Conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton may be too polarizing to become president. But a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that Clinton is actually less polarizing than nearly all the other leading candidates, Republicans and Democrats.
Of those surveyed, 41 percent said they definitely would not vote for Clinton in the general election. Only Barack Obama had a lower “reject rate,” at 39 percent. John Edwards, who argues that he is the most electable Democrat, had a 43 percent reject rate. All of the top four Republican candidates had higher reject rates: Rudy Giuliani, 44 percent; John McCain, 45 percent; Fred Thompson, 54 percent; Mitt Romney, 57 percent.
The poll also challenged the belief that former President Clinton might hurt his wife’s candidacy. Two-thirds of those surveyed approve of the job he did while he was in office — the reverse of President Bush’s current 33 percent approval rating, the Post reported.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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37 Comments
This is a bogus poll.
Way too many names. Most of the names are not household names. We are not past the primary yet, and the parties, themselves, have not “consolidated” behind a nominee.
Clinton is the best known name in the bunch. Her negs wont move down.
She might win the Presidency, she will lose Congress.
Econ -
You seem to profess a 50-state clairvoyance for the Nov 2008 election. Let’s just hear your predictions for Kansas. Who will win the Republican primary to go up against Nancy Boyda, and will they beat Boyda? Will Dennis Moore be re-elected again, or which neo-con will you predict to beat him? Please explain your reasoning.
This glass of milk is not as sour as the rest, I think I’ll drink it.
Ha, just wait until it comes to pushing the button in the voting booth. Hillary’s only substantial presidential qualifications are that she’s Bill’s wife, and she isn’t Bush.
Dems who would vote for Hillary must think that Bill would really be running the country.
Say what? Does anyone remember how the Clintons blackmailed several aerospace companies to giving sensitive technologies to China, while violating the regulations also, right after John Huang donated big time to the DNC in the early 1990s? Loral was in with the Clintons and got a lot of contractors forced to unwillingly send items to China. And if they didn’t, the Clinton Administration was going to make sure that the companies would be “punished” severely.
What surprises me is the high negatives Romney has. I cannot figure that out unless people still hate the Mormons. He was the the Governor of a very blue state and I have not heard anybody say they don’t like him. He has only one wife and seems to be a decent husband and father (by Republican standards anyway). So why would 57% of people say they would not vote for him?
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…WW.WWW.WW……AAAAAAAA..
….WW……WW…….AA………AA
LL……………KK…..KK
LL……………KK…KK
LL……………KKKK
LL……………KK…KK
LLLLLLL……..KK…..KK
..OOOOO…….NN…….NN
.OO….OO……NNN…..NN
OO……OO…..NN..N…NN
.OO….OO……NN…N..NN
..OOOOO…….NN…….NN
BBBBB………YY………..YY
BB….B……….YY…….YY
BBBBBB………….YYYYY
BB…..BB…………YYY
BBBBBB…………..YYY
Nice graphic, Clean House.
You cut and paste like a pro.
Why don’t you run away and play now?
******
“Washington Post/ABC News poll” says it all.
They want Hillary so bad that they’re not even waiting for the voters.
The king-makers have spoken. These are the same people that brought us
Worst.President.Ever.
Say what? Does anyone remember how the Clintons blackmailed several aerospace companies to giving sensitive technologies to China, while violating the regulations also, right after John Huang donated big time to the DNC in the early 1990s?
*****
No, Catherine, I don’t.
And btw, don’t e-mail me any more.
Thank you.
outlander,
Oh, beating the ‘qualifications’ tin drum again, eh?
Let’s just say that anyone who voted for a one-term governor of Texas, a state with a famously strong legislature and famously weak governor’s position, doesn’t exactly sound sincere when he bleats on and on about any other candidates’ “qualifications.”
One another topic, I have less and less time for breathless stories about candidate “electability” or “negatives.” Given the media’s self-appointed role as kingmaker among primary candidates and eventually party nominees, to use these as metrics for making decisions just seems like another pretext for the media to arrogate to itself the decision about who gets to enter and who will win the presidential horse race.
“Ha, just wait until it comes to pushing the button in the voting booth. Hillary’s only substantial presidential qualifications are that she’s Bill’s wife, and she isn’t Bush.”
Oh, and George W. Bush was more qualified that Hillary Clinton when he was appointed president.
She is now in her second term in the Senate, outlander. Several Presidents were elected with substantially less qualifications than that.
Your comment was merely reflexive, partisan noise.
“Reflexive, partisan noise.”
Nice, ksagnostic.
Hillary is intelligent, she may not be dumb enough to get elected. That is, if she were on the Repub. ticket, fortunately for her, she isn’t.
41% v. 43% is statistically insignificant. Besides, Hillary is probably more pleasing to Republicans because she’s essentially a Republican.
I don’t know. Most people either love her or hate her. There aren’t very many people in the middle.
I personally don’t care whether or not she can play well with others. I care that she has no connections with the majority of the people she claims to want to represent. She is rich, privileged, intolerant and inflexible. Of course these are the same sticks she beats any and all conservatives with so I guess you could add hypocritical to the list.
My daughter asked me why it’s legal for Hillary to run for president. I quote “…She’s already been president twice.” Out of the mouths of babes.
“Look in the Congressional Record cosmos, not the Sierra Club. And look at Justice Department reports.”
Posted by: Republican | May 26, 2007 at 12:34 PM
http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/05/dont_count_on_f.html#comment-70787370
See ‘3.7 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Admits Fault’http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_levee_failures_in_Greater_New_Orleans
ROFL!
Kansas insists that I’m a “racist”, because I believe the report written by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Cosmos you are probably not rascist but have a one track mind. This blog has gone so far downhill that is just isn’t worth the time it takes to participate.
Cosmos change that to two track mind.
cosmos calls me a liar for a report I post here by the Black Environmental Group of Louisiana. I’m not the one who wrote the report, I just posted it.
Since then, cosmos has called me a liar which has been months ago. I figured that cosmos must be a very bigoted racist for calling the people who made that report who happen to be Black liars. They are scientists, cosmos is not.
The only motivation and reason for him to call them liars is that cosmos is a racist since he has no scientific training.
I’m so tired of all of this arguing. Just vote already!
“outlander,
Oh, beating the ‘qualifications’ tin drum again, eh?”
—–
You keep pointing that out CF. And I’m willing to listen. But I’m still waiting for you or someone to give me a reason why anyone should vote for Hillary Clinton. What has she accomplished. What organization has she ever run in preparation? Why would she be better than any other 2nd term Senator?
Face it. The one and only reason she is where she is at is becasue she is Mrs. Bill Clinton.
This is the WEBLOG editor’s way of posting Hillary as the great ‘Uniter”.
Biggest piece of crap in America, but it’s all that’s available for the liberal koolaide drinkers to consume.
outlander,
Hillary has quite a record of scholarly publication, legal advocacy, and corporate governance. Here’s some of it from Wikipedia.
“In 1965, Rodham enrolled in Wellesley College, where she majored in political science.[13] She served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans organization during her freshman year.[14][15] However, due to her evolving views regarding the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, she stepped down from that position.[14] In her junior year, Rodham was affected by the death of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., whom she had met in 1962,[8] and became a supporter of the anti-war presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.[16] Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley’s black students for moderate changes, such as recruiting more black students and faculty.[17] In that same year she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government.[18] She attended the “Wellesley in Washington” summer program at the urging of Professor Alan Schechter, who assigned Rodham to intern at the House Republican Conference so she could better understand her switch to the Democratic Party.[17] Rodham was invited by Representative Charles Goodell, a moderate New York Republican, to help Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s late-entry campaign for the Republican nomination.[17] Rodham attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami, where she decided to leave the Republican Party for good; she was upset over how Richard Nixon’s campaign had portrayed Rockefeller and what Rodham perceived as the “veiled” racist messages of the convention.[17]
Rodham returned to Wellesley, and wrote her senior thesis about the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky under Professor Schechter (which, years later while she was First Lady, was suppressed at the request of the White House and became the subject of speculation as to its contents).[19] In 1969, Rodham graduated with departmental honors in political science. Stemming from the demands of some students,[20] she became the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver their commencement address.[21] According to reports by the Associated Press, her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes.[22][23] She was featured in an article published in Life magazine, due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Edward Brooke, who had spoken before her at the commencement;[8] she also appeared on Irv Kupcinet’s nationally-syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers.[24] That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthy conditions).[25][26]
Law school
Rodham then entered Yale Law School, where she served on the Board of Editors of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.[27] During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center,[28] learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973).[29][30] She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital,[29] and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free advice for the poor.[28] In the summer of 1970, she was awarded a grant to work at Marian Wright Edelman’s Washington Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator Walter Mondale’s Subcommittee on Migratory Labor, researching migrant workers’ problems in housing, sanitation, health and education;[31][32] Edelman would become a significant mentor to her.[32]
In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, who was also a law student at Yale. That summer, she interned on child custody cases[33] at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein,[34][35] which was well-known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes;[35] two of its four partners were communists.[35][36] The following summer, Rodham and Clinton campaigned in Texas for unsuccessful 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.[37][38] She received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973,[8] having spent an extra year there in order to be with Clinton.[39] Clinton first proposed marriage to her following graduation, but she declined at the time.[39] She began a year of post-graduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.[40] Her first scholarly paper, “Children Under the Law”, was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973[41] and became frequently cited in the field.
Marriage and family, law career and First Lady of Arkansas
Key decision
During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman’s newly-founded Children’s Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[42] and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.[43] During 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.[44][45] Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard Nussbaum,[29] Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment.[45] The committee’s work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.[45]
By then, Rodham was viewed as someone with a bright political future; Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright had moved from Texas to Washington the previous year to help guide her career;[46] Wright thought Rodham had the potential to one day become a Senator or President.[47] Meanwhile, Clinton had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and she had continued to defer.[48] However, helped by her having passed the Arkansas but not the District of Columbia bar exam on her first attempt,[49] Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, “I chose to follow my heart instead of my head.”[50] She thus followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington where career prospects were best. Clinton was at the time teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state.
In August 1974, she moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and became one of two female faculty members at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville School of Law,[51] where Bill Clinton also taught. Even then, she still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that her separate identity would be lost and her accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else’s accomplishments.[52]
Early Arkansas years
The couple bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975, and she finally agreed to marry him.[53] Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton were married on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.[54] She kept her name as Hillary Rodham, later writing that she had done so to keep their professional lives separate and avoid seeming conflicts of interest, although it upset both their mothers.[55] Bill Clinton had lost the Congressional race in 1974, but in November 1976 was elected Attorney General of Arkansas. This required the couple to move to the state capital of Little Rock.[56] Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence,[57] in February 1977,[58] specializing in patent infringement and intellectual property law,[27] while also working pro bono in child advocacy;[59] she rarely performed litigation work in court.[60]
Rodham co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children’s Defense Fund, in 1977.[27][61] In late 1977, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had done 1976 campaign coordination work in Indiana)[62] appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation,[63] and she served in that capacity from 1978 through the end of 1981.[64] For much of that time[65] she served as the chair of that board, the first woman to do so.[66] During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million,[59] and she successfully battled against President Ronald Reagan’s initial attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.[59]
Following the November 1978 election of her husband as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for a total of twelve years (1979–1981, 1983–1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year,[67] where she successfully obtained federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas’ poorest areas without affecting doctors’ fees.[68]
In 1979,[69] she became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm.[70] From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than her husband.[58] During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham made a spectacular profit from trading cattle futures contracts.[71]
Later Arkansas yearsHillary Rodham Clinton, 1992Bill Clinton returned to the Governor’s office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband’s campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes “Mrs. Bill Clinton”, in order to have greater appeal to Arkansas voters;[72] she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law in order to campaign for him full-time.[73]
As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee from 1982 to 1992,[74] where she sought to bring about reform in the state’s court-sanctioned public education system.[75][76] One of the most important initiatives of the entire Clinton governorship,[75] she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association[75] to put mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size in place.[75] She introduced Arkansas’ Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth in 1985, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.[77] She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.[78]
Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than all the other partners, due to fewer hours being billed,[79] but still made over $200,000 in her final year there.[69] She continued to rarely do trial work,[69] but was considered a “rainmaker” at the firm for bringing in clients, partly due to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections.[69] She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges.[69] Bill Clinton’s Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial re-election campaign accused the Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the Clintons deflected the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated.[80] From 1987 to 1991 she chaired the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession,[81][82] which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it.[81]
She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America, in 1988 and in 1991.[83]
Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992)[86] and the Children’s Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).[87][12] In addition to her positions with non-profit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992),[88] Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992)[89] and Lafarge (1990–1992).[90] TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law.[69][91] Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart’s board, added when chairman Sam Walton was pressured to name one;[91] once there, she pushed successfully for the chain to adopt more environmentally-friendly practices,[91] pushed largely unsuccessfully for more women to be added to the company’s management,[91] and was silent about the company’s famously anti-labor union practices.[91][89]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_clinton
So, outlander, Hillary has had a long and successful career in the law, and in legal and social advocacy prior to holding elective office. To say otherwise is to put yourself on the other side from the facts.
If Hillary Clinton gets the nomination, CF2K will be happy and proud to vote for her. She is eminently well-qualified for the Presidency.
Interesting. The liberal owned and operated media of the WEBLOG (yes, Phillipe, you are OWNED), it telling those who live on the liberal tape recording:
“HILLARY IS THE LESSER OF EVILS.”
For this reason, you support her?
Outlander,
And as for the contention that “the only reason she is where she’s at is because she’s married to Bill Clinton,” well, Outlander, if you voted for George W. Bush, I believe you’ve abdicated any right to make THAT particular claim.
CFUK just has a hard-on for Hillary.
Outlander,
Really, thinking about it, the most relevant candidate comparison for Hillary Clinton is Fred Thompson, although her legal reputation is probably stronger than his.
He served one term in the Senate; Hillary is serving her second.
If you’d consider Fred Thompson to be “qualified,” Outlander, I find it hard to understand how Hillary Clinton would count as any less so?
Pat is drunk again.
Sad, isn’t it.
Glad you made it back okay, CF.
Hillary will be the democratic nominee. The press has already decided. I don’t know why humans continue to debate the end game, but it is going to happen. Ordained.
The real issue is: Will the majority in the house and senate be democrat or republican?
If the answer is democrat: ALL AMERICANS NEED TO SELL THEIR STOCK IN CALENDAR YEAR 2007 and MAYBE 2008.
After that, the 15% capital gains tax will revert back to income bracket. Sell NOW!!!!
All Bush era tax breaks will expire. Move everything to tax-free or low tax investment options. EVERYTHING.
CONSIDER: stopping your 401K beyond the basic match rate. The basic match, is whatever your employer contributes based upon the percent/amount the employee contributes.
Hillary is planning a NEW TAX on 401K’s at WITHDRAWAL.
Presently, 401K withdrawals are taxed at the tax bracket the owner is in on the date of withdrawal. This adds to regular income in that tax yeat.
Clinton plans a NEW TAX on 401K’s. This will necessarily be drastic. She MUST come up with the money to fund the new entitlement programs. 401K’s are the target – she can’t tax the rich or the middle class or she will get hammered.
401K’s are the only vehicle left for Hillary.
In 2007, most companies no longer offer regular RETIREMENT PLANS. Today, most employers offer 401K’s instead of defined plans which include retirement pay.
Millions of MIDDLE CLASS workers have 401K’s. But millions are TOO STUPID to realize the tax potential of those plans.
Hillary is coming after them. It is all that is left besides Roth IRA”s (which are not taxed at withdrawal by law).
So be prepared: This is a sock it to me for the middle class.
Financial Advise: Move the bulk of your retirement:
1. Out of stocks before the 15% cap expires.
2. Out of 401K’s.
3. Into low tax or tax free investments.
Do it now.
The democrat congress will take charge again in fall 2008. The new Hillary beast will take office in 2009.
Tax year 2009 is too late.
Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. He promised:1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary,2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,4.) That the money the participants put into the independent “Trust Fund” rather than into the General operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and,5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income
_______________________
Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to “put away” — you may be interested in the following:————————Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent “Trust Fund” and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.————————-Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.————————-Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities????
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the “tie-breaking”deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US.————————-Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
This is MY FAVORITE:
A: That’s right! Jimmy Carter! And the Democratic Party of course!
Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!————————-
Then, after doing all this lying and thieving and violating of the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!
And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it!
If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. Maybe not!.. many Democrats are awfully sure of what isn’t so!!
But it’s worth a try. How many people can YOU send this to? Actions speak louder than bumper stickers. Forward this to others so that they can be informed of the truth.
“THE ONLY THING NEEDED FOR EVIL TO TRIUMPH IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING” EDMUND BURKE
Get used to it bogus socialist-name-caller:
PRESIDENT HILLARY CLINTON!
Hillary is less polarizing yes? Is because she is unwilling to compromise on the BJ position.
You are correct CF, to equate Fred Thompson’s and Hillary’s qualifications. Fred is the most poorly qualified of the top Republican candidates. There are better candidates. So, I’m not voting for him.
What is it with America these days, choosing our leaders based on family name? Vestiges of royalty influence?
Outlander,
You may want to let Nathan know that his candidate of choice is the “most poorly qualified of the top Republican candidates.”
As for the other “top” Republicans, neither Mitt Romney nor Rudy Giuliani has any foreign policy experience whatsoever. Nada. And Rudy comes with the additional baggage of having made a sweetheart deal with Motorola for a non-functional radio system that caused hundreds of NYC firefighters to die on 9/11.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2007-07-12-giuliani-firefighters_N.htm
Unless you’re voting for McCain, Outlander, the “qualifications” smear on Hillary Clinton isn’t going to stick. And if you ARE going to vote for McCain, then other considerations come into play, such as his age and temperament.
I’m no fan of political dynasties either. But if this is who we get to choose from, I’m not one to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Clinton less polarizing than other candidates. HA HA HA HA….. We know now who the Eagle is rooting for.