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In reply to the discussion: Hillary Clinton crushes Republican rivals in new poll [View all]tblue37
(65,409 posts)can we know how well she will actually perform. At this point in the 2004 election cycle, name recognition had Lieberman leading the Democrats! Most Amercans pay little attention at this point, so name recognition is a major factor in such polls.
The real issue is to prevent the Republicans from defining her--or any other potential Dem nominee--first. One big advantage with Hillary is that the Republicans have been so ridiculous for so long in their attacks on her that a lot of their claims get ignored. Another is that most people remember Bill's terms as better times.
My main concerns with Hillary are her unforced errors and her tendency to rely on bad advice from lousy advisors.
For example, if her team--or Dems generally--did a halfway decent job *showing* the very real differences between their record and that of the Republicans, and of keeping thins simple and repetitious so the low information voters would *get* it, then they would do much better. I am certain that unless a Dem wins by an overwheming margin, the Republicans will manipulate the votes sufficiently to steal almost any election, at almost any level. The Dems need to do something real about hackable voting machines, the purging of voter roles, suppressive ID laws, and other forms of voter suppression, as well as upping registration drives and GOTV efforts.
Heck, even pointing out how much time and money has been wasted on multiple Benghazi investigations and attempts to take away the insurance so many have finally gotten through the ACA, while the Republicans continue to block every effort to actually do anything for the people they claim to represent, would help move voters our way. But Dems never seem to tell voters any of these things in a way that they can understand and remember.