Today Clinton has forged herself into a formidable political leader. She has undergone a remarkable journey. In the face of unending autopsies on her personal and political past, unrelieved targeting at both Democratic and Republican debates, the punishing demands imposed on a woman candidate, she is still standing unflinchingly in place....
Why the most electable Democrat? Because after a year of being tightly measured, Clinton has won a public acceptance that she has the intellect and inner confidence to do the job. She has reached beyond her political inheritance and shaped a political presence all her own. Hillary belittlers still abound, to be sure. She is still caricatured as calculating. But the senator has taken on some different markings. Gone is the defensive bite, on hand is a new openness to concede mistakes, often with glints of humor.
Once nominated her campaign will undergo another transformation. Her candidacy will take on an historic aura as it confronts an historic question -- can a woman, this woman, be elected president? Americans will be caught up in crossing one of the country's great divides. Voters of both parties, not just proud women, will be favorably disposed to make that crossing. Americans like the good feeling of removing barriers.
Why the least vulnerable Democrat? The day the Democratic nominee becomes obvious the Republican attack machine will spring to action. Always, the opponent is a target to be eviscerated. If Obama is the Democratic nominee, a man less intimately understood and less defined, Republicans will rush to manufacture their own brutal definition. Can Obama withstand that kind of barrage? Does he have the personal makeup to be as relentless as his opponents? Do past political positions leave him vulnerable? Because the risks are sky-high, these questions need to be reasonably raised and answered beforehand
Clinton is well past negative redefinition. Unlike John Kerry's 2004 campaign in which veterans opposed to Kerry's candidacy challenged his war record, it will be difficult to ram a Swift Boat into her candidacy. If there is a convict in her political past, as with Willie Horton during the Dukakis 1988 campaign, he will already have been exhumed. Besides, the Clintons are veteran enough to mount a withering counterfire of their own.
The most vulnerable Democrat, Clinton is not. The most electable, she is. America's political landscape, this time around, looks fertile for the right Democratic candidate. But one day, surely, the country will elect a woman president. I sense that moment - and that woman - has arrived.
For the full editorial, click here.
