WASHINGTON – “She came, she saw, she conquered.”
That’s how The Times of India summed up Hillary Clinton’s late February visit to the world’s second most populous country.
“She prays, she listens, she learns,” chimed in Newsday, a Long Island daily.
“If Hillary runs, Hillary wins,” said Canada’s Halifax Herald in August 1999 about her likely bid for the White House. Her 2000 Senate campaign in New York, the Nova Scotia paper said, was a steppingstone to the presidency.
Energetic, concise language is the striking common denominator in media comments about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and her political ambitions. Because she herself is clear and decisive, she is the hottest Democrat in the land. From the nation’s television screens to T-shirts, her face is everywhere.
The former first lady had to jump a hurdle or two before she could emerge as a mature, savvy political leader. She had to ease out from public memory the many investigators of White House scandals and her humiliations as the wife of a serial adulterer.
She succeeded spectacularly, and Democrats would be mad not to nominate her in 2008. Here’s why:
• She can make Americans believe she knows why she wants to be president.
• She is focused, disciplined, determined and, yes, flexible. In the Senate, she has positioned herself close to the political center on social issues – including family values – and has gained credibility in defense issues.
• She has a natural political base among black, Hispanic and labor voters. She is a diligent senator for her New York constituents and is justifiably confident of re-election in 2006.
• She is a fantastic fund-raiser, holds a lot of Democratic IOUs and, most important, she is a woman. You would have to be politically tone deaf not to hear American women saying, “It’s our turn.”
Put that in the context of actual voting patterns, and Hillary’s presidential launching pad looks formidable by any measure.
Women already outnumber men in presidential ballots, and Hillary can ginger up a gender vote in 2008.
This could be crucial if Republicans nominate a man. They have a credible woman in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to match Hillary, but they also have several impressive men.
The opposite is true for Democrats. They have Hillary and she already towers over all other Democratic presidential wannabes. Yes, she outpolled them right up to eve of last year’s Democratic convention.
Here it’s worth recalling that women voters first outnumbered men in 1984, the year Walter Mondale put Geraldine Ferraro on the presidential ticket.
Ferraro was the first, yet her candidacy was hardly electrifying. But it coincided with profound social shifts. She campaigned for the second-highest office as women’s educational achievements and participation rate in the labor force at all levels started making their mark in politics.
The trend continues, however unevenly. For example, 22 million single women didn’t bother to vote 16 years later when George W. Bush failed to excite them and Al Gore, though he did better, still bored them to death.
Last year Democrats did even worse and with good reason. Four weeks before the ballot, 21 percent of potential voters answered “don’t know” when asked whether they approved or disapproved of Sen. John Kerry, their party’s nominee. Six months before the election I Googled the names Kerry and Hamlet – and got 22,400 hits.
Unlike Kerry, Hillary doesn’t ask: To be or not to be? She knows who she is – and so do voters. She is the Democrats’ best chance and they’d be fools to blow it.
Bogdan Kipling is a Washington correspondent for the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
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