The Early Show

By THOMAS B. EDSALL
The New York Times
December 12, 2006

Washington

Hillary Clinton is the Democratic establishment’s anti-establishment candidate. She is simultaneously an insurgent, seeking to end a 220-year reign of men, and the heir apparent — dominant in cash ($14.4 million in the bank), in the polls and in the colossal reach of her machine.

Clinton’s most visible challenger, Barack Obama, is similarly an insurgent, but without the former first lady’s resources. He is seeking to capitalize on his ranking as an underdog, entering the fray as David battling the Clinton Goliath.

The head of the pack is a dangerous place for a Democrat to be. Democrats excel in cannibalizing their front-runners. Just ask those who were knocked out in the primary season (Lyndon Johnson, Ed Muskie and Howard Dean) or those who limped from the ring after 15 rounds (Walter Mondale and Al Gore).

Republicans, by contrast, honor hierarchy. For four decades the G.O.P. has nominated the early favorite. Unlike Democrats, Republican voters have a long history of rejecting rebels and underdogs.

Clinton’s position at the head of the pack — a 20-point lead over her competitors — forces her campaign to shoot down a barrage of hostile challenges: Will voters trust a woman at a time of terrorist threat? Will the military accept a woman as commander in chief?

Evaluations of men and women running for House seats in 2006 have turned up disturbing numbers. In the 42 top-tier “Red-to-Blue” races selected by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for intensive financing and support, 25 of the candidates were male and 17 were female. In those contests, male candidates batted .800: 20 victories to five defeats. The women faced higher barriers: three won and 14 lost, batting .176.

This pattern was even more striking in the initial group of ‘Red-to-Blue’ candidates targeted as most promising by the campaign committee. Of the 11 men, nine, or 82 percent, won. Of the 11 women, 10, or 90.1 percent, lost.

Democratic officials are searching for explanations: a working hypothesis is that female candidates were more vulnerable on the issue of immigration, viewed as more generous with federal aid and amnesty.

One Democratic candidate, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot who lost both of her legs in Iraq. She was leading in pre-election surveys but was defeated, 51 percent to 49 percent, by Peter Roskam, a personal-injury lawyer who pounded her with ads charging that she would “give illegal aliens welfare and Social Security benefits” costing $50 billion, while “leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.”

The Clinton team, aware of these grim results, is fighting back. The campaign released a memo with recent data showing that 68 percent of voters describe Hillary as “a strong leader,” and that 92 percent say they would vote for a woman for president — up from 52 percent in a similar poll in 1955.

As the presidential contest goes into high gear, another Clinton vulnerability becomes salient. The New York senator is armed with a powerful but old machine. Key players — John Podesta, Mandy Grunwald, Mark Penn, Ann Lewis, Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe — were top advisers in Bill Clinton’s two presidential races.

The Glover Park Group, Hillary Clinton’s top consulting firm, is thoroughly embedded in the Washington nexus of politics and corporate interests — at a time when the electorate is acutely suspicious of cronyism. “From a presidential impeachment to a crippling antitrust action facing one of the nation’s largest companies, we’ve been there to offer critical communications counsel,” Glover boasts.

The Clinton leviathan provides a perfect foil for Obama. “I think to some degree I’ve become a short-hand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit that the last election in New Hampshire represented,” he said last weekend on his maiden trip to the state. “It’s a spirit that says we are looking for something different — we want something new.”

The candidates not yet in the limelight — Evan Bayh, John Edwards, John Kerry, Al Gore, Tom Vilsak, Bill Richardson, Wes Clark, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden — would like nothing better than to see Clinton and Obama split their shared constituency, leaving each other lifeless on the slaughterhouse floor. That would make Richardson, who is Hispanic, the sole exception in a field composed entirely of white men.

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Thomas B. Edsall, who holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, is a guest columnist.