Moving the Goalposts
Jul 26th, 2005 at 3:20 pm by Susie
Matt Iglesias points out the obvious: No one has ever accused Hillary Clinton of being a liberal except the wingnuts. He quotes this New York Times article on her new and closer affiliation with the DLC:
Republicans immediately fired back at the criticisms, mocking the council for reaching out to Mrs. Clinton, whom conservatives have long derided as a symbol of liberal excess.
“The fact that the centrist organization of the Democrat Party would anoint Hillary Clinton anything, exemplifies just how far left the Democrats have gone,” said Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.
“There is nothing centrist about Senator Clinton’s liberal record,” Ms. Schmitt said in a statement.
Matt sees this sort of thing as the obvious problem:
And that’s how it goes. This, to me, is the big problem with the Clinton for President stampede. There’s something to be said for a centrist nominee. But one would want the nominee to get credit for being a centrist. One can imagine an Evan Bayh or a Mark Warner or various other people doing that, but not Clinton. The view that something as trivial as a substantive record of moderate stances on the issues could alter the overwhelming presumption that she’s some kind of demented leftwinger strikes me as hopelessly naive. It runs, frankly, against everything we know about how the media and public opinion work.
