While most of the criticisms of Hillary are based upon thinly veiled sexism and the Right's lingering obsessive hatred of all things Clintonian, there is one issue that I think represents a major stumbling block for her. She will not be able to triangulate away her support of the Iraq war, because her candidacy is presaged, to a large degree, on her expertise and experience as a Senator well versed in foreign policy. (The reality, it seems to me, is that her reign as the junior senator from New York has been marked by an incredibly undistinguished record).
Hillary is in a box. She cannot completely pull a John Edwards and say that she blew it. She needs to put the blame on the administration for bringing faulty evidence to the Senate, which she assumed was legit, and therefore we need to understand that she was duped into support of the war. The problem, of course, was that there was that there was no evidence. The case was a poorly argued construct, based upon remarkably flimsy evidence, that many commentators, and a few senators saw for what it was. Russ Feingold got it. Hillary did not. Many reporters and pundits got it. Hillary did not.
Hillary, the foreign policy expert, saw the evidence, analyzed it, and got it dead wrong. That's going to hang around her neck like a millstone. And it should.
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Hillary voted to go to war to protect her political viability, a la Bill and Vietnam. Once again, the Clinton calculus will be correct, because 2008 will not be about whether you supported the war in 2003 or not. Those voters who will decide the outcome of 2008 supported the war initially.
Hillary will be painted as the opportunist that she is. The Decider won two times because he was perceived to be decisive. That small minority of voters that lie between those who will support the Democratic nominee even if it is you, MR, and those who hate Hillary so that they feel it in their bowels will not support someone they perceive as the Equivocator. Edwards and Obama are more viable general election candidates because they will be perceived to be decisive.
BTW, by my reckoning, the last strong, decisive leader to emerge from the Senate was LBJ. The institution breeds equivocators.
I think that you are agreeing with my attempt at a point here, which is that Hillary must move from her position (equivocation) to the admission (that she blew it), but that that is extremely problematic, as she is staking her claim to the Presidency on competence in the very area in which she erred so tragically.
Your point on LBJ is interesting (certainly he's the last decisive leader to ascend to the presidency from the Senate, but there's not much competition there) in that even a strong, decisive, politically savvy operator like LBJ couldn't overcome a foreign policy disaster that he came to own. And make no mistake, Bush owns this one.
Then yes, I agree. She won't be able to make the move.
Further thought on LBJ--he was decisive on the war on poverty, eductation, etc.. He equivocated on Vietnam and that cost him, too.
Finally, you are right, Bush owns this one for the next 2 years (and for posterity). There is going to be a huge mess to deal with for the winner in 2008, and I'm not sure I've seen anyone yet who's up to the task.
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