DAY 999 - A.B.B.

Today we'll cross the aisle and take a look at the leading Democratic contender to be A.B.B., Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

(I promise these will be more than just Wikiregurgitations once we get to the more obscure hopefuls.)

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton was born on October 26th, 1947 in Chicago, IL, and was raised in nearby Park Ridge, IL. Her father Hugh was into textiles and her mother Dorothy was a housewife. She graduated from Maine South High School in 1965 and matriculated at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She briefly served as the president of the Wellesley College Republicans (a woman after Karl Rove's heart!), but joined the Democratic Party shortly after graduating as valedictorian of her class in 1969. She was the first student to deliver a commencement address at Wellesley, a speech which was chronicled in Life Magazine.

Rodham entered Yale Law School in 1969, where, while working on a number of liberal causes including, among others, Senator Walter Mondale's sub-committee on migrant workers, she met a young, dashing law student by the name of Bill Clinton. The two were married in 1975, two years after Hillary received her J.D. from Yale. The couple moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Hillary joined the Rose Law Firm and Bill ran for and won the state governership in 1978. Hillary was the first woman to be made a full partner at Rose in 1979, and after Bill suffered his only electoral setback in 1980, the couple returned to the governor's mansion in 1982, where they would remain until 1992. Hillary gave birth to her only child, Chelsea, on February 27th, 1980 (who may or may not be Bill's only child, depending which right-wing conspiracy theorist you talk to). Hillary continued to work for the Rose Law Firm throughout her tenure as Arkansas' First Lady.

Of course, Hillary became the First Lady of the United States when Bill was elected to the presidency in 1992 and again in 1996. Though she worked on many of the traditional issues tackled by First Ladies, such as women's rights and children's issues, Hillary broke significant new ground with her assignment to head the president's Task Force on National Health Care Reform. This assignment proved to be a debacle, as the Task Force issued a confusing and complex plan that failed to gain support in Congress. Hillary was not asked to participate publicly on any substantive issue after this, although she was surely President Clinton's closest and most trusted adviser throughout his two terms in office, which wound down shortly after the infamous Monica Lewinsky sex scandal broke in 1998.

Ever the pioneer, Hillary became the first First Lady to seek, and then to obtain, a Senate seat, winning the 2000 race to replace Daniel Patrick Moynihan in New York, after she and Bill had purchased a house in Chappaqua, NY in tony Westchester County earlier that year. Certainly, Mrs. Clinton's grace and wrought-iron determination amid the Lewinsky scandal played an enormous role in engendering sympathy with New York State voters. During her Senate tenure, Hillary has focused primarily on Homeland Security, especially after the 9/11 attacks occurred in her state, and has continued her interest in universal health care. Politically, Clinton has spent much of the past six years employing her husband's famous "triangulation" strategy, taking policy positions significantly to the right of her supposed liberal constituency while still maintaining favor with that constituency. She was a strong advocate of the war in Afghanistan, voted to authorize force in Iraq (although recently she has been critical of the Bush administration's execution of the war), and has allied herself with noted conservative bomb thrower and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on improving access to medical records. Mrs. Clinton is running for a second term in the Senate in 2006, and appears to be a shoo-in, although it was reported just today that Rove may be helping the current Republican front-runner, Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, which surely sent a shiver down Mrs. Clinton's spine. Karl Rove could have made Jeffrey Dahmer a viable candidate for County Coroner.

Scandal has not evaded Mrs. Clinton nor merely been confined to her husband. In 1979, Mrs. Clinton managed to turn a $1,000 investment in cattle futures into a $100,000 profit with the help of her friend James Blair. This amazing return prompted charges of hidden bribery, none of which were substantiated. In 1993, several long-time employees of the White House Travel Office were fired and allegedly replaced with Clinton cronies. Mrs. Clinton was implicated in the firings, in a scandal known as "TravelGate", but special prosecutor Robert Ray could not find conclusive evidence that she was involved. Also, White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster committed suicide on July 20th, 1993, a death that numerous conspiracy wackos have attempted to tie to the Clintons, and specifically to Hillary, after it was alleged that files related to the Senate Special Whitewater Committee had been removed from Foster's office on Hillary's orders. And of course there was the Whitewater scandal itself, in which the Clintons were involved in a land speculation deal in Arkansas in 1978. After a $40 million investigation, the Clintons were cleared of any wrongdoing, although the probe did manage to unearth Bill's dalliance with an intern.

Hillary has written several books, including her best-selling 2003 autobiography "Living History". She received a Grammy for the audiobook version of her 1996 book, "It Takes A Village:And Other Lessons Children Teach Us". She is famously a New York Yankees fan, despite her Midwestern upbringing.

Can she win in 2008? The Democratic nomination seems eminently reachable. I don't see another Democrat with near her name recognition, charisma, and campaign apparatus. John Edwards, Al Gore, and John Kerry have all been rejected either by the party or the full electorate or both, making it unlikely that the Democrats will try to recycle them. Evan Bayh is a new face, but as such he has a long way to go to catch up to Mrs. Clinton's almost rock-star status. As for the general election, it seems unlikely that a polarizing figure such as Hillary could out-poll her own husband, who in both 1992 and 1996 failed to receive a majority of the popular vote. In addition, her nomination would unleash a smear/whisper campaign by her rabid opponents the likes of which the republic has never seen nor will likely see again.