Hillary Clinton Has All-Star Rebuttal Team

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination in 2008, each of the current candidates know they have to do a better job than Kerry of responding to the kind of bizarre right wing attacks that have become business as usual in the Republican Party, at least the party we keep seeing these days. Maybe if Hagel or even Huckabee win the Republican nomination, we'll see a clean race but no one is banking on that. Hillary Clinton has put together an all-star team to protect her back against right wing games and attack ads. Here's the story from Philip Sherwell of the British newspaper, the Telegraph:

The first woman to run on a US presidential ticket has promised her friend Hillary Clinton that she will help her fight Republican "dirty tricks" in the race for the White House.

"The only thing that can stop Hillary becoming the next president would be smears and dirty tricks," said Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrats' losing 1984 vice-presidential candidate. "I've told her I'll go anywhere and speak any time to make sure that doesn't happen."

She outlined her plans for a display of female solidarity with the Democratic presidential frontrunner last week in an interview in her office overlooking Ground Zero, where the World Trade Centre once stood in lower Manhattan.

Miss Ferraro, 71, ... has joined the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Billie Jean King, the former tennis star, in a "rapid rebuttal force" of well-known women on standby to defend and promote Sen Clinton's candidacy.

That's a great team. Ferraro, of course, is being a team player by saying that the only thing that can stop Hillary Clinton are smears and dirty tricks of the kind we've seen of late from Republicans. But here are the facts: Hillary Clinton is in a wide open race with at least three other contenders for the Democratic nomination. She should not assume that she has either a lock on the campaign money needed or on the votes. The Republicans decided to give George W. Bush a coronation simply for raising the most money before the first vote was cast in the 2000 primaries. It's up to the Democrats to show that ideas matter and that the average American voter matters.

If Hillary Clinton shows us that she has the total package and that she understands that a president taking office in 2009 will be facing a very different set of problems than the president who took office in 1993, she may very well go all the way. In any case, there are parts of her team I like very much and it is a good sign.