Jeff Goldstein has this to say about Hillary's list to starboard:
Very quietly, and using the cacophonous cover of the Democratic party’s very public progressive base-coddling, Hillary Clinton has been positioning herself as a supporter of an aggressive foreign policy while simultaneously shoring up her record on issues that speak to muscular “patriotism.”
What this suggests is that Clinton has surveyed the political landscape and concluded that a renewal of the “third way” approach is likely to sell in 2008, and that the vocal minority driving the party right now will not be enough to defeat her in the primaries, where she can rely both on name recognition and the pragmatism of those Democrats who she believes will come to recognize in her their only real chance of regaining power.
It seems Hillary is counting on the Democrats to be nothing if not pragmatic. Or maybe that should read "nothing but pragmatic," if Howard Dean is a better indicator than Clinton, of where most Democrats stand.
Maybe she's counting on the loony left to burn out before the primaries start in 2008.
Maybe she's expecting a reaction to Bush Derangement Syndrome, especially when it becomes obvious that Bush is not a) going to be impeached; b) going to run for re-election in 2008.
The loons over at the DemocraticUnderground favor Dean a lot more than Clinton. They are also convinced that every poll shows 60% of Americans are opposed to the War and want the troops home now. I guess these pollsters don't make it out to my neck of the woods.
Still, Clinton's maneuver will only work if the moderate/ pragmatic side of the Democratic primary electorate is more unified around her than the left flank is unified around their ABH candidate (be it Feingold, Dean, Boxer, etc.). For example, if Mark Warner -- whose been making a big splash of late -- siphons enough votes from the center and center-left, and the hard left unites early behind a single candidate, Hillary could find herself squeezed out (the same thing almost happened to Dole in 96 and Kerry in 04).
Given that, I think the worst outcome for Hillary would be a more-or-less stalemate election result in '06 (app. 1-2 pickups in the Senate, 4-8 in the House). A stong showing by the Reps (no net losses or slight gains) -- after everything that's happened this year -- would probably convince a lot of Dems to stop drinking the Kool Aid, and to stop backing candidates that do -- thus reducing the appeal of a hard left candidate.
Conversely, a great showing by the Dems in '06 (ie taking over the House & 2-3 Senate pickups) would convince the center/ center-left Dems that Hillary is the only candidate who can stop the Deaniacs.
However, another stalemate election will produce another two year cycle of some Dems trying to push the party to the center, and others trying to push it farther to the left -- and Hillary may prove unable to satisfy either camp under that scenario.
