Strong negatives, electability doubts dog front-runner

Sunday, July 29, 2007 | 7:01 a.m.

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MORRIS

Sean Hannity was sounding all retro '90s the other day.

He was intoning darkly about Vincent Foster, at one time President Bill Clinton's chief counsel, who "supposedly" committed suicide, Hannity said, the innuendo dripping.

The name Vincent Foster, although likely meaningless to most Americans, sets off a whole set of emotional associations for the fervent opponents of Clinton and his wife , Hillary, now the front-runner to be the Democratic nominee for president.

Foster's death was ruled a suicide multiple times by multiple government agencies, and it's too complicated and pointless to get into now, but suffice to say, happy days are here again for those who made a living in the '90s feeding the beast of Clinton hatred with all manner of accusation.

For all their bluster, though, Hannity and his ilk are not without effect.

Two in five people recently polled by The New York Times hold an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton, which matches those who view her favorably. Of those with an unfavorable view, 71 percent have a "strongly unfavorable" view, while those with a favorable view aren't as passionate.

Republicans are generally despondent about the 2008 election, but some brighten at the prospect of a Clinton candidacy; she's the Democrat the Republican base will rally to defeat, they say.

In another recent poll, more than half of respondents said they wouldn't consider voting for Clinton in the November 2008 election. The Clinton campaign says that poll is an outlier , wildly at odds with other surveys.

The campaign is correct that other polls don't show such high negatives for her. In the recent Times poll, for instance, 46 percent said they would definitely vote for her or consider voting for her, while 34 percent said they would definitely not vote for her.

Still, rarely has a nonincumbent candidate for president entered a race with so much of the American public having such settled opinions.

Democrats skeptical of a Clinton candidacy frame their doubts this way:

If Clinton still has high negative numbers once the primaries start in January, Democratic voters in primaries and caucuses might vote against her even if she is their preferred nominee. Out of the White House for eight years, Democrats are hungry for a winner. They don't want a candidate who can't deliver the general election.

In 2004 Sen. John Kerry made a case with primary and caucus voters that he was the candidate who could beat Bush, which was a selling point against former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and other candidates, according to primary and caucus exit polling.

Clintons' chief opponents, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, will make the same argument about Clinton.

That leaves her in a box. To drive down her negatives before January and thus seem more electable to her party's voters, Clinton will have to reach unaffiliated voters and even Republican-leaning moderates, who hold her in low regard.

Her problem is that she needs to reach out to them when her constituency, the people she needs to win over right away, are the hard-core Democrats who vote in primaries and caucuses - liberals who will be turned off by any attempt to mollify centrist voters.

The Clinton campaign and a number of political scientists say Clinton has many options and is still the front-runner.

Ann Lewis, a longtime Clinton strategist, said Clinton is the most electable candidate. The former first lady is the only Democrat who has withstood the attacks of the Republican message machine and beaten it back every time, Lewis said.

Much of the public that despises Clinton is made up of hard-core Republicans who would come to loathe Obama or Edwards if either one became the nominee, Lewis said. "That person will be the target of attacks."

Those other candidates would be more vulnerable because a less-known and somewhat undefined Democrat, such as, say, Obama, will be easier for Republicans to define; Clinton, on the other hand, is well-known to the public, and the mud has already been thrown at her.

Cary Covington, a University of Iowa political scientist and a scholar of presidential elections, said Clinton and the Republicans are already three or four moves into the chess battle that usually begins after the nominees have been chosen.

Clinton's electability is an issue as she makes her case with Democratic voters, Covington said. But he added that as long Clinton continues to win in head-to-head polls against leading Republican candidates, Democratic voters will be satisfied with her electability.

In New Hampshire, Clinton is winning the electability argument handily. Democrats there, which is where the all-important first-in-the-nation primary will be held, overwhelmingly see Clinton as the Democrat most likely to win the presidency, by 30 percentage points, according to Andrew Smith, head of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

Lewis also said the Clinton campaign has unique advantages among women, who made up 54 percent of the electorate in 2004. Women are active social networkers, which Clinton is using to help organize her campaign.

Last week, for instance, Clinton's Nevada campaign unveiled its women's leadership team, which includes dozens of influential women. The hope is that they will reach out to their social networks - their soccer carpools, book clubs and professional acquaintances.

Clinton also has excellent numbers among single women and working women, eight in 10 of whom think she understands their problems.

Single women are less likely to vote than their married counterparts, with 20 million having stayed home in 2004. More of them voted in 2004 than in 2000, however, so the Clinton campaign thinks it can tap into that large pool of voters.

Clinton struggles with men, with 47 percent of them holding a negative view of her, according to the most recent New York Times poll. But Lewis said the campaign has discovered a powerful exception: men with daughters, who like the idea of a female president as a role model.

Covington said Clinton has made the right calculation by refusing to apologize for her vote to authorize the Iraq war while criticizing its execution and calling for withdrawal. Although it might hurt her with some liberals, a show of steadfastness proves her mettle to Democrats as a general election candidate who won't be pinned by Republicans as weak or "squishy," he said.

If she wins the nomination, she'll have to continue to show toughness and an ability to counterpunch.

By driving up the negatives of her Republican opponent and keeping some voters who don't like her at home, she can still win.

This is precisely what President Bush, reviled by nearly half the country in 2004, accomplished to prevail in his reelection bid.

In other words, if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, Americans can expect a brutal campaign that will be new and somehow retro, co-starring Hannity and James Carville and Matt Drudge, and maybe someone will re mix "La Macarena" as the theme song.