Focus on Hillary Clinton

I'm going to start a new, reoccurring blog post series focusing on politicians in the news, their backgrounds, political analysis about their actions, and, of course, an arbitrary grade of that policy-maker's performance — from my perspective, their peer's perspective, and the view of the voters.

Senator Hillary R. Clinton (D-NY) is leading the Democratic pack in terms of funds and popular support.

Hillary Clinton has lost the support of some liberal supporters because she has refused to apologize in any way about her support for the Iraq war. She remains ambiguous on her real views on hot topics like Iraq. Clinton tries to please so many different groups: from the anti-violent video game parents to the anti-war collegians. She'll have to make a conscious choice about who her real target audience(s) will be if she is to prevent herself from stretching further her ambiguous views on big issues.

Iraq is a huge issue, not only among the voters: whoever wins the election will inherit Bush's disaster of a war.

The Democrats already get more of the female votes than the Republicans, but Clinton's gender, alas, will no doubt be an issue. Pundits and other politicians trying not to sound sexist, but who actually are sexist, will be making plenty of stealthy jabs: the same we've seen against France's Segolene Royal.

Clinton has raised record funds so far, but no doubt her spouse, former President Bill Clinton, has helped her gain a large amount of those funds. The younger, more youth-savvy and fresh Barak Obama is chasing at Clinton's heels, and John Edwards is not out yet.

Clinton's refusal to admit the wrongs of her vote on the Iraq war — which seems to have some hypocrisy to it — shows negatively on her political grade, and she has no new visions or ideas, even modest like those of Obama, to offer the voters. However, she has plenty of money and is still the Democratic frontrunner for 2008. Her grade stands at a B(-), or roughly 6/10 or 7/10 — 10 being excellent, one being unbelievably pathetic (e.g. Al Gore has an 8/10, but at the time of his Oscar, etc, boom it was more like 9/10; Obama has maybe 7/10 or 8/10... still working out the grading system).

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