This Hillary-Can-Win op-ed by Carville and Penn is a chuckle. Point of evidence #1? Despite some naysayers in late 1999, Hillary was able to win election to the Senate. What's funny about that tale is that the words "New York" never appear in the piece. For all the readers know, she could've won that Senate seat in Michigan, or Alabama, or Wisconsin. That she was elevated instead in one of the union's most liberal states isn't mentioned. That she had early trouble with a nobody named Rick Lazio goes similarly undiscussed. And that she underperformed Gore doesn't merit a line of explanation. Which, sadly, demolishes the Carville/Penn second point: women will make the difference, and Hillary can create "an explosion of women voting." If that's the case, why did Gore outperform her among women in New York?
Penn and Carville surely have their theories. But they keep those to themselves -- all the better to mythologize her with. There is an interesting argument that they don't explicitly make in their piece, though. Hillary is both female and widely viewed as a "strong leader." Given that the CW assumes the projection of strength will prove the problem for candidates with the double-X chromosome, she squares the circle. But they don't explore that theory at all, they offer no new polling, they don't refute her current weakness in head-to-head surveys, they don't explain why she's the party's best candidate, and they ignore troublesome evidence that confounds the few points they do deign to make. If this is truly the best rationale her campaign's top minds can come up with. she's weaker than I thought.
Update: Brendan Nyhan weighs in with some numbers.
