Hillary and Cindy

By all accounts, Hillary has a lock on the 2008 Democratic presidential candidacy. The power brokers love her. She has managed to be a leader in the Senate, taking moderate positions and working on her foreign affairs credentials. There are still a few potential problems for her. As Kerry found out, is it hard to run from the Senate. You not only leave a voting trail behind but you don't get a chance to demonstrate much leadership. Candidates from both sides have already announced themselves. Hillary will have to choose between waging a real campaign for re-election or bowing out gracefully.

None of these are insurmountable.

A bigger problem is that Hillary drives many people crazy. Some of them are on the right and will fight hard to stop her I don't think that this will turn into the white-hot rage that Democrats have for Bush but it will not be pretty. This too is surmountable.

Hillary's biggest challenge will come from the left. When Bill was president they were outraged by his triangulation. His presidency was far more moderate than they expected and they have not forgiven him for that.

The groundswell for Howard Dean was an attempt to turn the party back to the left. This continued when they made Dean the party chairman.

If you read the comments from Cindy Sheehan's supporters, they are furious that Hillary voted for the war and even more furious that she is not leading the fight against it (they feel the same about John Kerry).

In 2004, around half of the anti-Bush money came from Soros-funded organizations like MoveOn.org. These are Cindy's biggest supporters. Camp Casey went from a lonely woman's protest to a movement because of backing from groups like MoveOn.

So what should Hillary do? Granted the poll numbers on Iraq right now show Americans favoring a quick pull-out but the mid-term elections are still fifteen months away and the presidential race is two years after that. If the peace movement wins, our troops pull out, and Iraq dissolves into chaos then anyone involved with the peace movement will be tainted. If the peace movement loses and we still have troops in Iraq in 2008 the peace movement will be furious.

Standard election logic says that Democrats have to turn out the vote in order to win but no matter what Hillary does, she is likely to alienate a good-sized chunk of voters.

Even worse, anyone embracing Cindy is going to get slimed. Cindy left her own trail of anti-American remarks. She has disowned the one about her son dying for Israel but she sent the original email to too many recipients. Several people have come forward and said that she did write it exactly as shown.

Don't think for a moment that Karl Rove doesn't know this. If Hillary or any other candidate is pictured with Cindy he will find himself disowning her. This is the worst thing that can happen to a campaign.

The best that the Democrats can hope for is that the war winds down, that the peace activists wear themselves out, and that the economy is the main issue in 2008. Any Democrat who has to choose between supporting Cindy and rejecting her will lose.