Why Hillary Won't Win...Unless

I would not say that Hillary can’t win. I will say that she probably won’t.

The conventional wisdom (which is an oxymoron, wisdom seldom being conventional or popular) is that this election is going to the Democrats and is theirs and Hillary’s to lose. I disagree. Democrats are very likely to gain big numbers in the House and Senate. Incumbent Republicans are retiring in record number and in considerable despair. Bush has done for his party what he has done for America.

Hillary, if nominated, as at the moment seems likely, will lose—unless the Republicans run someone completely unacceptable to the center of the country. This is possible, and it is the key to the election.

I am not a Hillary hater. She is clearly bright, skilled and polished. I’ll let others rehearse her flaws. I like Hillary but not as a candidate.

She will not win—not because of the Hillary haters and the right-wingers who obsess over any and all Clintons. She will not win because of the elastic middle where our elections are won or lost.

Our presidential elections turn on two major factors. Who shows up to vote (or these days who mails it in). If the left sits on their hands, as we did 1964, Humphrey loses and Nixon wins. If the Evangelicals sit on their hands—never mind a third party—and just don’t show up, Hillary could win.

The second factor though is the critical one for Hillary and this election—and that is the middle. The party faithful Republicans and Democrats will vote for the nominee of their respective parties. This will represent about 85 to 90% of ballots cast. The middle: the undecided and unaffiliated usually breaks fairly evenly. They are truly the “deciders.”

With high negatives and some admiration, but without much affection, Hillary may not get her fair share of the middle. But the biggest factor influencing this very small number of people in the middle of the middle will be gender. The polls will not show this. People poll as better than they vote.

Senatorial candidate Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee was leading in the polls, but when push came to shove, too many voters did not vote for an African American. Race made a difference, not simply to conscious bigots but to the middle.

I am afraid that given a plausible social moderate on the Republican side, that in the moment of decision, there will be enough for whom gender makes the decisive difference.