Last night we asked Bill Clinton whether he was ready to become America’s first male First Lady (OK, first gentleman.)

“If the American people are ready to elect [Hillary Clinton], I am," the 61-year-old Mr. Clinton told The Transom. "I’ll do whatever I’m asked to do. I hope they will, because I think it’ll be good for America and the world, but whatever happens…” And then he gave a slight shrug.  read more »

Hillary Clinton saved her most energetic appearance of this Labor Day weekend sweep through New Hampshire and Iowa for last.

She just addressed a hall full of union members at the Des Moines Labor Day "Solidarity Fest" bellowing, "Are you ready for change in America?"

She skipped the more nuanced talk about winding down the war in Iraq that she employed earlier in the day, going with, "Are you ready to end the war in Iraq and bring our young men and women home?"

The applause was loud and sustained.  read more »

A new Rasmussen poll has Hillary Clinton thumping Rudy Giuliani in New York, 58 to 33 percent. So does this throw cold water on the Giuliani campaign’s claims that their man is uniquely suited to compete on Democratic turf? Not really.

The size of Hillary’s lead is a little surprising, but it’s not exactly a revelation that New York, which lasted voted for a G.O.P. presidential candidate in 1984, is a lock for the Democrats next year.

A better test of Giuliani’s potential to pick off blue states is probably New Jersey, whose 15 electoral votes haven’t been seriously contested by Republicans since 1992. A Quinnipiac poll last month showed New Jerseyans favoring Rudy over Hillary, 47-44 percent. Compare that to the G.O.P.’s Garden State futility the past three elections – an 18-point win for Bill Clinton in 1996, a 17-point win for Al Gore in 2000, and a 7-point win for John Kerry in 2004.

On a separate note, Rasmussen has a baffling bit of analysis up on its web site, lecturing reporters for “missing what matters” in the G.O.P. race. Rasmussen’s basic claim: That the media overplayed the August 11 Iowa Republican straw poll, where Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were the top finishers:

Both Romney and Huckabee received a minor bounce in the polls for a few days. But, two weeks later, the national polls show that the Iowa event had virtually no impact. Romney remains mired in third place barely ahead of John McCain. Huckabee’s support continues to be measured in the mid-single digits.

I don’t understand Rasmussen’s point. Huckabee’s surprise second place finish was a major development in the campaign, since it opened the door to improved fundraising (a significant challenge for the cash-strapped candidate), increased credibility with party activists, and higher profile and more favorable media coverage, now that he has demonstrated some viability. No one, as far as I know, was under the impression that the actual news of his 8/11 performance would affect national polls. That’s not the point. The point is that 8/11 signaled that Huckabee has some strengths that help him make a splash four or five months from now.

The same is true of Romney, who has focused on the early states. He leads polls in Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire. He needed his straw poll win to maintain his credibility with the folks who have fueled his rise in those states. If January rolls around and Romney actually wins them, his national poll standing will take care of itself.  read more »

Here, via the Washington Post's campaign blog, is Hillary Clinton's response to Alberto Gonzales' resignation as Attorney General and the rumors that Michael Chertoff is in line to replace him:

Without naming him, Clinton also took a swipe at Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who is rumored as a possible choice to lead the department.

"The second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is one more reminder that the President must appoint someone to lead the Department of Justice with the leadership and competence necessary to defend the Constitution," she wrote.

Clinton's potential opposition to Chertoff is noteworthy because it could provide her a unique opportunity to tend to personal and political imperatives simultaneously.

Recall that the former First Lady has a history with Chertoff, who served as the lead G.O.P. Counsel to the Senate committee that investigated Whitewater in the mid-1990s -- and perhaps nothing makes Hillary Clinton more irate than the memory of that probe. Indeed, she (Ed. note: woops) cast the lone Senate vote against Chertoff's nomination to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003, citing his Whitewater conduct as her rationale.

If President Bush does nominate Chertoff for Attorney General, Hillary will have plenty of ammunition to go after him, as her Katrina comment today demonstrated. And in going after him, she would undoubtedly score points with the Democratic base (especially if she took a leading role in any nomination fight), thereby burnishing her primary season credentials. At the same time, of course, she'd also be getting even with her old nemesis, especially her effort resulted in the death of his nomination.

It's also worth wondering what effect Clinton's opposition would have on the other Democratic Senators in the presidential race. With Clinton connecting Chertoff to Katrina, wouldn't Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd be obligated to oppose his nomination as well? Perhaps this is why the White House, which seemed initially to be telling reporters that Chertoff was the choice, is now putting out the word that no decisions have been made and other contenders -- Ted Olson, Larry Thompson -- are in the mix.

The next major event on the U.S. political calendar is not in Iowa, New Hampshire or even Florida. It’s actually next week in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, where a the lone open House seat in the country – vacated by six-term Rep. Marty Meehan’s May resignation – will essentially be filled in a Democratic primary. (The primary winner will be the overwhelming favorite against the G.O.P. nominee in what is a solidly Democratic district.)

What makes the contest noteworthy outside of Massachusetts is the identity of the Democratic front-runner: Niki Tsongas, the wife of the late Paul E. Tsongas, the former Massachusetts Senator who very nearly knocked off Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primaries. A decade after his death, Paul Tsongas remains a beloved figure in the district, which is centered in Lowell, the old mill city that he never left (and where a downtown arena now bears his name). That alone figures to be enough to lift Niki Tsongas past her four opponents in next Tuesday’s primary.

Niki Tsongas’ looming elevation to Congress seems like a good excuse to indulge in one of my favorite past-times – the political what if game.

Think back to the 1992 presidential primaries, when every big name Democrat backed off, convinced that George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf triumph would render him invincible in the fall. That left a decidedly B-list cast of Democratic aspirants: Clinton, Tsongas, Jerry Brown, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin and (for a minute) Doug Wilder. The early thinking had Clinton and Kerrey as the front-runner. Tsongas was ignored.

But his message took hold in New Hampshire, whose lead-off primary was even more important than usual, with Iowa – Harkin’s home state – going uncontested. A string of Clinton scandals in January 1992 – Gennifer Flowers and his Vietnam draft maneuvering, basically – sent the Arkansas Governor’s poll numbers plummeting, and Tsongas surged to the lead in New Hampshire. On primary day, Tsongas won by 7 points. Kerrey was essentially flushed from the race. Clinton, though, was saved by the craftiness of his campaign, which sold him to the media as “the comeback kid,” based on his less-awful-than-expected 26 percent showing in New Hampshire.

The race then went south, where polls showed Tsongas faring surprisingly well in Georgia and Florida. The Clinton campaign, though, launched a slick, well-funded stream of negative ads against Tsongas, portraying him as a cold-hearted foe of Social Security, Medicare, and Israel. It was enough to hand Clinton a seemingly decisive series of Super Tuesday victories, which he followed up with wins in Illinois and Michigan the next week – which prompted Tsongas to suspend his campaign.

Then Clinton inexplicably lost the Connecticut primary to Jerry Brown, one of the biggest upsets in the history of presidential primaries. National Democratic leaders, already worried about Clinton’s “character” issues, panicked and began making noise about recruiting a last-minute alternative to Clinton. New York was next on the calendar and Tsongas made it clear that he would re-enter the race if Clinton lost to Brown again. That’s as far as it went, though: Clinton survived New York and the nomination was his.

But what if he’d been tripped up by Brown again? Or what if he’d lost New Hampshire even more decisively – finishing behind Bob Kerrey, say? A change of just a few thousands New Hampshire votes could have derailed Clinton – and made Tsongas the nominee.

Would the country now know Niki Tsongas as a First Lady? And, instead of the headlines she receives every day, would we now be reading after-thought stories about how Hillary Clinton, the wife of a former presidential candidate, is running for Congress in Arkansas?

There seem to be two prevailing but absolutely contradictory attitudes about Hillary Clinton’s ’08 prospects.

One school of thought insists she’s the least electable Democrat, an easy argument to make given that her unfavorable rating has hovered near 50 percent for about 15 years now. But then you take a poll, and Democrats overwhelmingly say that Hillary is their best bet for the fall – and, in fact, that electability is one of the main reasons they support her. (A July poll found Democrats calling her the most electable candidate by a 54-22 percent margin over Barack Obama.)

And yet, as Michael Scherer in Salon points out, Republicans and independents clearly like Obama more than Hillary, or any other Democrat for that matter:

Any political expert will tell you that polls don't mean much five months before the first caucus. But a pattern may be emerging. In part because of Clinton's high negatives among Republicans, it appears Obama is gaining momentum as a fresh candidate with a less divisive approach, by constantly appealing beyond the partisan lines of the last decade. His first television ad buy in Iowa included testimony from a Republican state lawmaker from Illinois talking up Obama and his ability to reach across party lines. As Obama reiterated in an appearance in Iowa last week, "The country is hungry for change. It wants something new. We want to chart a new direction for our nation."

For the record, I don’t subscribe to the notion that Hillary Clinton can not win in the fall of ’08. In fact, I’d probably make her the favorite against any Republican at this point. It’s not that I think her favorable numbers will improve radically – or at all – but the climate is so bad for the G.O.P. that I think Hillary can get 271 electoral votes. (In a sense, she’s like the despised Chuck Robb running for re-election in Virginia in 1994 against the even more despised Oliver North. Under no other circumstances could Robb have won, but the G.O.P. was so weak that he eked out a win.)

But if you’re a Democrat, why even take a chance on Hillary if there are such clear signs that Obama has the kind of cross-over appeal on which landslides are built?

The situation is beginning to remind me of the G.O.P. race in 2000, with George W. Bush running – like Hillary now – as the candidate of the establishment and inevitability. And yet polls were even clearer back then that independents and Democrats loved John McCain. I recall a poll in March that showed Bush essentially running even with Al Gore, while McCain enjoyed a lead of more than 20 points.  Nominating McCain would have produced a landslide for the Republicans, and yet they rallied around Bush, who needed a Supreme Court ruling to beat Gore.

In 2000, the G.O.P. shunned McCain for conspiratorial reasons: Bush told them that McCain’s support was from “mischievous” Democrats trying to install a weak G.O.P. nominee. (Indeed, despite the poll numbers, among Republicans Bush was still regarded as the stronger autumn candidate.) Add to this the love McCain got from the “liberal” media and his campaign finance reform apostasy, and it was all enough for the G.O.P. to turn its back on him.

But why are Democrats resisting the evidence that Obama is the most electable candidate? Are they confusing familiarity – Hillary’s been on the national stage since 1992, while no one had heard of Obama before 2004 – with electability?  read more »

Maybe you've seen this already -- it's been making the rounds on the web all day -- but a heavily-armed Ted Nugent had some tart words for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and (if I'm hearing it right) Barbara Boxer during a recent performance. (No word if this was part of the "Sean Hannity Freedom Concert" series.)

Two pieces of good news for Hillary Clinton’s campaign today:

1) A new Gallup poll shows her shows her wide lead holding steady – a 48 to 25 percent margin over Barack Obama, with John Edwards at 13 percent. Yes, it’s easy to dismiss national polls like this, given the momentum that Obama and Edwards are banking on from success in the early states next January. But…

2) There’s a new early state in the mix, and it’s a good venue for Hillary. Michigan is now set to schedule a primary for January 15, potentially making it the third of the early nominating contests.

Michigan’s pols are unanimous in wanting to move their date up, but the hidden story here is the debate over whether the January 15 contest should be a primary or a caucus. Traditionally, the labor-dominated state has held a Democratic caucus, which has skewed the results in favor of candidates on the left – like Jesse Jackson, whose finest hour as a presidential candidate  came with his landslide win in Michigan’s ’88 caucuses, and Jerry Brown, who finished a surprising second in 1992 (helping to usher Paul Tsongas from the Democratic race).

Not surprisingly, John Edwards’ supporters in the state – most notably U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak and former Rep. (and current Edwards campaign manager) David Bonior – argued for a caucus in ’08. But Republicans and key Democrats – like Governor Jennifer Granholm – wanted a primary, in which labors influence is not as pronounced and non-interest group voters have more of a voice. With today’s 21-17 state Senate vote, Granholm and the Republicans won out – and so did Hillary.

A friend passed along a link to an interesting New York Times Select column from literary theorist Stanley Fish which handicaps the poll of potential running-mates for Hillary Clinton.

This prompted two immediate reactions: (1) How much money has the Times lost on this silly “pay-for-access” thing; and (2) What does Stanley Fish know about politics?

Anyway, chances are you don’t have access to Times Select (unless, like me, you’ve taken advantage of their “free to .edu” policy), so let me recap: Fish cedes the Democratic nomination to Hillary on the grounds that the other candidates “are either running for vice president or just having a good time.” For her Number Two, he says, Hillary can’t pick a woman, a Jew, a Senator (or member of the House), or anyone from the Northeast.

So who does that leave? Fish’s finalists are former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh (who passes muster because he was once a Governor), North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle.

(Continued after the jump)   read more »

Every time the Democratic eight gather for yet another debate, it is Mr. Biden who turns in the most consistently presidential performance of any candidate from either party.  read more »