The new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll that has the blogosphere abuzz finds that Democratic voters increasingly are focused on nominating the most electable presidential candidate.
While that poll finds Sen. Hillary Clinton rebounding from a modest slump and increasing her lead over her rivals, the new Washington Times-Rasmussen Reports poll finds that she tops the list of who Americans would most want to keep out of the White House. Clinton scored 40% — more than twice the total of the No. 2 “anti” pick, Republican Rudy Giuliani.  This is not as bad for Clinton as similar poll results earlier this year, though the 17% of Dems who would vote against her in the new poll is eerily similar to the 20% in the prior Harris poll and should be unsettling to the Clinton campaign (not to mention the 42 percent of third-party or independent voters who feel that way).
Even the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll contains some bad news for Clinton on this front. Obama currently matches up better against GOP rivals, which should influence those Dems who prize electability.ÂÂ
Clinton also led the field as the most likely prospect to be a “great” president and as the most likely to be a “terrible” president. Hillary, the Great and Terrible. Sounds like Oz. Or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Judging by the apparitions seen by Dorothy and her companions in Oz, let no one doubt that I have a brain. A heart, maybe not — but definitely a brain.
The ability of the nutroots to accurately predict an “electable” candidate is seriously in question.
“Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate.
Ia! Ia! Hillarhea!
To be scrupulously fair to the Dems, I would note that focusing more on electability is not the same as making it the sole criteria for primary or caucus voting. Moreover, if the GOP focused more on electability, McCain would be doing much better than he is now. Voters in both parties balance electability with policy positions.
The Dems have a dilemma. Despite the current polling — I suspect that HRC is really the Dems’ most electable candidate. Imho, Obama’s lack of experience would get him hammered in a general election (and that would be tied into his position on Iran, etc.) But if your most electable candidate carries a 40+ percent “anti”-vote, you have a problem.
Huckabee and his wife made them some butt ugly babies, huh. People who spawn teh ugly like that should not be president I think. It’s really shocking how homely his children are. Like Uday and Qusay ugly. Fred and Jeri made pretty babies, not at all like the malformed and heinous beasts that were sired from the loins of Huckabee.
Electability..
HAPPYFEET !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They picked Lurch and Silky because they were electable. Thanks.
Hi, JD! I finished that work stuff, finally. I will never let work intrude like that ever again. That’s like a vow.
And also Obama is not electable cause he looks like Urkel, but he does make him some pretty babies.
I strongly suspect that Hillary’s high negative poll #s reflect sentiments of both old school Republican anti-Clintonites, and, of a sizable number of Democratic voters who remember her vote for the Iraq war. Here, the current success of the Surge works against her. Prior to the surge, she seemed to hope that events would force Bush’s hand; leading him to begin a draw down of our military in Iraq that would both decrease its relative importance as a campaign issue and tar the Republican party with the ugly aftermath of a pull-out. Good news in Iraq forces her to maintain her studied ambiguity with regard to the situation – a tentative, specifics free approach that hurts her with core Democratic Party voters who want to know what she is doing to get us out (as long as Edwards and Obama continue to be seen as peace candidates). Meanwhile, her occasional attempts to bolster her peacenik credential, demonstrated in her hostile questioning of General Petayus, strengthens the resolve of traditional, conservative anti-Clintonites and reminds them of the reasons they loath her.
Hillary Clinton would poll behind several forms of venerial disease, Herpes and the Clap included.
I am trying to catch up and I could swear when I was in Texas I saw that Jeff had posted something. I have been checking in faithfully but mostly glancing more than reading. I thought it was in the Pub, but there’s nothing there.
Maybe it was mysteriously missing post #10418 that I remember seeing? There was a lot of traffic here on the 14th it looks like, so I must have missed an Event of some kind. It’s like I think there was a coffee cup involved, and I thought to myself that I should rather like to own that coffee cup so that maybe some day if someone chances to love me we can get up in the morning and each have our own Protein Wisdom coffee cup… the old one and also the new one. But maybe it’s not meant to be.
This saddens me.
Hillary, I guess you either love her or hate her. I think Joe @9 has got it wrong. People who dislike her also recognize that she is a lying shit weasel who can’t be trusted as far as you can throw her. She’s lowest among the Dem candidates on the trust scale for well deserved reasons. Screw the electability.
What has she ever done that would make anyone think she would be a “great” president?
Well, she has great cankles.
“People who dislike her also recognize that she is a lying shit weasel who can’t be trusted as far as you can throw her.”
Bingo.
Moreover, if the GOP focused more on electability, McCain would be doing much better than he is now.Oh, please. The last time the GOP nominated a septuagenarian Senator who’d been a war hero, it was Bob Dole.
McCain electable? Good one.
Ok. I must have been high. I’m not at all sure what it was that I wanted to go back and read but it’s ok. #10418 still seems very mysterious and I can almost swear something I saw when I was in Texas is gone or not here or something but also I could just be high. I found the coffee cup finally and got that and also the shirt. Shouldn’t this stuff link from the Protein Wisdom The Stuff link up there to the right? I do think McCain would peel off a lot of Democrats that really don’t like Hillary, but he’s old and weird and I don’t think I could be bothered to actually vote for him.
I think I mean up there to the left. I’m so high.
Hey, if you follow that GOP link, you’ll find that McCain matches up better against the Dems than people ahead of him in the polls. If he’s unelectable, it’s because he alienates too many Republicans. And that’s why I say it’s always a balancing act. I don’t have a candidate yet, so I’m not touting McCain, just noting the polling data.
I think that’s right, and I’ve heard liberal friends say as much… they don’t like Hillary, and they could vote for McCain. Personally I think the media worked hard to marginalize him this time around, for just that reason. Much like they’ve done Thompson.
‘Feet! Welcome back!! We were afraid the seals got you..
I’ve got to agree with Karl, McCain probably is fairly ‘electable”, in having more appeal to the liberals than any of the other Republican candidates, being pretty much a RINO. But that doesn’t make him nominatable thank da lord. He’s far too weird in a ‘listens to the voices in his head’ sorta way.
Hillary most likely to be a great president and a horrible president? Yeah, I can see that. Much in the same way Nixon was a great president and a horrible president. Comparing Hillary to Nixon isn’t exactly an original thought either, they have much in common. Both brilliant in a way and both completely hateful at the same time. It remains to be seen if Hillary is fatally flawed but the magic 8-ball says “yes”.
Thanks, Swen. I’m not feeling the part about “brilliant in a way” about Hillary though. She gets a lot of help from the media and through William Jefferson Blythe III’s connections and yet her negatives are prohibitively high. Can you imagine what they’d be if media coverage was just 25% less fawning?
If the press was just 25 percent less fawning towards Hillary, it would still be around 9750 percent better than President Bush has ever gotten from those vultures.
I feel dat.
HAPPY FEET!!
Glad to see you back.
BTW I heard Fred on Laura Ingraham today and was impressed by his ability to laugh at himself. Laura opened by mentioning their recent meeting in some studio make-up room. She remarked that he was out of the room in about ten minutes, and he said, “there’s only so much you can do with this face.”
He also showed a pretty good grasp of the important conservative principles. Laura asked him, as she did Mitt, whether he would pardon the Border Patrol guys, and he said–maybe commutation. In other words, he resisted the impulse to answer in exactly the way Laura and her audience would have loved to hear him answer.
I am still wavering about the candidates, but I admire a man who knows he’s ugly and who won’t simply toe the company line.
Hi, Cowboy. I’m still hopeful about Thompson. I read or heard somewhere this morning – can’t remember where – someone saying that if he’s not 1 or 2 in Iowa, he’s done. Oh. It was Cap’n Ed. Pay no mind.
I think it’s starting to dawn on the Democratic Party voters that they have maybe one guy running who’d make a good president. I may not like much of the GOP side but at least several of them I could conceive of being president. The Dems are running a bunch of chumps.
Richardson? I still have my money on him being Clinton’s veep pick.
Oh, there were plenty of reasons for the media to marginalize McCain, most notably that he wasn’t running aginst Bush this time.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a RINO, based on his ratings. But the issues where he’s strayed — for Campaign Speech Restriction, against the Bush tax cuts, for Immigration relaxation — are big ones for the base, no doubt about it.
…and I’m with happyfeet on Richardson as a Dem Veep pick.
Karl,
Richardson fits with a strategy that involves picking up CO, NM and AZ to offset OH. AZ would be tough but if Richardson campaigned well for the Hispanics it would be possible. Hispanics are at 29% in AZ. Emily’s List have been working their broad butts off in those three states.
Richardson used to impress me. He was a straight talking Governor that was willing to point out that his state was in a state of emergency due to illegal immigrants. Ever since he entered the race, he has sprinted to the leftist positions, just like Lieberman did with Gore.
That’s true enough Karl, still though… I can’t shake a sense that coverage decisions like that are increasingly data-driven, and I think the data said he pulled from Hillary. But you’re right – his pro-war stance was probably a deal breaker this time around with the media, whatever their polling consultants showed them, and they’re justifiably thinking that they delivered in ’06 so in ’08 they wants all the marbles.
It’s kind of scary, how they are… I’ll jump out there and predict we won’t see anywhere near the manufactured outrage directed at the FCC’s cross-ownership decision today that we would have seen ten years ago… they’re all about consolidating the message these days, so consolidating the companies? Inexorably logical.
Oh – that took way too long… my #33 was in reply to #29…
Rick,
IIRC, there are polls showing that the “anti”-HRC vote is actually strongest not among whites or blacks, but “other.”
Karl,
That could very well be but that doesn’t obviate the strategy re Richardson. He’s been in it for the VP slot from day one and his selling point is the potential to help in those three states.
I keep wondering if Giuliani could swing CA.
I would cross over in the Dem primary just so I could vote against Hillary twice – once in the primary and again in the general.
Rick,
I’m suggesting that “other” encompasses Hispanics, which boosts the Richardson theory.
I third the motion of not having a problem with the Dems having Richardson on their ticket. Aside (despite? in spite of?) from his proximity to the Clinton administration in the 90’s he’s never evinced outright felonious or overt anti-American actions or agendas… he’s actually the closest thing to a statesman that I see in the Dem field.
Taking those qualities of Richardson and appreciating them as a whole, by default, guarantees that the nutroots won’t even allow consideration of him for a veep slot. Hell, they might try to Lieberman him if he continues to come across all adult and sh*t.
Rick Ballard –
This time next year the Third Great Diaspora out of Cali will be well under way. There won’t be a U-haul to be had west of Salt Lake City.
If Arnold tries to restrain spending, the state house will literally revolt. They’ve paid other people’s good money for their seats and will string old Arnie up in the rotunda before giving up their pork.
Nope, the last middle class homeowners, small businesses, and family farms are going to be taxed out of existence. It won’t even touch the deficit and it will be the death of the middle class in Cali.
And that is just another variable in an already contentious election season.
You’re not just whistling ‘Dixie’, pal. Last year (2006) was the first year in all of researchable history that the population in California actually dropped, and that in spite of the massive influx of illegals and others riding the tail end of the last wave west.
This latest health care initiative will wipe out any chance of ever maintaining a balanced budget, will catastrophically fail in its goals (of providing universal health care for all Californians) and will somehow be held up as the example to which all other states should strive.
The people are beginning to vote themselves ‘bread and circuses’, and the collapse will only be delayed long enough to take the rest of the nation with it.
Start stockpiling, folks. It’s gonna be like a summer picnic at the park – hot, uncomfortable, crowded with unkind strangers and eventually given over to the ants.
I just can’t take Richardson seriously after this. unless someone can show me he was just having an off morning.
California is just wrong and mostly dumb as a box of rocks but I seriously doubt that healthcare nonsense will pass once it gets to the voters next November. Mostly, and this is just me, I think 8 years of the media working overtime to degrade confidence and sow anxiety and defeatism does not lead to a people eager to entrust their health or much of anything else to government. They’re gonna need to approach that utopian nonsense with baby steps for awhile I think. Meanwhile I hope enough people get scared enough to leave cause a lot of them I rather dislike and also rent here is freaking ridiculous.
As I noted in another thread, Cali emigrants largely fail to make the connection between the conditions that cause them to leave and the policies that created those conditions. Thus, after they arrive in NV, WA, OR, UT, CO, etc. they advocate for the big gov’t, nanny-state policies that require the smothering regulation and high taxes that forced them from Cali in the first place. Much like the aliens in Independence Day who traveled from planet to planet sucking dry the resources from each one before moving on to the next.
Isn’t the California’s official state insect the locust?
[Richardson is] actually the closest thing to a statesman that I see in the Dem field.
That sound you hear is Joe Biden slamming his hair-plugged head into the filing cabinet. Poor Joe thinks of himself as quite the statesman.
“Meanwhile I hope enough people get scared enough to leave cause a lot of them I rather dislike and also rent here is freaking ridiculous.”
You know, if enough of the moonbats left… I mean, the weather out there is pretty rockin’…
Nope. He wasn’t.
Richardson is a an ignorant asshat on all things islamic, middle eastern and terrorism. He wouldn’t know a Shia from a Sunni, thinks a fatwa is what a lisping toddler calls his dad and wouldn’t recognise an anti-insurgency POA if it surrounded his house and blew off his roof.
Outside of Kucinich’s bubble headed socialism, Richardson is the most clueless foreign policy person in the Democratic field.
Ans that’s sayin’ something…
Bj – Richardson has freaking sprinted to the Left, while the others merely jogged to the Left. He went from being the least bad of their choices to me, to just being another unprincipled hack in my eyes. As much as I like Lieberman today, he skewed horribly Left when he ran with Gore, running in opposition to many of his previously principled positions.
Well unprincipled because he sprinted to the left on the War on Terror, electing to uncritically embrace moonbat positions and the John Kerry school of Global Terror fighting (“when I’m elected president, I’m going to hold a summit in the middle east!!!”) In the meantime, he uses this as the centerpiece of his campaign to butt kiss the lefties but doesn’t take the time to learn a damn thing about anything to do with Islamic jihadists.
Unlike Richardson, Kucinich comes by his blinding ignorance honestly.
“I just can’t take Richardson seriously after this. unless someone can show me he was just having an off morning.”
Holy shit, I hadn’t seen that! That is unbelievable.
I do like Richardson’s idea of drafting Europeans and Muslims to fight for us, not sure how is going to swing it Constitutionally, but I am sure they can find it in there somewhere.
BMoe:
how does he expecty to have an “all muslim peacekeeping force” that included Europeans?
Inquiring minds want to know. Actually, not really. He’s beyond clueless on this subject.
“how does he expecty to have an “all muslim peacekeeping force†that included Europeans?”
Actually, I suspect we could get some pretty strong French support for that notion. And the Dutch. And Germans, the Danes, and well, you get the idea.
Richardson used to impress me
Me too but like you said his campaign has made him less and less palatable. If he’d stayed true to his character as a Governor he’d had been their best choice, but he abandoned it and started talking crazy. He’ll investigate area 52!
eLarson –
Politically, Joe Biden is Ted Kennedy without the booze and dead girlfriend, while he comes across personally at about eighty percent as self-important as John Kerry. This puts his unfounded arrogance quotient up there someplace north of the ISS.
It doesn’t matter which Dem is the candidate. Their party isn’t about the country, or freedom, or democracy. It’s about their fiefdoms. And Teh Hate. Always the hate.