Hillary tries to run up the score in NY

The Hill reports that Hillary Clinton is spending a fortune in New York even though there is no way she'll lose:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) spent nearly $7 million from her Senate campaign account last month running for reelection in New York.

The figure ranks among the most ever spent by a Senate candidate in such a short period, and many New Yorkers cannot even name her opponent.

Clinton’s onslaught is drawing comparisons to George W. Bush’s 1998 gubernatorial race in Texas, when he outspent his opponent 4-to-1 and used his big victory as a springboard to the presidency.

An overwhelming win would help a Clinton presidential campaign, chiefly by allowing her to say she can appeal to independent and conservative voters. It would dampen criticism that she is too polarizing to win in the 2008 general election.

The reason she's doing this is clear. There are serious questions about her electability as a presidential candidate. And her performance in New York in 2000 was not impressive, as I wrote:

First of all, her 55%-43% win was not exactly a landslide. As the Almanac of American Politics 2002 points out, Chuck Schumer beat Al D'Amato by an almost identical margin of 55%-44% in the 1998 race for New York's other Senate seat, and Hillary was riding the coattails of Al Gore, who won the state 60%-35%. According to Barone and company, when you break it down by region, she won New York City 74%-25%, lost in the suburbs 53%-45%, and lost upstate 51%-47%. The latter two numbers are pretty good, but again, compare her to Schumer -- he won New York City 76%-23%, lost the suburbs 51%-49% and lost upstate 53%-45%. The figures are almost identical.

The obvious conclusion is that Hillary did about as well as your average Democrat in a Democrat-leaning state. While things could have gone much worse given how polarizing she was, it proves almost nothing about her ability to win over voters in the the battleground states of the industrial Midwest, let alone the South.

I'm sure she will end up winning by a huge margin, but a landslide against a nothing candidate in a Democratic state in a highly favorable political environment proves very little.

Comments

[glenstein]

It proves as much as it does to point out how average her victory was for U.S. Senate.

And this selection of yours is fairly relevant:

"While things could have gone much worse given how polarizing she was, it proves almost nothing about her ability to win over voters in the the battleground states of the industrial Midwest, let alone the South."

Not meaning to troll or anything, but that suggests that if she had done better among those voters, that it would have proven something about her ability to win battleground voters.

Favorable environment, tons of money, who's to say those won't continue to be factors in 08?

[Seth]

Another Senate race that puzzles me in a similar fashion is Dick Lugar's race. I've seen about half a dozen commercials for Lugar in one weekend, but his only opponent is a very poorly funded Libertarian with no public policy experience. He can't seriously be concerned, and he's too old to run for president again so what's the deal with the ads? Wouldn't that money be better served as a PAC contribution to tight GOP races like NJ, MS, TN and maybe VA?

[Thomas Nephew]

I think the reasons she's campaigning hard in NY are straightforward: (1) anything less than an improvement on 2000 and she's damaged goods. Absent a way to fine tune that, you campaign hard, especially when (2) it can help down-ticket congressional candidates in a state where there are apparently a number of GOP seats ripe for the picking.

Not everything Hillary does is nefarious; of course she's looking out for her own interests, but those dovetail with the Democratic Party's here (as well as the country's, I would argue.)