Less Electable

Today, a friend of mine called me from Austria to share that he used Clorox wipes on himself in the bathroom by mistake. He thought of me when it happened. I'll let that go.

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On a more serious note, the Iowa caucuses are coming up, and I wanted to offer my two cents in rebuttal to some colleagues and family members who are supporting Hillary Clinton because they think she's the most electable Democrat next November.

I'll qualify my remarks by admitting I don't know that much about Clinton's actual policy positions. I do know she's shifted them quite a bit over the years, or even during debates, but that's easier to criticize than it is to avoid in practice. I'm actually fairly sure she'd make a good president - if she were elected.

So, let's assume a few things for the sake of discussion.

(I'm about to lose my Republican readership.)

(1) Any Democrat winning in 2008 is a positive. This is, of course, a disputable assumption. Let's set it aside for now.

(2) The Democratic candidates are more alike in their policy positions than they are different. They have different health care plans, but they all have health care plans. They all want to change No Child Left Behind (even those who voted for it). Edwards is more protectionist and anti-business, Obama is more into community-building, Clinton is--more experienced. But in general, any of these three candidates will steer the country in a much more progressive direction than his or her GOP counterpart. Democrats should be happy no matter which one wins (if one of them wins at all).

(3) A president is more capable of enacting daring policies if Congress lines up behind him or her.

(4) Congress is more likely to line up behind the president if the president's party has a significant majority in Congress. The greater the majority, the better the chances for the president's agenda to pass, especially once the blush of days 1-100 fades.

(5) Representatives and Senators who oppose a president will be cast as obstructionist if the president is popular enough with enough Americans - a la Ronald Reagan, or George Bush in 2002. Conversely, if a Democratic president is a polarizing figure, Republican congressmen can go home and boast of defying her, while Democrats will face added peril in midterm elections.

With that said, we should evaluate which Democrat has the best chance of (a) winning a general election, (b) working with a supportive Congress and (c) motivating the opposition to support him or her or risk political fallout.

Polls are a good place to start. They are notoriously inaccurate, especially exit polls in Ohio, but my sixth assumption will be that, taken in sum, they have some value for seeing where the electorate is.

Polls consistently indicate that Clinton has a commanding lead nationally in the primaries - 15 or more points on her closest rival, Obama. Asked why they're choosing Clinton over Obama, many Democrats say it's because she has the best chance of winning the general election. For example, according to a recent LA Times/Bloomberg poll, "Democrats seem to agree that Clinton has the best chance of beating the Republicans in 2008--38% in Iowa, 45% in New Hampshire and 48% in South Carolina."

At the same time, polls consistently indicate that of the major Democratic candidates, Clinton fares much worse than Obama in hypothetical matchups with the major Republican candidates. She sometimes beats Huckabee and Romney, but almost always loses against Rudy and McCain. Here's a typical poll demonstrating this. For those of you who don't want to click, here are some numbers from last week.

Obama (D) 53%, Romney (R) 35%
Obama (D) 47%, Huckabee (R) 42%
Obama (D) 48%, Giuliani (R) 39%
Obama (D) 47%, McCain (R) 43%
Obama (D) 52%, Thompson (R) 36%
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Clinton (D) 46%, Romney (R) 44%
Huckabee (R) 48%, Clinton (D) 43%
Giuliani (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 42%
McCain (R) 49%, Clinton (D) 42%
Clinton (D) 48%, Thompson (R) 42%

(http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1404)

Notably, these are the same people in each sample. That means, for example, that for every 100 people surveyed, six people who would vote for Obama against Giuliani would not vote for Clinton against Giulani. The same phenomenon is evident across the board. Some people who would vote for Obama against anyone would not vote for Clinton against that same anyone. Something similar happens when people are asked, generically, whether they would support a Democrat or Republican for president. The unnamed Democrat runns far ahead, usually about 9% (the same was true before the 2004 election). As soon as names are inserted, we get the results above. That means people who think they would vote for a Democrat change their mind when they learn that she's the Democrat.

This points at a curious contradiction: Democrats who support Clinton because they think she is the most electable Democrat may not realize that she's not - that she's still a polarizing figure for many Republicans. Clinton might manage to win the presidency, but unless she's running against a weak GOP candidate, she would win by a thin margin at best: hardly a mandate. It would be another 49-49 election (or worse).

Furthermore, because she attracts so much of an opposition vote, her presence on the ballot could hurt downticket Democrats in vulnerable areas - that is, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates also running for office next November, especially incumbent Democrats in strongly Republican regions. Many Democrats were elected to Congress in 2006 in a strongly anti-Republican wave. To stay in office, they need a lot of people to vote for them again who would traditionally vote for Republicans.

What the Democrats need, then, is someone who will not only draw more Democrats to the polls, but who would persuade independents and other moderate Republicans to give Democrats a chance - both for president and for lower offices. A person who comes and votes against Clinton by default because they hated the Clintons in the 1990s (even if today's Hillary positions herself as a moderate) is more likely to vote against other Democrats too. (This is known as the "coattails effect".) Even more worrisome, a person who votes against Clinton because she's been successfully cast by the opposition as a political calculator instead of a person of principle is likelier to lump other Democrats in with her.

As John Edwards put it in a recent debate, "America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent..." This shouldn't be a surprise. A lot of admiration for John McCain comes from the fact that he (reputably) always speaks his mind - and usually speaks it the same way. Bush had this going for him in 2004, even if I didn't agree with much of what he kept saying the same way. Obama, too, has shown consistency. To his credit, so has Edwards, except for a brief detour on the Kerry ticket. But Clinton, like Kerry before her, has changed her mind - a lot. Now, I change my mind a lot too. I think mind-changing is morally defensible; as new things come up, old views can change. Changing your mind for political convenience is less defensible, but understandable.

However, the American electorate doesn't like inconsistent candidates. Recent elections have emphasized that lots of people vote for president more on perceptions of character and likeability than on the issues. Republicans flayed John Kerry as a flip-flopper in 2004, and Hillary Clinton suffers from a similar degree of doublespeak. I'm not here to disapprove of her changing her views, but to point out that they will allow her to be caricatured - as in an October debate when she seemed to come out both for and against granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. It makes for great campaign commercials. Anyone remember Kerry windsurfing? Here's a little piece from the Edwards campaign that previews how the GOP would treat Clinton. You can trust the Republican ads would be even better. (For example, here's an ad designed by top Republican strategists attacking Mitt Romney for pretending to be a lot more conservative now than he used to be - or for pretending then and telling the truth now. It's hard to know.)

Certainly the GOP could attack Obama as inexperienced. But inexperience can also be portrayed as an openness to new ideas, or as an echo of JFK and Bill Clinton. Inconsistency is just inconsistency.

In 2004, Democrats overwhelmingly favored John Kerry in the primaries over Howard Dean and John Edwards because he was the "most electable" candidate with the most experience in government. They chose to overlook his inability to inspire and his history of saying one thing, then saying another. That didn't work out so well.

Hillary Clinton would run a better campaign than Kerry did, but she has similar vulnerabilities and lots of baggage. Those who want her as the nominee simply because they are hungry for a winner may be in for a disappointment.

Then again, maybe McCain the Man of Conviction or Rudy the Warrior Mayor wouldn't be so bad?