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For hillary clinton presidential election holds key to her plans { November 2 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny-eln--whitherhillar1102nov02,0,1852519.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wirehttp://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny-eln--whitherhillar1102nov02,0,1852519.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire
For Hillary Clinton, presidential election holds key to her plans
By MARC HUMBERT
AP Political Writer
November 2, 2004, 6:08 PM EST
NEW YORK -- The outcome of Tuesday's presidential election could well determine whether Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will have a chance to personally return her family to the White House.
A victory by President Bush could establish New York's junior senator as the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president. A win by Democrat John Kerry could put off any run for the White House by the former first lady for at least eight years, and maybe forever.
"The speculation starts as soon as Bush is declared a winner, and not at all if Kerry is," said independent pollster Lee Miringoff, head of Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion.
New York's voters are split on a Clinton run for the White House. She continues to evoke strong feelings _ positive and negative _ the way she did during her 2000 Senate campaign.
Richard Stager, a retired machinist from Fayetteville, said he'd support a Clinton run for president.
"It's time we had a woman president," the 73-year-old said after voting for Bush Tuesday. "God only knows the men are running this country into the ground."
Bob Gibson, a 57-year-old retiree from New York City, reacted strongly to the suggestion of another Clinton presidency. Gibson is a Democrat who voted for Bush.
"I can't stand Hillary," he said. "She reminds me of my ex-wife, what a phony."
Clinton has said she would be happy if Kerry won, served two terms and handed off to John Edwards for two more terms.
"That would be great with me," she said shortly after the Democratic National Convention. "I want a Democratic White House for as long as we can have one."
"If Kerry wins, Hillary loses," declared Republican operative Nelson Warfield. "Do the math. She's fresh and 57 today. After Kerry runs for re-election (in 2008), she's 65 and old news."
But one top Clinton adviser, Harold Ickes, said Tuesday that two terms for Kerry was "not a show-stopper" if the former first lady later decides she wants to run for the White House.
Ickes said he didn't know if Clinton wanted to do that.
"There is a myth abroad that the Clintons really didn't want Kerry to win," Ickes said. "Nothing could be further from the truth. ... From the beginning they have wanted a Democratic president."
But a Bush win does mean "the Democrats will be in somewhat of a disarray. She's the most logical person to pick up the pieces," said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who worked on President Clinton's 1996 re-election effort. "She has a national organization, a national fund-raising base, and she has the former president as her greatest ally."
National polls have shown the former first lady to be very popular with rank-and-file Democrats. An Associated Press survey of delegates to this summer's Democratic National Convention found her the favorite for the 2008 nomination over vice presidential nominee John Edwards should Kerry lose.
"I think John Edwards is a nonstarter," said Sheinkopf. "She's the one to watch."
But Warfield said Edwards, a millionaire former trial lawyer, should not be written off.
"He has deep pockets and marshals big trial-lawyer money, so he's going to have funding," Warfield said. "She's got the ideological base. It's a fight."
The former first lady, who says she is focused on re-election to the Senate in 2006, has campaigned for Kerry and raised about $10 million for him.
Warfield said Clinton's ties to traditionally liberal New York could scare some Democrats away from Clinton in 2008.
"If the Democrats lose this time, there's going to be a wonderfully bloody internal battle over the future of the Democratic Party," the Republican strategist predicted. "At least a portion of the party will say, `We won with Bill Clinton of Arkansas and we got slaughtered twice now with liberals."'
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
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