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The "message" you often hear on right-wing talk shows is that Republicans are down in the polls, but that Democrats can't take advantage of it, since they don't have any good candidates or proven ideas.
I agree Hillary has been greatly damaged. I personally believe much of that damage is artificial (like convincing us that Gore did "fuzzy math" and lied a lot). Unfortunately, any Democrat is pounced upon by the right-wing smear machine. Kerry got labeled a flip-flopper, and what they did to his military career was horrible but effecive. The reason that Democrats don't have any "good" candidates, is that the Republicans are so good at magnifying flaws. If RFK were running today, Limbaugh/O'Reilly/Hannity/Scarsborough/Savage, etc., would attack him as the beneficiary of neopotism, a wealthy elitist, conceited, and so on. They'd find a flawed statement or two in his speechs, and before they were done, people would be saying "RFK is too polarizing," just as they now say about Ted Kennedy. Unfortunately, there's little we can do about that except try our best to expose it, and play at their own game, distasteful as that might be.
But Hillary's strength is that she has the 1990s track record. It's hard to say she has no proven ideas, when she can point to the excellent reduction in crime, reduction in poverty, growth in prosperity, international good will, success in Kosovo, balancing the budget, etc., that we had with her husband. The message for her (and really all Democrats), is competent, proven, successful governance. If I could be Democrat PR czar, I'd repeat the message ad infinitum (like the Republicans successfully did with "tax and spend"): Democrats are competent, Republicans are failures.
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