I don't think the Clinton camp wants Gore to run, but I do think that they like the fact that people who don't favor Hillary are currently sitting on the sidelines, rather than getting involved on behalf of another candidate.

Good point.  I realize that Luntz is a GOPer, but I think his focus group on Democratic primary voters a year or so ago (pre-Obama, pre-2006 Democratic win), was fairly instructive.  Democratic voters are inclined to like Clinton.  But the more they hear, the less they like.

The anti-Hillary concept may have come out of this focus group, as the view was that Clinton would flame out early for some reason.  But the problem with that thinking is that people won't actually hear what Clinton is saying until November.  

But more than that, the latest Washington Post/ABC poll shows a dynamic we all knew about.  Clinton has numbers set in stone: 48 approve/47 disapprove/3 undecided.  Who makes up that 48%?  Democrats, naturally.  And Democrats across all factional lines.  So it makes sense that the more candidates out there, the more likely the factions will go for their candidate over Clinton.  But Clinton is the one candidate that's acceptible, at this point, to most Democrats (who are sanely disengaged from 2008 elections at this point).

Interesting analysis.  A couple points though.

First, I think Gore is a completely different beast than Obama, Edwards, or Richardson.  I think it's very difficult to poll whether people would choose Gore in a primary because he's given every indication that he's not going to run.  In fact, if Gore were to jump in, I would instantly support him, but if I were to answer a pollster's questions that included Gore in the equation, I would probably answer 'Obama' at this point.

Second, if it is the case that Hillary doesn't want a specific "anti-Hillary" candidate, why has she been getting into a pissing match with Obama of late?  Wouldn't doing so make Obama the "anti-Hillary"?  It sure seems like the media is portraying the race as Obama vs Hillary, which I don't believe was the case a few weeks ago.

Why should Gore supporters hurry up and decide? I don't mind if they wait until the fall or winter. Most people in Iowa make up their minds during the last month or six weeks before the caucuses anyway.

Total props for this post, Chris.  The Obama-Edwards fights are getting a little crazy already, especially over on DKos.   The Edwards crowd seems annoyed that Obama's getting more traction at the moment than Edwards.  Relax, folks...Edwards is in very good shape in the early states, particularly Iowa.  National polls don't mean too much at this point anyway.

One minor quibble...I do think that Hillary's camp has reason to push the Gore meme in the short-term (i.e. the next couple of months).  They need the largest Q1 fundraising number possible for the inevitability campaign they're running...and the Gore meme helps to keep some money away from other candidates (in theory, anyway) for now.

> The entire concept of the "anti-Hillary" in
> another example of lazy, inaccurate thinking
> cooked up inside the beltway (an all-too common
> flaw for Hotline).

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Duncan Black the first out of the gate with the Hillary/anti-Hillary theory about a week after the November 2006 election?

sPh

I think the debates will push more of the voters in early-voting states (as opposed to the respondents in nationwide polls who may or may not be paying close attention) away from Clinton and towards Edwards, Obama and Richardson. I see each of them having major strengths as candidates.

In Iowa so far, I know a few big donor types who are supporting Clinton, but I don't know a single volunteer/activist type who is. When all the activists start working their precincts and making the case with their neighbors for one of the other candidates, I expect Clinton's numbers to go down.

Government seems to be about a compromise, in most cases. One thing I cannot understand is why we have chosen to shift focus, essentially to compromise - our major initiative to destroy the horrific mistake that the GOP congress and senate created in this war that was waged on an innocent country for illicit reason - to lose focus of the fact that the administration has multiplied the powers of the presidency to include anti-constitutional powers - and to continually return our discussion back to presidential races.

I think Hillary is nice, so could alot of other folks if they chose to run/. Is this site about advertising? Or is it about politics?

I always felt like mydd stood for my due diligence, not "direct democracy" and I take deep umbrage at what seems to be a continual focus on statistical measures made so far away from their area of contextual relevance.

Please understand, your article is nice. but frankly a poll this far away is just plain dumb.

The claims isn't that Clinton is trying to push Gore into the race.

It's that they're so confident that he won't, that they're spreading FUD in the rest of the field by talking up his chances. The longer people sit around waiting for Gore to jump in, the less time the other non-Hillary candidates have to soak up that support.

I think you're wrong on this one, Chris, and it's an issue of game theory: right now, people are free to say whatever they want in terms of which candidates they prefer.  When it comes time to vote in IA and NH, however, then it really does start to become a question of "Hillary" or "not Hillary", just as in 2004 I believe it came to "Dean" or "not Dean", and at that moment, people generally act as if Instant Runoff Voting already existed..  

If you look at the Iowa exit polls and those from NH, it's pretty clear that the late-deciders was where Kerry really cleaned up.  In other words, as it became clear that Kerry was the candidate best able to stop Dean from winning, those people who opposed Dean gravitated towards him.  Of the 40% of NHites who held an unfavorable opinion of Dean, 48% of them chose Kerry in the field.  (Similarly, Kerry also dominated in the "I chose this candidate because he can beat Bush" bracket.)

(There was a similar dynamic in the 1999 Dem mayoral primary in Philadelphia, where John Street became the most viable non-Marty Weinberg in the field.)

I don't think your polling justifies your point at all.  With Clinton the frontrunner based at least partially on name ID, removing any candidate could/should generally increase her performance.  When Democratic primary voters have had an opportunity to get to know more than one or two candidates, these polls could and probably will shift dramatically.

Hillary is the best chance for the White House in '08.   Edwards and Obama would be gutted like fish by the GOP machine.  Neither has the experience or the weight to deal with a McCain or Guiliani.

Barack Obama=Harold Ford.  I really believe that.  Like Ford he will come across as a nice guy.  He will run a nice campaign.  The GOP will kick the snot out of him, he won't fight back, and in the end it won't even be close.  Just like Ford.

Edwards, I worry about other reasons.  I don't think he has or will put the talented campaign staff around him that he'd need to win.

What I sense at the deepest and broadest level in these United States is an almost voracious appetite for change, and that includes a return from the putrescence of Republican politics.

The primary and the election will turn on who is perceived to be the agent for change.

Senator Obama gets this at the cellular leval, believes it and works it into every appearance. Ain't nobody close.

Candidate that can cut into her African American support?

I think today's WaPo poll says you are wrong.  As for the Gore conspiracy, today's WaPo poll says that his support goes to Hillary when he isn't included in the poll.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2007/02/27/AR2007022701030. html

I agree with your conceptual thinking completely.

I think Richardson WILL emerge as an additional top-tier candidate as support for Biden, Dodd and all the others--except the Kucinich Few--moves to him.

...in the race. I think he takes far more votes away from Clinton than from Edwards. For example, I would much rather have the African-American vote go (as an oversimplified example):

40% Clinton, 35% Obama, 20% Edwards, 5% Richardson

rather than

65% Clinton, 25% Edwards, 10% Richardson.

Contrary to national opinion polls, I find it hard to beleive that Hillary Clinton is popular amongst Democrats.  Her poll numbers remind me of Joe Lieberman's poll numbers in 2003.  Her numbers seem too related to her being extremely well known in an environment where the general population is not paying attention yet to the race.

Although every Democrat I know approves of her as a Senator from New York, I have yet to meet a Democrat or Republican here in the midwest whose stomach doesn't turn-over when her name is mentioned as a presidential candidate.  Perhaps people on the east and west coasts feel differently.

Okay, this makes sense.  But why didn't it work out this way the last time we had an open Presidency with a major frontrunner ahead of a large pack -- 2000 for the GOP?  Then, McCain saw his candidacy advanced by the departure of three major candidates from the race (Elizabeth Dole, Lamar Alexander, Dan Quayle) and the fatal weakening of another before the first votes were cast (Steve Forbes).  Every time one of these folks dropped out, McCain got stronger.  If Dole in particular had stayed in the race, McCain wouldn't have had a chance.  What's the difference there?

On the other hand, the GOP in 1996 followed exactly the pattern you're describing here.  Bob Dole was weak in a field populated by Lamar Alexander, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, and Phil Gramm; with Gramm out, he was strong; with Alexander out, he was unstoppable.

So why does this year line up with 1996 for the GOP, and not with 2000 for the GOP?

I still feel like Hillary's numbers will change dramatically as soon as she starts getting hit on the war. There must be tons of quotes from her in the last three years that demonstrate a real lack of judgement.

The forces on the Internet who regularly spew their venom against Senator Clinton and her husband are quite reminiscent of the nature of such forces some fifteen years ago.

Then as now, neither the established press, nor pundits, nor inveterate self-defined "liberals" could understand the potency of the Clintons.  The reactionaries took their hatred all the way to impeachment proceedings, defying national opinion polls indicating that the Clintons were prohibitively popular.

It remains a tragedy that an administration presiding over comparative peace and prosperity for the greater breadth of its run, and concerning which most Americans today would far prefer to the administration which followed, should have as its most vociferous detractors seemingly progressive bloggers.

It is almost hysterical to witness the ceaseless rants posted on this and other sites.  One blogger gleefully admonishes Senator Clinton for achieving her million dollar goal a few hours after an appointed deadline!

Another blogger trumpets a virulent comment by billionaire David Geffen as signifying that Mr. Geffen is warming to Senator Obama, rather than admitting that the billionaire's actions have little to do with anything other than his own disgruntlement.

Other bloggers, denying former Vice-president Al Gore's own never-ending comments that he will not be a candidate in 2008, attempt to parse away how many of his supporters would naturally drift to Senator Clinton.

Bloggers here are asked to "stand fast" and have their rival cadidates "gang up together" as potential opposition to Senator Clinton.

Ceaselessly bloggers bemoan Senator Clinton's Iraqi incursion vote, and further bemoan her not wanting to apologize for it; then further bemoan those often polled that they do not likewise bemoan her for it!

There are those who trumpet Senator Edwards, denying his lack of appeal to his own region!  

There are those who trumpet Senator Obama, denying his profound inexperience, and incorectly deducing that his being a current "media darling" will somehow carry him to the Democratic nomination and thence to the presidency.

There are those who positively examine the effect of the other current "media darling," former Mayor Giuliani, assuming that his never being dissected on a national scale is somehow not pertinent, when it is certainly the most pertinent fact in his most assuredly inevitable surge downward.

Yet through this whole process, Senator Clinton yet remains the prohibitive Democratic favorite.  Strange indeed, with so much vitriol all around her.

We who appreciate the Clintons for their most positive leadership (not least of which was President Clinton's selection of Al Gore and Bill Richardson to most potent positions, giving them free reign of their views through the whole of their Clinton administration years) are not particularly distressed.  We have witnessed it all before.

However, there comes a point at which the denials and disparagements and invective simply become empty exercises.  And that is where the ant-HRC bloggers, whatever their current candidate preferences are, now find themselves.

I didn't enjoy the 2004 campaign much.  My guess is a lot of Democrats feel the same way.

Personally, I feel like the solution is to pick a candidate who will fight back more effectively, rather than a candidate who the Republicans will smear less.

I don't think these poll numbers will hold up.  People will not always move to HRC as they get to know the other candidates better and the race heats up.

This is still early and even those of us who follow this stuff aren't exactly sure where everyone stands on the issues.

Obama hasn't even gotten started.  And Edwards and Richardson must have media and pr strategies yet to implement.

I wouldn't rely on those numbers except to offer an overview of 1,2,3 etc. based on name recognition and gut feelings.

that we could possibly have.

Other than the iraq war vote, there is really no good reason why Hillary shouldn't be President. But, the war vote is significant and hence should play a role in the dem. nomination.

The next major problem with the Clinton camp is that they seem to view the netroots as a problem and not as a people's movement and a potential partner. If they changed their attitude and became truly progressive-thinking with a healthy dose of idealism of the their early years, and embraced the netroots as friends, this problem would be ameliorated.

The war issue would still remain on the table, how ever.

Another key issue, which would become important is whether the Clintons would be willing to stand up against Big Oil when the push comes to shove on global warming, even it means severe political cost for them. In 2000, when Richardson was the energy secretary, he dissed Gore when the latter was critiquing BO on price gouging (must have been with Clinton's knowledge, one would imagine). I am skeptical on this front as well.

A couple of qualms such as how they downed Howard Dean (when they weren't running in the race) are still thorns on one's side, but the three issues above are more significant.

I beg to differ.  The Clintons have done nothing to disparage the progressive nature of the netroots.  The invective comes from the netroots themselves, much as it did their predecessors.

Are many of the same folks that voted for Nader and made Bush President.

What a great waste of neurons, you guys should worry more about what they're wearing.

I'm going to invoke game theory too, but in a different way from the previous commenter.

In this primary race situation, the little guys benefit from the rise of each other, even though they're in competition with one another for the all-or-nothing prize.

There's your Nash Equillibrium. It's the scene in the bar with the blonde and her friends, where shooting for second best is the best way to win first place.

Strange, eh?

Personally I think that most tactical manuvering that people worry about is a mistake.  

What you should worry about is character.  Do you think that your candidate is good enough to make the right responses to different environments.  

If you don't then you should work on helping them with that rather than trying to change the playing field to support their strengths.