|
 Hillary
(& Bill) Clinton
excerpts
from the Iowa Daily Report
official draft Hillary website:
August
2003
... Fickle New Hampshire
voters indicate they could abandon their
current favorite for Al or Hillary.
One-third of those committed to Kerry might go
with Gore – if he’d run. Poll director says
there’s an opening for another – presumably
better and electable wannabe, not another
Kucinich. Headline from Friday’s The Union
Leader: “NH poll: Clinton or Gore could
grab primary lead” Excerpt from
report/analysis by John DiStaso, the UL’s
senior political reporter: “If Al Gore or
Hillary Rodham Clinton sought the Democratic
Presidential nomination, either would
immediately become the front-runner in New
Hampshire, according to a new poll. The
Presidential race is so ‘soft,’ said Franklin
Pierce College poll director Rich Killion,
that many people who had told the survey
they were ‘committed’ to one of the announced
candidates jumped to the former vice president
or the New York senator when their names were
brought into the mix. The college had
released a poll on Tuesday showing former
Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry in a
virtual tie. The poll had a high undecided
rate of 37 percent. Yesterday, FPC released
more information from the same poll, showing,
according to Killion, ‘more likely primary
voters would make Al Gore or Hillary
Clinton their first choice in this primary
than the current leaders.’ FPC asked 500
likely Democratic primary voters the
hypothetical question, ‘If Al Gore were to
become a candidate, would he be your first
choice?’ According to the poll, 26 percent
answered yes, 59 percent said no and 15
percent were undecided. That is enough to put
Gore in the lead, Killion said. Gore’s
support was primarily drawn from backers of
the existing candidates. One-third of
those who had said they were committed to
Kerry then turned around a few minutes
later and said they would support Gore. The
same can be said of 22 percent of Dean’s
supporters, 39 percent of Missouri Rep. Dick
Gephardt’s supporters and 34 percent of
Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman’s backers,
according to the poll. Gore would get
the vote of 23 percent of the likely voters
who said they were undecided on the current
crop of candidates, the poll said. Twenty-four
percent of men and 28 percent of women
surveyed would back Gore. If,
instead, the former first lady were to run, 25
percent of those surveyed told FPC that Sen.
Clinton would be their first choice, 59
percent said she would not and 16 percent were
undecided. Among women, 26 percent would
make her their first choice, while Clinton
would be the first choice of 23 percent of the
men surveyed. Clinton’s support is drawn
mainly from supporters of the two
front-runners, with 28 percent of Dean’s vote
and 27 percent of Kerry’s support going to her,
along with 29 percent of Gephardt’s
vote and 22 percent of Lieberman’s
vote. Clinton would receive the vote of
20 percent of the undecided. ‘This result
directly relates to the high number of
undecided voters and the fact that no one is a
front-runner and the pack is either not known
or not catching on,’ said Killion. ‘People
are really open to look for someone else to
get into the race.’ Killion said that a
‘nationally known leader would assume the
lead.’ He said Gore and Clinton
were the only two major national Democratic
leaders with wide name recognition he could
think of to put in the poll.”(8/3/2003)
…
Opinion Journal commentary: Hillary may be
the candidate to stop Dean and revive the Dem
Party. Headline yesterday in
OpinionJournal.com (The Wall Street Journal)
-- “The Stop-Dean Candidate: Hillary… If
Hillary wants to save her party, 2008 may be
too late” Excerpt from commentary by
Robert L. Bartley, editor emeritus of The Wall
Street Journal: “Last
week The Hill reported that Al Gore's
friends are urging him to get back into the
race, because President Bush's poll
ratings have slipped recently. Mr. Gore
also rhetorically opposed the Senate war
resolution, but the poll numbers may also
speak to the real potential stop-Dean
candidate. Hillary, she's the one. It's
not exactly my place, as one who joined the
vast right-wing conspiracy as soon as she
advertised it, to endorse Sen. Clinton.
But in recent polls among Democrats she swamps
the announced candidates if her name is
included. She's been stumping the country with
book signings, and is headed to California to
save Gray Davis. Since her health-care fiasco,
too, she's learned something about
triangulation. She did vote for the war
resolution, and has been cautiously supportive
since…At a confab of liberal lawyers last
week, Mrs. Clinton made an intriguing
comment that the depredations of the Bush
administration ‘can no longer be observed from
the sidelines.’ Onetime inside adviser Dick
Morris has predicted she'll run this year if
the Bush approval rating dips below 50%. It
dropped to 56% in the latest Wall Street
Journal/NBC News poll, down from 62% in May.
Yet the president probably turned a corner
with the capture of Saddam's sons in Iraq and
a surprising 2.6% GDP growth in the second
quarter. Also, getting out of the Beltway
bubble and spending a month on the ranch in
Crawford may be the ideal therapy for his
team's recent mistakes. They yielded to
conventional Washington opinion in needlessly
apologizing for citing British intelligence,
and also in proclaiming victory for
surrendering to Teddy Kennedy on health care. Mr.
Bush is at his best refusing to yield the
moral high ground, demonstrating a capacity to
govern. This challenge to the moral authority
of a leftist elite is also why he stirs such
emotion among Democratic die-hards.
But
arrogating this authority--against the wishes
of the electorate on issues of war, taxes and
social policy--is precisely what has cost
Democrats their once-dominant position. Last
week the Democratic Leadership Council heard
that only 33% of voters identify themselves as
Democrats, the lowest in recent history and
weakest among younger voters. A poor 2004
race might also erode the party's last hold on
the legislative process; with a lot of
Democratic seats vulnerable, Republicans could
conceivably end up with 57 or 58 votes of the
60 needed to stop filibusters. The Democratic
Party is in danger of fading away like Alice's
Cheshire cat. Watching Mr. Dean's
surge in the primaries, Sen. Clinton may
have to rethink her preference of delaying a
presidential bid until 2008 to run against
Gov. Jeb Bush or some other non-incumbent.
By then it may be too late, not for her but
for her party. A Dean candidacy would stamp
Democrats more clearly than ever as a party
that runs hoping for a sour economy at home
and rooting for American humiliation in Iraq.”(8/5/2003)
Hillary
pulled off a RFK move when she ran – and won –
in New York, but will she repeat his ’68
decision make a prez bid ahead of anticipated
schedule? Headline from Dick Morris column
in yesterday’s The Hill: “Hillary Clinton
might not want to wait until 2008”
Excerpt: “In 1968, a carpetbag senator from
New York pondered a race to unseat an
incumbent president. Determined to
capitalize on his family name, raised to
mythic proportions by his relative’s tenure in
the White House, he judged, nevertheless, that
his time had not yet come and that he should
wait for four more years to venture out and
run on his own.
But along came an
unknown candidate who saw the vulnerability of
the incumbent and mounted a campaign driven by
the left-wing activists of the anti-war
movement. With the president’s strength
more apparent than real and Americans chafing
under the daily dose of combat casualties, the
unknown candidate gathered momentum and
support. With each passing week, the incumbent
president seemed more and more vulnerable…Will
the role Robert F. Kennedy was preparing for
be played by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Lyndon
Johnson by George W. Bush and Eugene McCarthy
by Howard Dean? As that famous philosopher
Yogi Berra said, ‘It’s déjà vu all over
again.’ Bill and Hillary Clinton have one
central idea in their uncluttered, ambitious
minds: Hillary in 2008. Let Bush get
re-elected, use the ’04 primaries and general
election to clean out the underbrush of
competing Democratic candidates, and proceed
unimpeded to the ’08 nomination. Use the
book tours to build support and popularity,
but let somebody else take the fall in 2004.
But those well-laid plans
would go awry if somebody else beats Bush.
With a Democrat
in the White House certain to seek a second
term in 2008, Hillary would have to
wait until 2012 to run. By then, she’ll be
65 and
have been out of power for 12 years.
The bloom will have faded and the honors gone
elsewhere. So as Bush continues his
descent in the polls, the chance that
Hillary will run becomes ever greater. The
most recent polls put Bush’s job approval at
58 percent but, ominously, indicate that only
47 percent would vote for him against a
hypothetical Democratic candidate. Forty-seven
percent is just about what Bush won in 2000.
And how committed could the top 11 percent of
his backers be to say that they approve of the
job he’s doing but won’t necessarily vote for
him?…If Bush continues to drop and one or
more Democrats start to catch fire, Hillary
Clinton will have some thinking to do. She
won’t have to look far to absorb the
consequences of sitting on the sidelines.
If 1968 is a distant recollection, 1992 would
be doubtless more vivid. Bill Clinton got the
nomination because Mario Cuomo decided not to
run. Cuomo, figuring Bush couldn’t be
defeated, elected to wait, as Hillary
is waiting in 2004, calculating that Bush
can’t be taken. Will Hillary remember
1968 … and 1992?”(8/7/2003)
One can’t
run and the other two show no signs to joining
the Dem derby – at least in the immediate
future – but Gore and the Clintons keep
grabbing headlines from the nine wannabes.
Headline from yesterday’s Union Leader: “Gore
and the Clintons steal Democratic candidates’
thunder” Excerpts from report by the AP’s
wannabe watcher Nedra Pickler: “What
does a Democrat have to do these days to get a
little attention? They can declare their
candidacy for president, pound their fists in
defiance of President Bush and travel across
the country shaking hands. Still, they lack
the prominence and headlines that those
non-candidates named Clinton and Gore always
grab. Former President Clinton, New York Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Vice
President Al Gore have managed to dominate
Democratic politics in a way the nine White
House hopefuls can only imagine. And even
when Hillary and Al say they are not running
in 2004, no one seems to believe them. ‘When
it comes to commanding page one, either
Clinton or Al Gore can do it with much
less air miles than this group of nine,’ said
Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist
Institute for Public Opinion. ‘These people
cast shadows far larger than any of these
candidates could even hope to have even if
they were standing on each other's shoulders.’
Consider this. Gore delivered a speech in
New York Thursday criticizing Bush on
everything from Iraq to the economy, echoing
the same complaints that the nine candidates
have been delivering to varying degrees during
the last few months. And yet the cable news
stations cut away to a live broadcast of
Gore's speech, something they've rarely done
with the nine candidates…And one could
imagine the frustration among the Democratic
candidates, particularly those who have been
sharply critical of Bush's justification for
the U.S.-led war against Iraq, when former
President Clinton punched holes in their
complaints. Appearing on CNN's ‘Larry King
Live,’ Clinton said Bush should be given a
pass for saying that Iraq had tried to
purchase uranium for nuclear weapons production.
The White House had acknowledged that those
reports were based in part on forged
documents, prompting an outcry from the
Democratic candidates that Clinton deflated.
‘You know, everybody makes mistakes when they
are president,’ Clinton told King. ‘I mean,
you can't make as many calls as you have to
without messing up once in a while. The thing
we ought to be focused on is what is the right
thing to do now.’ End of that argument for
the Democratic candidates. Still, they
insist they don't feel overshadowed by Gore
and the Clintons…Former Vermont Gov. Howard
Dean said he was delighted to hear Gore making
the case against Bush. His praise also was a
concession about the former vice president's
clout. ‘Gore still has a stature
that none of us has,’ Dean said in a
telephone interview while campaigning through
Iowa. ‘He's run for the president. At the time
when we don't have a head of the Democratic
Party, Al is the closest thing to
that.’”(8/10/2003)
Chicago
Sun-Times reports that CA Guv Davis,
confronted with prospect of facing the
Terminator, turns to political hero to “save
his skin”
– SuperBill. Headline from yesterday’s
Sun-Times: “Clinton advising Gray Davis”
Excerpts from coverage by Julian Coman: “Faced
with Arnold Schwarzenegger's bid for his job,
California's beleaguered Gov. Gray Davis has
turned to perhaps the only man in America who
can save his skin. Former President Bill
Clinton has taken a hands-on role in the
Democratic governor's campaign to help him try
to avoid being recalled by voters. Close
aides of Davis said the two men met privately
for more than an hour last week in Chicago and
are in daily telephone contact. The former
president apparently advised Davis to play the
sober politician to Schwarzenegger's brash
show business star. ‘Davis and Clinton are
friends, and Bill is giving him all the help
that he can,’ one prominent California
Democrat said. ‘The Chicago meeting was an
important strategy session. They've been
discussing the themes that Gray needs to push
in his campaign, the problem of fund-raising,
and how to get help for the governor at a
national level.’ Another senior Democrat
confirmed: ‘Clinton has been [to California] a
couple of times and is managing the whole deal
by phone. If Davis survives, he'll owe it
to the Clintons. Then, if Hillary jumps into
the presidential race, she'll have the
California delegates locked up as well as the
ones in New York.’ As the unfolding
political circus prompts a mixture of
amusement and consternation across the
country, Clinton has advised the bruised
governor to present a businesslike image in
the lead-up to the Oct. 7 recall vote.
"(8/11/2003)
“Hillary
and the California hijinks” – Headline
from Joan Vennochi in yesterday’s Boston
Globe. Excerpt: “As California goes, so
goes Hillary Clinton? Bill Clinton is
offering comfort and strategic advice to
embattled California Governor Gray Davis.
According to The New York Times, the former
president is helping Davis fight the Oct. 7
recall election out of sympathy for another
victim of right-wing politics. Clinton also
feels personal loyalty to Davis, who stood by
him during his impeachment trial. But, as
even Clinton loyalists know, at the end of the
day with Bill and Hill, it's always about Bill
and Hill. Besides helping out Davis, there
is very possibly a second agenda: setting
the stage for Hillary Clinton to enter the
Democratic presidential race. After all,
if Davis triumphs despite the threat from
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who else is a big
winner? Both Clintons. A Davis victory
could help Hillary Clinton launch a
presidential candidacy with a claim to crucial
New York and California electoral votes.
She is undoubtedly controversial, and her
enemies can't wait for an opportunity to drive
up her political negatives as high as
possible. But all the vitriol in the talk-show
universe can't change these facts: Hillary
Clinton has money and celebrity, the two most
important ingredients in American politics
today…Politics today is all about buzz.
Howard Dean, the former Vermont
governor and Democratic presidential candidate
has some buzz, but the rest of the Democratic
presidential field remains virtually buzz-less.
Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry, another
Democratic presidential hopeful, got some buzz
when he went to Philadelphia this week and
ordered a cheese steak with Swiss cheese
instead of the more usual Cheez Whiz…Hillary
Clinton definitely has buzz. But for the
Clintons successfully to tie her political
future to California, Davis has to do what
most pundits assume he cannot do. He has to
beat back the Terminator and the recall
effort. It may sound difficult, but it's
not impossible. Nothing in politics ever is.
That's why the unlikeliest candidates jump
into political races. Perhaps California
voters will ultimately consider the views of
another bodybuilder and king of buzz, Jesse
Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota. On
television this week, Ventura said he did not
support the California recall election and
reminded viewers that while he ran as an
unconventional third party candidate, he did
it during a regularly scheduled election
cycle. Rather than reveling solely in the
wackiness of the California recall effort,
shouldn't the media make a good faith effort
to examine the budget crisis that is the
underpinning of this particular moment in
political time? On July 29, the San Francisco
Chronicle published a thoughtful editorial
entitled ‘Distorting the budget crisis.’
Noting that the paper's editorial pages had
taken Davis to task in the past for
‘displaying insufficient leadership,’ the
editorial went on to say: ‘But to blame him
for creating it is an even more egregious
claim than Al Gore taking partial credit for
creating the Internet.’ Sorting through a
state budget debacle as big as California's is
a matter of fact, not buzz. It is much more
entertaining to watch Arnold on Jay Leno,
follow Bill to Hollywood, and wonder whether
Hillary is getting ready to steal the show and
the buzz from the rest of the Democrats who
want to replace George W. Bush.”(8/15/2003)
… “Clinton
rallies young Democrats” – headline from
yesterday’s The Union Leader. Excerpt of
coverage by AP’s Marc Humbert from the Young
Dem convention in Buffalo, NY: “Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, leading in the polls
for a presidential nomination she says she
doesn't want, roused young Democrats on Friday
with her attacks on the Bush White House.
‘This is the most radical, reactionary
administration we've ever had in Washington,’
Clinton, D-N.Y., told more than 500
young Democrats at a lunch in Buffalo.
Clinton was the star attraction on the third
day of the Young Democrats of America biennial
convention. The 43,000-member organization
is open to party members under age 36.
‘President Bush may not be on our list of
America's best presidents, but he should be on
anyone's list of America's best magicians,’
Clinton said. ‘The budget surplus - then
you saw it, now you won't. Good jobs - then we
had them, now we don't ... George Bush's
disappearing act is getting a little old to
me.’ Clinton also took issue with
the California recall election aimed at
removing Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. ‘I
think we have to ask ourselves, do we want an
angry minority to reverse the result of a
legitimate election?’ she said. ‘It sounds
less like power to the people than a plain old
power grab,’ Clinton added. Clinton
has said she will not seek the 2004 Democratic
nomination. She has said she has "no intention
of running" in 2008. A nationwide poll
conducted in June by the Quinnipiac University
Polling Institute had the New York senator
leading all the active contenders to challenge
Bush in 2004, favored by 40 percent of the
Democratic voters surveyed. Sen. Joseph
Lieberman of Connecticut was in second
place at 16 percent.”
… Is this
supposed to be bad news or good news for Gray
Davis? Report: Clintons may take a political
pass on trying to save the beleaguered CA gov.
Reports surfacing that the Clintons could be
reducing their profile in the CA recall. Under
the subhead “Cold feet,” Greg Pierce
reported in Friday’s “Inside Politics” column
in the Washington Times: “’As
Arnie mania explodes, there are hints that
Bill and Hillary Clinton are getting cold feet
and don't want to risk putting their
personal prestige on the line to try to rescue
Democrats by fending off Conan the
Republican,’ the New York Post's Deborah Orin
writes. ‘Just a few days ago, Bill Clinton
was getting touted as chief strategist for
California's Democratic Gov. Gray Davis as
he tries to beat back the Oct. 7 recall vote
that could bounce him from office and put Ah-nold
in his place,’ Miss Orin said. ‘But as of now,
Clinton has no campaign events on the
schedule when he goes to California to fulfill
prior commitments mostly in connection with
his foundation,’ says spokesman Jim
Kennedy. And he's not planning to go until
September. ‘The former president also must
take time to travel to Bosnia and is working
on his book and his foundation, including a
new partnership with South Africa on AIDS
treatments. Which sure doesn't make Davis
sound like a top priority.’ A spokesman
for Mrs. Clinton told the columnist that
the New York senator currently has no plans to
visit California.”(8/17/2003)
Today is Bill
Clinton’s birthday. However, his birthday wish
well could be that the Nigel Hamilton’s
first of two volume
biography of him was not scheduled for release October 7, 2003.
The New York Daily News has reported
that a new two-volume Clinton biography,
titled "Bill Clinton: An American
Journey" is being published by Random
House. Hamilton drew fame and
Kennedy-clan fire for his best-selling book "JFK:
Reckless Youth." Excerpts from the New York Daily News
article state, "The former president,
who's writing his own memoir for sister
imprint Knopf, was not involved in Hamilton's
research, Random House spokesman Tom Perry
said. On the book's Web site, Hamilton, based
at the University of Massachusetts, said a
look at Clinton's early life is key to
exploring the impeachment, the Monica Lewinsky
affair and other White House scandals. The
author added that, "you can't begin to
understand that kind of risk-taking in the
highest office unless you look deep into the
childhood and psychology of the human being."
(8/19/2003)
Under the
subhead “Hillary Attacks” in this morning’s
Chicago Sun-Times,
columnist Robert Novak reported: “Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton's quick response to the
Aug. 14 power failure trying to blame
President Bush, marking a shift in her
political tactics, received mixed reviews from
insiders of both parties. Some criticized
her for reverting to the harsh partisan style
of her first lady days after softening her
image as a senator. The consensus, however,
was praise for Clinton for grabbing the
spotlight while other politicians were caught
vacationing, on foreign trips or unable to say
anything. Normally wary about television,
Clinton rushed to cameras the night of the
power stoppage to be interviewed by Larry King
(CNN) and Ted Koppel (ABC). She blamed the
federal government in general and energy
deregulation in particular.”(8/24/2003)
… Hillary’s
Decision? Columnist says she’ll gather Bill
and advisers after Labor Day to decide whether
to become a wannabe. Excerpt from item in
yesterday’s CQ Midday Update: “In his
syndicated column in the Hartford Courant
yesterday, Richard Reeves wrote that Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers,
including her husband the ex-president, her
money men and pollsters, will meet shortly
after Labor Day to discuss whether she should
join the race for the Democratic presidential
nomination. Previously, Reeves wrote, she
could comfortably deny having presidential
ambitions because the conventional wisdom was
that it didn't really matter who the
Democratic candidate would be because
President Bush had a lock on re-election.
But with Bush looking more vulnerable, Clinton
has to check some numbers. If a Democrat
defeats Bush next November and runs for
re-election in 2008, then her next chance to
run would probably be in 2012, when she will
be 65 years old. It is a decision that has to
be made earlier rather than later because of
November and December filing deadlines for
early primary elections.”(8/29/2003)
Does this
Hillary person have a credibility problem – or
why else would it be she’s not believed when
she says she’s not running in ’04? Anyway, she
said it again – “I am absolutely ruling it
out” – over the weekend.
Excerpt from report by Stephen Dinan in
yesterday’s Washington Times: “Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton yesterday ruled out running for
president in 2004 as she sought to stymie
rising speculation she might seek the
Democratic Party's nomination after all. ‘I
am absolutely ruling it out,’ the junior
senator from New York said, according to the
Associated Press, during a visit to the New
York State Fair in Syracuse. Faltering
poll numbers from President Bush have left
many Democrats scrambling to put their best
candidate forward — and for many, the
answer is Mrs. Clinton. Also fueling
speculation are reports that she and her
advisers — including her pollsters,
fund-raisers and her husband, former President
Bill Clinton — will meet soon to discuss her
prospects. But some political observers
said rather than running in 2004, they expect
what she'll really be discussing is what
supporting role to play in the election.
‘She is going to be a force in this election
whether she's a candidate or not,’ said Morris
Reid, a political consultant and a former
official in the Clinton Administration's
Commerce Department. ‘I think it's prudent for
her to sit down and discuss with her advisers
what's going on with the current crop of
candidates,’ he said. ‘Hillary is still the
800-pound gorilla.’ Mrs. Clinton has won
good reviews from Republicans and Democrats
for her first few years of work in the Senate
and Jeffrey Plaut, who works with the
Democratic firm Global Strategy Group in New
York, said remaining in that position leaves
her well positioned. ‘I think the political
view is she's been tremendously strong and
that she will be a very strong candidate to
run in the future, but that's not going to
happen in 2004,’ he said. ‘I think she's a
formidable Democratic player, but it's very
late in the cycle,’ he said. ‘The serious
candidates are up with television
advertisements and making their case, so she
would be walking off the bench in kind of the
seventh inning.’ For her part, Mrs. Clinton
has repeatedly said she will honor her pledge
to serve out her full first term, which ends
in early 2007.”(8/31/2003)
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