Hìllary waiting in democratic party wings
When Hillary Clinton lavishes praise on John Kerry at the Democratic National Convention today, she could be helping to seal her own political fate.
Should Kerry win and be nominated for a second term in 2008, any chance of Clinton making her own run for the White House would be out of the question until at least 2012.
By then she would be 65 and a whole new crop of presidential contenders could be on the scene.
On the other hand, a rousing speech this week could help position her for a presidential run in 2008 – if Kerry fails to knock George Bush from the White House.
“That’s not going to happen,” she said during a visit to Troy, New York. “We are going to win in November and I am going to be campaigning for John Kerry and John Edwards in 2008 for a second term.”
Much as she dismisses such talk, the junior senator from New York is the front-runner among the party’s candidates-in-waiting should Kerry falter.
“People will endlessly turn over Hillary Clinton’s remarks for what’s there and what’s intended and what people think was intended,” said Steve Grossman, who served as a Democratic national chairman under former President Bill Clinton.
But Grossman, like many others in the Clinton camp, insists Clinton and her husband, the former president, will be working all-out to elect Kerry.
“You cannot underestimate how focused she is on getting George Bush and Dick Cheney out of the White House, and turning the Senate Democratic,” said Clinton media consultant Mandy Grunwald.
“I think she’d be happy to never be president if she could get these guys out of the White House,” Grunwald added.
That is the party line. Veteran independent pollster Lee Miringoff said Hillary Clinton has no choice but to stick with it.
“She has to be totally enthusiastic” about the Kerry ticket, said Miringoff, head of Marist College’s Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, New York.
