers being told “I am only for the war so I can win elections.” And meeting with Cindy Sheehan along with decrying anyone who questions “our patriotism” (a question no one ever asks). But her refusal to take a playbook out of her husband’s campaign and rebuking Cindy Sheehan in a Sister Soulja moment for embracing not one but two anti-war movements founded by communist parties makes a perfect way to say “Opposing the war is fine but to some it goes into excess.” The fact she hasn’t shows she is not playing her war cards strong but playing them tight and conservative.
In the end Morris shows where this comes from when the scandal about the Draft came out and Hillary vehemently and animatedly said Bill would never say the war was good, or the protests were wrong. Hillary can’t run a Nixon or an Anti-Nixon in an honest way because unlike Bill she lacks the true ability to sell that which she does not believe.
Also as part of this strategy Hillary to “sell” her femaleness has to embrace big government… rub and get snuggly with big government. Unless Hillary starts to find a voice on cutting spending (which hasn’t happened) Hillary will be painted rightly as a “Tax and Spender.” And will go against the grain the Reagan years built in and her husband had to accept ~Americans want smaller government~
He disrespects the back bench of the Democratic Party. The question comes up where are some other Candidates that he didn’t mention.
- Russ Feingold: Russ is from the new south (an area where the democrats are starting to implode) the upper Midwest. He is a solid progressive but has supported Bush on key appointments saying in his own way that elections do have consequences. He is a maverick who has a reputation for doing what he feels is best for the country.
- Bill Richardson: Will Bill bow out to Hillary? He wasn’t a Clinton loyalist. But was a key member of the Clinton administration. He negates the republican’s push into the Hispanic areas and has shown his ability to do moderate things he might not agree with (like stopping gay marriage) and as a governor he doesn’t have to explain voting for something, before he voted against it.
- Bill Nelson: Popular democrat who well… has won in Florida. Something few democrats can speak of doing.
- Fast Eddie Rendell: Pennsylvania is a state that swings and he’s won it as a liberal. Fast Eddie has a re-election he might not win so that can kill him.
- Governor Warner of Virginia: Running with the one term governorship problem can be made up for because he is a democrats who can get Republicans to vote for him
As Morris says in his book, Presidential candidates have often come from the fringes of the main political stage to take the center. Hillary has name recognition but she doesn’t have foot soldiers that can fight and win for her.
Morris’s outline for how a Draft Condi movement can work is interesting. And his pointing out how the Blog-Fox News-Talk Radio Unholy trinity has changed the rules of the game is also good but his Hillary thesis; the big sales pitch doesn’t hold water. And without Hillary the Anti-Christ his motives to “Draft Condi” go by the wayside. I could point out his demographic formulas have already been challenged by other venerable men of the elections game… but this was a book of theater and I got an autographed book…I win, he wins.
But Hillary won’t win
