Sen. Clinton faces Democratic opposition
By JOHN MACHACEK - WASHINGTON BUREAU
The Journal News
Dogged for months by anti-war activists, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton now faces a mounting backlash among liberal Democrats upset with her support for the Iraq war and search for the political middle ground.
Some liberals at a recent "Take Back America" conference in Washington booed and heckled Clinton when she said it would be wrong to set a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. And some of New York City's Democratic clubs — all liberal bastions — either have not endorsed Clinton in her Senate re-election bid or are backing an anti-war candidate hoping to challenge her in a September primary.
"She needs a slap in the face to wake up," said Sean Sweeney, president of the Downtown Independent Democrats in lower Manhattan. "She has basically lost touch with her base."
Liberal activists also are angry about her rhetorical shift to the political middle on such issues as abortion and her welcoming of fundraising support from conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News.
While she is still considered the frontrunner among Democrats who may seek the party's presidential nomination in 2008, recent polls suggest her support among liberals may be softening.
Among Democratic presidential primary voters, Clinton does best with nonwhites, Northeasterners, women, union members and people with some college experience but no four-year degree, according to a June 1-4 survey by RT Strategies Inc., a bipartisan research and polling organization.
She doesn't do well among college-educated Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic — a group most likely to be a hotbed of anti-war liberalism, said Thomas Riehle, the polling group's Democratic partner. Only 27 percent of college graduates and 26 percent of independents supported her, compared with 47 percent of nonwhites, 43 percent of Northeasterners and 37 percent of women.
Riehle also found it surprising that Clinton fell short of getting 50 percent of Democratic women voters in the poll that measured support for a dozen Democratic presidential possibilities.
"That's why I would analyze her situation as somewhat short of a stampede for Clinton among Democratic women and anti-war Democrats," he said. "The issues that brought the baby boomer Democratic women activists into the party — anti-war and civil rights — don't seem to be the kind of issues motivating Senator Clinton's campaign. That's the shortcoming in the eyes of Democratic activists."
Indeed, an early June poll by the Des Moines Register showed former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina leading Clinton 30 percent to 26 percent in Iowa, the first state to select delegates to the 2008 Democratic convention. Edwards, who enjoyed strong backing from Iowa's liberal Democrats in 2004, said last year that his vote for the Iraq war was a mistake.
In New York, where Clinton leads either of her potential GOP opponents — former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer and former Pentagon official Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland — by wide margins, a Zogby International poll showed she could have trouble if she faced any anti-war candidate who was well-known and well-financed.
"There is real palpable anger against Hillary for her stance on the war and for the fact that she is not backing down," pollster John Zogby said. "It's conceivable that an anti-war candidate could still get to the mid- to high-30s against her."
Two Democratic clubs in lower Manhattan recently endorsed Jonathan Tasini, a union activist who is calling for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. He is gathering signatures on petitions to get on the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot against Clinton. Club officials say they are trying to "send a message" to Clinton.
A recent BlogPAC survey of nearly 2,000 bloggers and liberal activists — who call themselves the party's "netroots" — found that only 45 percent have a favorable opinion of Clinton compared with 77 percent by all Democrats in a recent Hotline poll.
But Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf, a veteran of past Democratic presidential campaigns, said the anti-war sentiment in the Democratic Party is "broad and deep" and goes beyond the bloggers.
"The vast majority of the Democratic activists think we ought to get out of Iraq, and if you advocate a position that says we ought to stay in Iraq, you are going to get some grief from those people," he said.
Clinton has brushed off criticism from the left and stuck to her position against immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq. In a Senate debate on Iraq last week, she supported a nonbinding resolution urging President Bush to begin "redeploying troops" out of Iraq by the end of this year without setting a timetable or firm date for a complete withdrawal.
Clinton said Friday that she was excited about how progressive Democrats were using blogging to advance their ideas and passion. But she noted that it's a "win-win" for Republicans when the liberal bloggers "beat up on each other and other Democrats."
