I hate the concept of "electability," but
numbers like these are cropping up for Clinton in more and more places (see
Marist and
Rasmussen, for example). If 50% of adults of voting age say they won't vote for a candidate, that candidate will have difficulty being elected nationwide. Granted, these numbers can be moved because we are very far from the election. Further, the poll was of adults of voting age rather than registered voters, and it doesn't take into account the odious Republican she might be running against if she were to become the Democratic nominee.
However, one does have to wonder if Clinton has a serious possibility of winning against any Republican nominee except via a total squeaker. Yes, she can still win, but there does not seem to be a big margin of error for Clinton. This is frustrating, because we are in a moment of strong Democratic performance across the board. In many ways, we are still facing residual problems from our political defeats and lack of political infrastructure during the 1988-2004. Back then, Republicans were regularly able to slime any prominent Democrat to no end while simultaneously leaving themselves with several prominent, well-liked spokespeople (such as McCain and Giuliani). I know that any Democratic nominee will face this slime machine, and as a result might very well run into the problem Clinton currently faces--or worse--not far down the road. That is always one of the dangers with looking at horserace polls as a means of determining "electability," because the election is so far away that for many potential Democratic nominees the slime machine has not yet acquired him or her as a target. For example, remember when we were all told that Kerry was the most "electable," because in January and February he comfortably led Bush in polls and even Republicans wouldn't dare attack a decorated war veteran? It certainly did not work out that way, and throughout 2006 Kerry performed worse against Republicans in hypothetical trial heats than did Clinton.
I'm not going to deny that I am participating in an anti-Clinton electability narrative by putting up this post, no matter how many qualifiers I sprinkled throughout the piece. This does not alter my firm belief that every declared Democrat, with the possible exceptions of Gravel and Kucinich, can win the general election (notice that even for those two I wrote "possible exceptions"). However, I am also not going to deny the desire for a little electability tit-for-tat, since the same establishment that backs Clinton was able to take down Dean, even before the "scream," on attacks largely predicated on the concept of "electability." In the end, I justify this somewhat mild questioning of Clinton's ability to win the general election because I don't want to see the progressive movement become a bunch of pushovers in important Democratic primaries. If our candidates can get taken down based on "electability," while establishment candidates receive a pass on the concept, then we will have ceded an important strategic position. The ideal would be that concepts such as "electability" are thrown out altogether, but that is not going to happen in the next nine and a half months. While I worry that engaging the primary candidates on these terms could end any hope of removing electability from the primary equation down the road, I am also under no illusions that in the meantime numerous progressive House and Senate candidates will be crushed and dismissed when they are pinned with the dreaded "unelectable" label. In fact,
Clinton's surrogates have already begun to play the electability card themselves.
Hillary Clinton has much higher negatives than
Edwards or
Obama. Take that for what it is worth, which might not be very much. There is an old "rule of fourteen," that some say applies to the Presidency, where if someone has been prominent in the national political scene for longer than fourteen years, it becomes virtually impossible for that person to win the Presidency due to established, negative preconceptions surrounding that person. This would apply to the current difficulty Clinton faces is overcoming long-term, and now fairly static, negative preconceptions. She can definitely still win in a general election, but because of her well-established national image she might face more difficulty than other potential Democratic nominees. That is dangerous during an election where we have the potential to solidify a pro-Democratic realignment.
So, there is that. I feel dirty. Politics will do that to you sometimes. What is that line from Wordsworth in
The Prelude, about French revolutionaries becoming the tyranny against which they were fighting? Maybe in this instance, it applies to me now. Feel free to trash me in the comments.
Further caveat: It turns out that
the Harris poll which started off this entire discussion was an online poll, which gives it a higher range of error than other polls:
This Harris PollŪ was conducted online within the United States between March 6 and 14, 2007, among 2,223 adults (aged 18 and over).
I think that goes a long way toward explaining why Clinton's "won't vote for" numbers are about seven or eight points higher in this poll than in other polls. It also seems impossible that the "won't vote for" numbers among those over 62 years of age are a stunning 69%. Among all other age groups, the "won't vote for" numbers are in line with other polls. Methinks there is something way, way off about the senior citizen online sample in this poll.
Even with all of the qualifiers I through in, I probably should have looked closer at the poll before blogging about it. And Matt is probably right anyway: "electability" is never actually defined by numbers, at least in the way the establishment uses the term. .
