Must be Clinton voodoo

IT IS AN odd article of faith among conservatives that Hillary Clinton is a sure-fire lock to win the Democratic presidential nomination. You can hardly turn on Fox News without hearing some pundit assure viewers that Clinton is the runaway favorite. But this belief says more about them than it does about her. The belief in her invincibility is a product of their deepest fears.

After all, it’s not as though conservatives think that Clinton is a brilliant, natural politician. Nobody does -- as a backslapper and as a public speaker, she’s decidedly average. When they try to talk about why Clinton inevitably will roll over her primary competition, they usually invoke the dreaded “Clinton machine.” A recent Wall Street Journal editorial, for instance, asserted that Clinton is the clear favorite but offered little evidence to support this other than the existence of “those Clinton legions -- of fundraisers, union chiefs, party bosses, think tank operatives, media consultants.”

Conservatives rarely make clear exactly how this dreaded machine is supposed to mow down the competition. Other candidates have fundraisers, union supporters, media consultants and the like.

Is the idea that Clinton’s team is so battle-tested from her husband’s presidency that it knows how to play the game far better than the competition? It’s a plausible theory, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working out that way.

A week ago, South Carolina state Sen. Robert Ford, a Clinton supporter, declared that having a black man at the top of the Democratic Party would doom the entire ticket. That, of course, was just the thing Barack Obama wanted -- a chance to stand up for the right of African Americans to run for president. “When folks were saying, ‘We’re going to march for our freedom,’ they said, ‘You can’t do that,’ ” he said in his next speech. “When somebody said, ‘You can’t sit at the lunch counter.... You can’t do that.’ ” It was the highlight of Obama’s speech, all thanks to a blundering attack by a Clinton surrogate.

Then there is the continuing controversy surrounding Clinton’s 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war. Clinton’s advisors have apparently decided that she will never apologize for the vote, as doing so would make her look weak in the general election. Which may be true, except that her war vote is hounding her everywhere she goes, the first primaries are nearly a year away and the war keeps getting worse.

So Clinton looks extremely vulnerable. Why do so many conservatives insist that she’s a lock to get the nomination?

A few of them have a strong vested interest in the Hillary Clinton boogeyman. There’s an enormous amount of money to be made in scaring the pants off of conservatives about Clinton. Last year, conservative pundit John Podhoretz published the fear-mongering screed “Can She Be Stopped?” “Hillary Rodham Clinton will become the next president of the United States unless you Republicans can find a way to stop her,” he warned. I’m guessing the way of stopping her involved, among other things, buying Podhoretz’s book.

The bigger factor, I think, is that conservatives are spooked by the Clintons. They had Bill Clinton on the ropes when they took control of Congress after the 1994 elections. He beat back their revolution. They had him again a few years later when they caught him with his pants down and made his misbehavior a theme of the 1998 midterm elections. Instead, Democrats won seats.

In the Republican mind, there must have been some sort of Clinton voodoo at work. The public was on their side, they believe, yet through some sort of nefarious dark political art, he turned the tables on them.

The conservative hatred of the Clintons has always had around the edges a certain fear of the supernatural. A famous 1993 American Spectator cover story depicted Hillary Clinton as a witch. A witch is an object of hatred, of course, but also a creature with dark and frightening powers.

In reality, the public never really was on the Republicans’ side. Yes, they gave them control of Congress in 1994, but a majority of Americans opposed the deep cuts in popular social programs that the GOP agenda required. And yes, the public was disgusted by Bill Clinton’s adultery, but a majority likewise opposed impeachment all along. Stopping these wildly unpopular things didn’t require magic or even a fearsome political machine.

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jchait@latimescolumnists.com