The polls show her running strong out front, and Keith Olbermann’s offers her a fluff interview, but her campaign to be the CIC has some serious challenges ahead of it.

One of the biggest challenges will be Bill.  You remember him, the former president?  He offers many problems that must be dealt with, and no clear method presents itself.

• His history of past sexcapades, rumors of his current ones and his recent (unofficial) diagnosis of sexual addiction remind us that she is married to a man of questionable values, and also raises the questions of what she knew, when she knew it and why she stays with a man who shows no respect for his marriage.  The answer pretty much has to be political gain and everyone knows it.  Had she divorced him in 2000 I doubt she would have been able to Carpetbag New York as easily as she did.
• Every day he appears in public, he is a slap in her face that she will always be second best.  He is more charismatic, a better speaker, a better writer and a better politician then she is or ever will be.  She rode his coattails to Little Rock, then to Washington DC, and no matter how hard she tries, she is still riding them today. 
• Too many people see her possible Presidency as a way to circumvent the 22nd Amendment and return Bill to the Whitehouse.  Once again it is about Bill, not her

And the ugly truth is that she is caught between a rock and hard place.  She cannot win without his support.  But every times he speaks he reminds how much less then him she is.  She will never be able to over come being second.

Sure she has some people trying to grease her past the challenges.  As I mentioned, Olbermann sat her down for a not so hard hitting piece of fluff that had meaningless leading questions and a complete lack of substantive answers.  Examples (via Hot Air and Olbermann Watch):

• How would you answer people who’ve approached this and say, I could not possibly vote for anyone who, no matter how misled they might have been, no matter how misled the country might have been, voted in any way to authorize what has happened in Iraq? How would you answer them?
• So how can you, and Senator Obama, and Senator Edwards and Governor Vilsack, and Governor Richardson, and everybody else who is considering, or has considered, or will run for the Democratic nomination, maintain and survive a campaign of that length, to say nothing of the American people? How do we do this?
• But having spent eight years in the White House under the conditions in which you and your husband spent them, that’s a reason to want to go back to the White House?
• What, in your opinion, is, as of right now, the State of the Union?
• What, if you could pick and could only show to the voters one element of your resume, would you say, “This is it, this why”?

He might have well been reading from her cue cards.

But stepping away from Olbermann’s soft padded studio, and the Time’s Poll, the ugly truth is that Obama is the media darling this round and everyone knows it.  Her announcement was carefully timed to prevent him from running too far ahead. 

Rumours abound that Hillary has a war room dedicated to defeating him, which recently caused an uproar between CNN and Fox.  Hannity is promoting an Insight Magazine story that claims  to quote staffers of Hillary’s hit team that say Hillary is going after Obama’s alleged Muslim roots, with CNN and the Washintongpost working overtime to debunk it and dismiss it as a right wing hachet piece.  I am curious who the inside source is:

Sources said the background check, conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton, disclosed details of Mr. Obama’s Muslim past. The sources said the Clinton camp concluded the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.

"The background investigation will provide major ammunition to his opponents," the source said. "The idea is to show Obama as deceptive." 

The sources said Ms. Clinton regards Mr. Obama as her most formidable opponent and the biggest obstacle to the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination. They said Ms. Clinton has been angered by Mr. Obama’s efforts to tap her supporters for donations

Of course they dismiss the "source" out of hand, whereas they have all relied on "unnamed sources" before and expected other media outlets to give them full weight. While Fox has been vilified over this, and if the storyis garbage they deserved it, I think they simply went with a story because it was juicy, not like CNN or WaPo would EVER do that…in other words they acted pretty much in step with the rest opf the MSM.  In fact CNN claims they didn’t make an effort to debunk it, they actuall tried to verify it so they could run with it, because it was so sensational.

Insight is happy to respond to WaPo and CNN, and they win the money quote award:

Insight’s story was not thinly sourced. Our reporter’s sources close to the Clinton opposition research war room confirm the truth of the story. The Clinton camp’s denial has as much credibility as the “I never had sex with that woman” statement.

Heh.

But Insight did raise a serious accusation, that Obama is luring her Hollywood connections.  He is, and it is going to hurt her.

Let’s face the reality here:  Without Hollywood, without Arsenio and Linda Bloodworth-Thomas and the other Hollywood heavyweights, he would have just been a hick candidate from Arkansas.

Hollywood made him a household name long before his campaign, and that made a difference.

Today, Hollywood continues to hold remarkable sway despite more organized opposition.

And Hollywood LOVES Obama.

Hillary’s Hollywood Friends Switch Sides - Steven Spielberg and David Geffen Invite Hundreds of Stars to Their Big Barack Obama Fundraiser

Is Hollywood abandoning Hillary?

On Wednesday morning, hundreds of Hollywood’s movers and shakers received an invitation that they may find hard to refuse.

They’ve been invited to come meet Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s new superstar. He already has the buzz, but can he bring home the prize?

The fundraiser represents a major slap for Obama’s main competitor, Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has received financial support from all three moguls in the past. Spielberg, Geffen and Katzenberg, along with other employees of their entertainment company, Dreamworks SKG, have contributed $47,000 to Clinton since her 2000 New York Senate campaign.

It may be the hevy hitters are simply spreading out their bets, but the Clintonistas have typically counted on solid support in Hollywood.

Spielberg alone has contributed $11,000 to Clinton since that campaign, and his political consultant, Andy Spahn, emphasized that Spielberg and Geffen have not yet officially endorsed Obama. "Mr. Katzenberg is endorsing Sen. Obama’s candidacy," he said. "Mr. Spielberg is co-hosting the event but has not made any endorsements as of yet."

Spahn added that Spielberg "expects to be helpful to a few candidates during this exploratory phase," and may host fundraisers for Clinton and John Edwards as well. "Spielberg likes John Edwards and has a relationship with him — those are the two who he also likes."

Obama already has the support of the likes of George Clooney, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Oprah Winfrey, Oliver Stone and superagent Ari Emanuel.

This may be a connection to what Olbermann carefully wove around earlier, her original support of the war, which SNL previously lampooned as insincere.

But the truth is the Nutroots and the liberal left in general have not forgiven her for her support of the war, particularly in the Cindy Sheehan camp.

There is one other thing that will become fodder soon, and that is her own past and the scandals that she has been a part of.  This includes the Whitewater, File Gate, Her Black Panther association, Travel Gate, her campaign finance scandals, her racist Ghandi and plantation comments, and many others.  Wiki has a section devoted solely to her scandals.

But most currently bothersome, is the pardon scandal involving Hillary’s own brother.

Pardon Scandal Still Looms for Sen. Clinton’s Brother

A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee asked a federal judge this week to schedule a new court date in a case against Tony Rodham, the brother of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., accused of failing to repay $109,000 in loans from a carnival company whose owners received controversial pardons issued by President Bill Clinton in the last hours of his presidency.

According to documents filed in the case, Rodham received the loans, before and after the pardons were granted, from United Shows of America, Inc., owned by Edgar Gregory and his wife, who had been convicted of defrauding several banks.

A congressional report by the Republican-controlled House Reform Committee concluded Rodham "had tried to sell his access to the White House" and that "but for Tony Rodham’s lobbying efforts, the Gregory pardons would not have been granted."

While she did nothing directly, Washington DC loves the concept of guilt by association, and there is no way her relationship with her brother could not have been a factor.

During the investigation of the Clinton pardons, Rodham publicly maintained that he worked as a consultant for the Gregorys to help obtain contracts for the carnival business. He refused to be interviewed by congressional investigators but told Larry King on CNN in March 2001, "The Gregorys are the kind of people that the pardon system is made for."

At the time, the Gregorys said they saw nothing wrong with seeking Rodham’s help to get their pardons, which were issued over objections from the Department of Justice.

According to the congressional report, Rodham was paid over $240,000 in consultant fees by United Shows in addition to the loans.

At the urging of President and Mrs. Clinton in February 2001, her other brother, Hugh, promised to return some of the $400,000 he received from individuals who also were granted pardons by President Clinton in other cases.

Make that brothers.  Will the country stand for a woman president who cannot even say know to her siblings? 

Pardon Gate might even be sticky enough to overshadow Bill’s mighty zipper.

All in all I expect her run for the throne to be one of the ugliest in history.  The opposition is definitely marshalling their forces, and the Clintonistas are pros are fighting dirty themselves.

And we in the blogosphere will be here.  Waiting.

A few timely quotes:

Take our politicians:  they’re a bunch of yo-yos.  The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize.  ~Saul Bellow

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.  ~Charles Krauthammer

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.  They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire.  I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy.  The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.  ~Dave Barry

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