{"id":13162,"date":"2007-10-08T16:05:51","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T20:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13162.html"},"modified":"2007-10-08T16:05:51","modified_gmt":"2007-10-08T20:05:51","slug":"clinton-is-blessed-with-inept-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/clinton-is-blessed-with-inept-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton is blessed with inept enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum raised a point<\/a> this morning that bears repeating: Hillary Clinton’s “polarizing reputation might actually help” her presidential campaign. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s absolutely right<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For more than a decade, she has been attacked in a shelfload of books, on countless websites and in repeated direct-mail drives. Her detractors see her as a calculating opportunist with a crisis-ridden past.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, Clinton may be benefiting from that unflattering image as she reintroduces herself.<\/p>\n

“If she showed up and doesn’t have a horn and tail and speaks clearly and engagingly, people say, ‘You know, she’s all right,’ ” said Andrew E. Smith, a pollster at the University of New Hampshire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clinton’s critics have been so unhinged in their attacks, and so scathing in their criticisms, that a casual observer who hasn’t seen too much of Clinton lately starts to think she’s the Wicked Witch of the West. After all, Limbaugh, Fox News, & Co. characterize her as having no redeeming qualities whatsoever.<\/p>\n

And then voters see her for themselves … and realize she’s not awful after all. Indeed, she’s quite pleasant, and shows a fairly warm personality, in addition to being obviously bright.<\/p>\n

In a sense, Clinton’s detractors have been too<\/i> successful. They’ve lowered expectations, which manage to make the senator look even better<\/i>.
\n
\nIt reminds me a lot of the period before the 2004 presidential debates, when Bush-Cheney ’04 convinced much of the nation that John Kerry could barely complete a sentence without tripping over his own words in some kind of desperate flip-flop. Kerry was “dull,” “wishy-washy,” and “unsure of himself.” The GOP-driven conventional wisdom was that Kerry’s tendency towards nuance made him “aloof” and “overly cautious.” In the debates, he was going to be awful<\/i> — a Time magazine poll taken before the first debate showed that Americans expected Bush<\/a>, not Kerry, to “win” the debate, 44% to 32%.<\/p>\n

Of course, Kerry did a great job, and his performance in the debates helped narrow the gap considerably. The real Kerry didn’t match the Kerry caricature at all.<\/p>\n

I think we’re seeing the same phenomenon play out with Hillary Clinton. People almost expect<\/i> not to like her, because they’ve been told for years that she’s “cold,” “calculating,” and “unfeeling.” She’s supposed to come across as “ambitious” and “power-hungry.” And then voters listen to her for a few minutes and realize none of those qualities are there.<\/p>\n

What’s more, as Kevin argued<\/a> way back in January, the right has thrown just about every attack imaginable at this woman, and her political standing is still pretty strong. That they’ve managed to lower expectations is just an unexpected bonus for Clinton’s campaign.<\/p>\n

A lot of people outside of New York will soon be getting their first real look at Hillary since 2000. I think they’re going to be surprised. Many of them probably have vague, Limbaugh-fueled recollections of her as a dragon lady of some kind, but when they actually see her for the first time on Larry King or Oprah or whatever, she’s going to seem much more engaging than they remember.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Conversely, I think Giuliani has the opposite problem. People have fond memories of his press conferences in September 2001, and then they hear him talk now — and he doesn’t do himself any favors.<\/p>\n

Regardless, it’s another reason not to underestimate Clinton’s campaign. She’s not only impressing voters, she’s surprising them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum raised a point this morning that bears repeating: Hillary Clinton’s “polarizing reputation might actually help” her presidential campaign. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s absolutely right. For more than a decade, she has been attacked in a shelfload of books, on countless websites and in repeated direct-mail drives. Her detractors see her as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}