Election Result 2008

According to the AP , southern Texas has contributed a full third of all of Hillary’s campaign funds for the last two years. This seems remarkable considering the coldness most Texans feel toward letting any Clinton back into the White House. This may be more a sign of the increasing power of southern Texas as a political and economic power more than a sign of a change in Texan alliances.

The Texas GOP chairman Tina Benkiser had this to say:

Democrats may raise money in Texas, but they don’t win in Texas

Guess we’ll see in a couple of years.

Rudy Giuliani has opted not to run in the upcoming Senate and gubernatorial races means that he’s gotta be aiming for the presidency. It’s unnofficial - just pieced together by circumstancial evidence - but it worked in predicting Hillary’s run just fine. She made no move for the 2004 election and while denying that she’d try to oust Kerry’s 2004 spot she was eerily silent regarding 2008.

Giuliani seems to have a good chance too. He’s the most desirable GOP candidate according to the latest Marist College poll. 24% would vote for Giuliani compared to 20% for John McCain and 10% for Jeb Bush.

So Obama is almost certainly not running for the 2008 election, but I had to include this strange piece of news. He’s been campaigning for ex-klansman Sen. Robert Byrd. The same guy who filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act is being represented by my favorite senator ever.

In a letter to it’s members MoveOn.org had Obama make a request for campaign funds on behalf of Sen. Byrd. Within 48 hours they’d raised almost $900K.

This is either an odd friendship or Obama knows that doing crappy jobs is part of being a senator.

Last Wednesday Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich stood side by side and did a photo op together while proposing a new federal health care plan. Some stories are describing this as “The Beginning of the End” because Gingrich and Hillary were at such odds not too many years ago. He lead the charge to get her husband impeached and she accused him of being part of a ‘vast, right-wing conspiracy’.

Yet they met together, agreed on health care, and promoted a plan together. Coincidentally this doesn’t just give them each a useful boost toward appearing bi-partisan in preparation for the 2008 run - it also makes for healthy politics. A plan backed by someone on the far right and someone on the near left is better than a comletely partisan one.

Hillary is not attempting to hide her desire for the 2008 presidency. Newt has not ruled it out and there’s good reason to believe that he’s starting his own groundwork for the election. It’s odd that during the preparation for a primary election a Democrat’s best friend will be someone that she’s not going to be competing with. Well, I’ll enjoy the healthy politics as long as they last.

Sources: The Houston Chronicle
Concord Monitor

There’s good reason to believe that the Republican stance on abortion may hinder them in 2008.

Hillary is known to be moderate on her abortion position; taking up her husband’s phrase of ’safe, legal, and rare’ to be her own platform. This will bring in more pro-lifers than Kerry was able to get in 2004.

The real trick is that Giuliani is pro-choice and John McCain is not too far away from Hillary concerning abortion. These two men are the highest polling potential Republican nominees. If Republicans decide they need to make a definitive stance toward pro-life both McCain and Giuliani may find themselves losing support from within.

This combined with Giuliani’s health problems and McCain’s age (68) may mean that Republican voters are given someone like Bill Frist.

That could be a very serious problem for the GOP.

Polls have been done that pitt John McCain one at a time against John Kerry and John Edwards. The results show that if the election were to be held today, McCain would beat Edwards 46% - 43% and would slaughter Kerry at 51% - 41%.

In two separate head-to-head contests, McCain holds a 10 per cent lead over Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, and a three per cent advantage over former North Carolina senator and vice-presidential choice John Edwards.
Source: Angus Reid

This adds to the evidence we’ve already seen (like When McCain told Kerry to give it up) that the next election will exclude the John/John ticket of 2004. Giuliani is traling McCain by a moderate margin but both of them are set to be likely candidates for the GOP. The Democrats have Hillary in a ridiculously strong lead so early on, but her competition has plenty of time to create an attack plan against her. It’s just as likely that we’ll see some newcomers to the primaries like Russ Feingold or even a returner like Wesley Clark (I hear he learned how to debate and give speeches since last election).

There’s an interesting piece in the Washington Post about how Hillary is considered to have moved to the center recently. The writer points out that this has become commonly acccepted as true (I’ve even written about it here and here) simply because she’s done things that are indicative of a centrist in her campaign for 2008.

However, there’s good reason to believe she’s not moving to the center at all. Hillary has a long record of being known as a ‘flaming liberal’ but acting in a very republican way. Here are some facts about her that I was surprised to find:

• She has spoken at length since 1990 about her christian youth group years, giving guest sermons for a United Methodist Church, and the importance of faith and theologians like Bonhoeffer.
• She has always been more of a hawk than a dove
• She has consistently stuck with the same belief her husband had about abortion: that it be ’safe, legal, and rare’ while encouraging abstinence as an alternative to sex

There’s a good chance that the press will continue to misrepresent Hillary because what is known about her beliefs and her actual beliefs seem to be discrepant. I can already imagine the GOP response to Hillary being the same that was used against past candidates (’flip-flopping’, etc.) but her record may save her on this one.

In an interview with Billy House John McCain has made it clear that he intends to run for the presidency in 2008.

I think I’m qualified to help make the world a better place; I’m qualified for the job.

McCain (68) gets checkups every three months for possible cases of melanoma. He’s had skin cancer before that was treated and removed but due to his age and his health there may be concerns about his ability to lead well.

Regarding Hillary McCain seemed respectful and impressed by her political power. He believes she has an excellent chance at getting the Democratic nomination in 2008 while he hopes to get his own nomination to run from the other side.

Regarding policy McCain said explicitly that he’s always fully supported Bush on Iraq and will continue to do so, so this rules out McCain’s chances of running from a non-republican platform in an attempt to garner the same support that Dean received.

A while ago I wrote about a poll suggesting that nobody would vote for Hillary because she’s a woman. This has really started to astound me. My dad was visiting last week and he told me that he didn’t think she’d have a chance. Granted, he’s against anyone who’s not GW being president, but he seemed to think that no woman could ever be elected to the Presidency.

I suppose time will tell (maybe as early as the primaries) whether real live voters will give any support to a woman. Hillary seems to be doing everything right to secure some votes from both the right and the left, but I haven’t met anyone who really supports her yet.

The survey about voting for women said that the people who claimed they would vote for women claimed that their friends wouldn’t - so maybe we’ll be surprised and we’ll find out at election time that we’re all more tolerant than we thought.

Or maybe Hillary will crash and burn.