40-something Hillary Clinton should worry Democrats
The latest FOX poll is bad news for Mrs Clinton:
She loses to Senator Rubio (50-41%),
Senator Cruz is up 7 (50-43%),
she ties Bush (44-44%),
Trump leads (47-44%),
and Christie leads (47-44%).
Dr. Carson is the only candidate she defeats, according to this poll.
It takes more than one poll to persuade me one way or another. However, there is a trend in the polls that should scare Democrats: Hillary is 40-something time after time.
Hillary Clinton is between 42% and 45% in the average of polls. This is scary for such a well-known candidate.
I think that there are a few things going on here:
1) Mrs. Clinton has not run a very impressive campaign. She looks programmed down to the coffee break.
She always looks as though she's reading her speeches, and her handlers keep her away from the kind of unscripted one-on-one that works well in New Hampshire.
2) The Obama record must be weighing her down. The RCP average of polls has President Obama at 44%. What happens when a lousy candidate is running on an unpopular incumbent's record? You get a candidate stuck in the 40s.
3) Maybe there is something going on in the country beyond the conventional wisdom that it's all about demographics. Selena Zito believes that the real divide is a conflict between cosmopolitan vs. traditional values:
Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Democrats have purposefully cut white, traditional-values, working-class, predominantly male voters from their coalition in favor of building an urban- and cosmopolitan-centered coalition of minorities, elites and women.
That move left discarded voters with nowhere to go except toward the Republican Party, for which they turned out in large numbers in the 2010 and 2014 midterms and gave the GOP historic wins in state legislatures, governors' offices and Congress.
A few days ago, I joked with a Democrat friend that it may be time for Hillary Clinton to be indicted. His response was interesting. He said that it'd be a quick way to get rid of Hillary Clinton and open the door to fresh faces.
Well, I don't know if fresh faces will come in, but it will force the party to start looking beyond the Clintons and cosmopolitan values.
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