Hillary Clinton: Empty Pantsuit

Hillary’s real claim to fame is that she married a political star. And, because of that, any biography that tells the truth about her essentially amounts to hundreds of pages relaying, well, not that much of anything. You can’t write a good life story about a rather boring and unlikable personage who’s never done enough to merit a lengthy biography in her own right, even if she is married to someone as interesting as Bill.

Ralph Nader Calls Hillary a ‘Coward’

In what could be a looming nightmare for Democrats, Ralph Nader said he is seriously considering running for president again in 2008 – calling front-runner Hillary Clinton a “political coward.”

Sabato: Hillary Has General Election Problems

In his latest Chrystal Ball newsletter Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and a widely respected expert on the American political scene, sees Hillary Clinton as a probable winner in the primaries and a probable loser in the general election.

Noting that Hilary could easily survive a loss in the Iowa caucuses, Sabato warns that the road ahead for her is still full of ruts and potholes.

The soft side, and the underside, of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

What’s Not to Like

Hillary Clinton doesn’t have to prove she’s a man. She has to prove she’s a woman.

She doesn’t have to prove to people that she’s tough enough or aggressive enough to be commander in chief. She doesn’t have to show she could and would wage a war. She has to prove she has normal human warmth, a normal amount of give, of good nature, that she is not, at bottom, grimly combative and rather dark.

This is the woman credited with starting and naming the War Room. Her staff has nicknamed her “The Warrior.” Get in her way and she’d squish you like a bug. This has been her reputation for 20 years. And it is her big problem. People want a president to be strong but not hard.

A longtime supporter of Mrs. Clinton’s spoke with candor some months back of her friend’s predicament. “We’re back where we were in ‘92–likability. Nothing has changed.”

Breaking the Hillary Code

Hillary Rodham Clinton is speaking in code.

Because I learned this code as a youngster, I thought it would be a public service for me to translate for Americans who may not understand exactly what she is saying and exactly what she means.

SENATOR CLAIMS: Clinton, Boxer Conspiring to Rein In Talk Radio

Oh DO they now?

Clinton Assails Bush to Win Liberals

WASHINGTON — Trying to win over her party’s liberal activists, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday accused President Bush of disregarding the Constitution and promised to bring a new progressive vision to the White House.

Clinton condemns response to 9/11 dust

WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton Wednesday chastised the Bush administration for failing to warn New Yorkers about toxic dust after the terror attack on the World Trade Center, but withheld criticism of the city’s response under then-mayor and fellow presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani.firefighters contracted sarcoidosis, a serious lung-scarring disease, at a rate more than five times higher than the years before the attacks.

Liberals boo Clinton on Iraq

WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) — Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., was heckled and booed at a liberal conference in Washington Tuesday.

Clinton spoke for 30 minutes at the Take Back America conference, where about 3,000 liberals are gathered, and tried to assure them she had reversed her initial support for the war in Iraq and now wanted a deadline to withdraw the troops, The New York Times reported.

Sen. Hillary Clinton an artful dodger

WASHINGTON – Slick Hillary? Former President Clinton earned the nickname “Slick Willy” for his mastery in the political arts of ducking and dodging. He had a knack for convincing people on both sides of an issue that he agreed with them.

His wife may not be as smooth, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is doing a passable impression of the ever-parsing former president.

Would she pardon Scooter Libby?

No comment.

Would she nominate a union leader to be secretary of labor?

Maybe.

Would she repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement?

Can’t say.

The Hillary Conundrum

Howard Kurz
Washington Post

Hillary Clinton is inevitable.

That, at least, is the consensus view of media wizards, strategists, pollsters and other kibitzers, that HRC is a virtual lock for the nomination. An official with a rival campaign told me that Hillary has an 80 percent chance of being the party’s candidate, and most neutral observers would probably go with a higher number.

So why is there such unease about her within the party?

The conventional explanations don’t fully cut it …

“The real problem many Democratic voters have with Clinton is the sneaking suspicion that with so much of the country against her, she can never win a general election. Clinton’s fate may well come down to her ability to deal with a vexing question: what is it about me that so many people don’t like?

Here’s the Hillary Clinton campaign theme song

Celine Dion’s “You and I

High above the mountains, far across the sea
I can hear your voice calling out to me
Brighter than the sun and darker than the night
I can see your love shining like a light
And on and on this earth spins like a carousel
If I could travel across the world
The secrets I would tell

Chorus:
You and I
Were meant to fly
Higher than the clouds
We’ll sail across the sky
So come with me
And you will feel
That we’re soaring
That we’re floating up so high
‘Cause you and I were meant to fly

Sailing like a bird high on the wings of love
Take me higher than all the stars above
I’m burning, yearning
Gently turning round and round
I’m always rising up I never
Want to come back down

Chorus

You and I
Were meant to fly
Higher than the clouds
We’ll sail across the sky
So come with me
And you will feel
That you and I
Were meant to fly

that were soaring we are floating up so high cause

You and I were meant to fly

We’re all shocked for sure …

Former President to Campaign With Wife

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Former President Clinton will campaign with his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Iowa next month, seeking to boost her bid for the Democratic nomination in a state where she trails in the polls. The former president will spend three days in Iowa with Sen. Clinton from July 2-4.

More Polls: we got ‘em

Obama, Thompson lead key 2008 Southern vote poll

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and Republican Fred Thompson were the frontrunners in South Carolina’s first-in-the-South 2008 presidential primary, according to a poll Sunday.

The survey by the Mason-Dixon polling firm found that African-American support had pushed Obama ahead of US Senator Hillary Clinton, giving him the support of 34 percent of likely voters against 25 percent for Clinton.

Hillary Backs Sen. Robert Byrd’s Iraq Withdrawal

Sen. Hillary Clinton is asking her fellow senators to sign on to her and Sen. Robert Byrd’s plan for an Iraq war vote do-over.

In a letter to all 98 other senators provided Sunday to the New York Daily News, Clinton, D-N.Y., and Byrd, D-W.Va., say Congress should haul President Bush back for a new war vote when the Senate debates the 2008 military spending bill in the next few weeks.

The letter, sent Friday, argues that the 2002 vote for the war, which Clinton backed, is hopelessly out of date.

In Polls, Clinton Loses to Republicans

So what’s in a poll?

WASHINGTON — It is a paradox of the 2008 presidential race. By a wide margin, several polls show, voters want a Democrat to win — yet when offered head-to-head contests of leading announced candidates, many switch allegiance to the Republican.

In a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll conducted earlier this month, this dynamic was most clearly evident with Senator Clinton.

When registered voters were asked which party they would like to win the White House, they preferred a Democrat over a Republican by 8%. But in a race pitting Mrs. Clinton against Mayor Giuliani, a Republican, the former New York mayor was favored by 10%.

Mrs. Clinton’s showing against Mr. Giuliani was the starkest example of how the general Democratic edge sometimes narrows or vanishes when voters are given specific candidates to choose between.

Poll: Clinton establishes sizable lead over Obama

USAToday

WASHINGTON — New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has regained a double-digit lead over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll two weeks after the survey found the Democratic presidential rivals essentially tied.

A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Clinton

Reviewed by Kate Muir

by Carl Berstein

THE PHRASE “the aristocracy of exposure” was coined recently by Tina Brown for her Diana biography, but it could apply equally to that other eclipsing wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

As her electoral machine rolls across the States, Hillary can rely on the celebrity-aristocratic credentials awarded to her by the American People for standing by her man, stepping over him, and marching on.

What Carl Bernstein’s A Woman in Charge makes clear is that without Bill’s intellectual charisma, Hillary would not be where she is now, but without her down-to-earth focus and management, he would not have had a sniff at the presidency. And their relationship (with its famous ups and downs) is not extraneous. The marriage is political to its core.

Poll: Voters Don’t Want Hillary

Frederick Cole wants the Democratic Party to take back the White House in 2008. “Look what a mess we’re in,” said Cole, a nurse in Louisville, Ky. “It’s time for some fresh, new-thinker ideas.”

Yet if his party nominates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for president, the 52-year-old Democrat plans to vote for her Republican opponent.

“It’s a personal thing,” Cole said. “I don’t like her. I think she’s condescending and arrogant, even worse than Al Gore, who has no personality.”

Analysis of Hillary Reveals ‘Clinical Narcissism’

Human Events
by Ericka Andersen

Hillary Clinton may suffer from a psychological condition that would raise questions about her fitness for office. In a book released [May 2007], respected political analyst Bay Buchanan reveals that Hillary bears all the classic symptoms of “clinical narcissism.”

According to the American Psychiatric Association, this condition includes feelings of superiority, self-importance and “fantasies of unlimited success, fame or power.”

“We are not talking about self-infatuation,” warns Buchanan, “we are talking about a clinical condition that could make her dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander in Chief.”

In “The Extreme Makeover of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Buchanan chronicles examples of Hillary’s instability, from her incoherent speeches as both student and First Lady, to her casual disregard for the law, to her ever-changing opinion on the Iraq war. These character flaws, writes Buchanan, make Hillary overly dependent on gurus and outside experts, with no internal compass to guide her — or the country.

FURTHER STUDY ON NARCISSISM

The DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder are:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, lack of empathy, as indicated by at least five of:

1. A grandiose sense of self-importance.
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
3. Believes that he or she is “special” and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).
4. Requires excessive admiration.
5. Has a sense of entitlement, ie unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.
6. Is interpersonally exploitative, ie takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.
7. Lacks empathy and is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes .