2008: Hillary, Obama - electable?

Democrats' Litmus: Electability Key Issue for 2008 Race Poses Hurdles for Clinton, Obama
By JACKIE CALMES
Wall Street Journal
January 11, 2007
[excerpt]

.....Last year's midterm elections, which gave Democrats a majority in Congress for the first time in 12 years, offered a preview of their party's pragmatic bent. Primary voters chose a number of moderate-to-conservative Democrats over liberal stalwarts for the party's nominations, to increase the chances of winning Republican-held suburban and Western seats.

"Primary voters vote with their heads, not their hearts," says Democratic consultant Stephanie Cutter, an adviser to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. She and some other strategists cite that year for early evidence of Democrats' emphasis on electability, when Mr. Kerry won the nomination over Howard Dean, then the darling of antiwar liberals. "They dated Dean but married Kerry because he was the best positioned to beat President Bush with his military record and proven experience," Ms. Cutter says.

Yet Mr. Kerry wasn't elected. And that has other Democrats, in particular Clinton and Obama advocates, warning against taking the electability test too far. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Obama has announced for president, though both are expected to create exploratory committees this month.

"I think both are electable," says Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who has ties to both -- as Mr. Obama's friend and fellow Chicagoan, and as a former top adviser to Mrs. Clinton's husband. "Bill Clinton had an electability problem until the primaries were over" in 1992, Mr. Emanuel recalls, but his strong performance in the primary campaign overrode controversies about his political stands, avoidance of the Vietnam draft and alleged philandering.

Much like her husband 15 years ago, Mrs. Clinton is often seen as too cautious and calculating, leaving many questioning what she stands for. Unlike him, she lacks a compensating charisma. Despite bipartisan praise for her Senate record on issues from education to national security, even admirers lament that she would draw Republican attacks like no other Democrat given conservative activists' loathing for both Clintons. Then there is the fact Americans have never elected a woman -- complicated in Mrs. Clinton's case by her spouse being a former president, suggesting a co-presidency of sorts.

"Anybody who has questions about her electability should look at what she's done in New York," says spokesman Howard Wolfson. He notes that she defied skeptics in 2000 by winning election to the Senate with 55% of the vote, and last year was re-elected in a landslide thanks to greater support from independents and Republicans.
Mr. Obama exudes the charisma, authenticity and optimism that many Democrats find lacking in Mrs. Clinton. Yet while he was raised in Hawaii by his white mother and grandparents from Kansas, his public identity is defined by the African skin and Muslim name inherited from his late father, Barack Hussein Obama, of Kenya. Inevitably Democrats ask: Would Americans elect an African-American, and one whose name rhymes with the terrorist they most revile?

Skeptics also cite the 45-year-old Mr. Obama's inexperience after just two years in the Senate. Days after his return last week from a holiday visit to hometown Honolulu, Hawaii's longtime Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye was quoted in the city's paper saying Mr. Obama should wait: "He has been in the Senate for, what, two years?"