It’s now obvious that Hillary Clinton’s negatives are rising among American voters. A Harris Interactive survey says that a majority will not vote for her, and a Gallup poll this week finds her favorability among Democratic primary voters dropping from 82 percent in January, to 74 percent in March.
By itself, this slippage would not be fatal. But it begs the key question: Why is Hillary dropping?
Democratic Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaks at the Communications Workers of America (CWA) National Legislative-Political Conference in Washington, Tuesday, March 27, 2007. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) Usually a candidate only falls in the polls when she is attacked by her rivals, or is the object of a major scandal. Yet, Obama and Edwards are treating her with kid gloves — avoiding even the most gentile of criticisms. So noteworthy are their all-positive campaigns, that when Obama’s fund-raiser, David Geffen, knocked Bill for his pardons, it became the central campaign event in January.
And, for once in her life, Hillary is not currently on the griddle for any scandal. There are no daily exposes of her financial or Bill’s marital misconduct. Nobody is hitting Hillary.
The real bad news for her campaign is that Hillary is losing support — not due to any attacks on her, but because people are watching her wage her positive campaign, and are concluding that they just don’t like her.
It is Hillary’s own campaign appearances that are driving up her negatives!
That’s the worst possible news for a campaign. When your main instrument — the candidate — creates negatives in her wake, you’re in big trouble. You can always rebut an attack that comes in from the other side — but how do you fix things when your own candidate’s campaigning is building up her unfavorables?
Basically, voters are seeing that Hillary is a phony. With her posturing on Iraq, and her evasions of her previous positions in favor of the war, she sounds as contradictory and dissimulating as she is. To watch her try to explain her positions on the war is actually amusing. She voted for the war — but now claims she only wanted to strengthen the hands of the U.N. inspectors. She even supported it after she learned there were no WMDs, but now wants a total withdrawal of our troops — except for those she would leave there to keep the Iranians out and hunt down al Qaeda. She voted to cut off funds if the troops are not pulled out, but she doesn’t really want to cut off the funding, etc., etc...
URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2007/03/30/hillarys_star_appeal_fading |
