Are We Stuck With Hillary?

The closer we get to primary season and actual votes being cast by actual voters, the less enthralled I am by the prospect of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee.

Don't get me wrong. I like Hillary -- sort of. I'm not one of those people who hates her guts and I'm also not one of those people who think she's a goddess. I fall in the middle of the road where Hillary's concerned. I voted for her twice to be Senator for New York, after all. But do I want her as my president? And, far more importantly, do I think she can win?

Whether Hillary can win depends on who she runs against. If she runs against Rudy Giuliani she's got a real shot -- the best shot she has, actually. It's been said that 40% of Bush's vote in 2004 came from Christian evangelicals, and those people will not vote for Giuiliani -- and they might vote for a Perot-esque third party candidate on the Christian right. So Hillary wins in that scenario.

But if she runs against Mitt Romney, I think the evangelicals will swallow hard and vote for the Mormon -- and against the idea of another Clinton in the White House. If the Republicans put Romney up against Hillary, I think Romney will win.

A lot of this depends on what happens in Iowa. If anyone else other than Hillary Clinton wins in Iowa -- even more so if they win convincingly -- then it's anybody's ballgame. John Edwards did surprisingly well in Iowa four years ago and it helped him win the vice presidential nomination. Could he win Iowa in 2008? Because whoever wins Iowa and New Hampshire (assuming the same person wins both) is the odds-on favorite for the nomination. If Hillary stumbles in both places, she's toast. After New Hampshire the race is like a snowball rolling down a mountain -- there's no time to make up for mistakes.

So I'll be watching the last few days before Iowa very carefully. If Barack Obama or John Edwards can manage to win in Iowa, then Hillary's nimbus of inevitability is gone, and it might be too late at that point to get it back.

Tom Moran