That's MY Senator, Dammit!

Kevin Drum wants to know what's up with all the constant speculation on Hillary Rodham Clinton: will she run for President, will she stay out of the race, and why is it that every utterance by her or by her husband is interpreted by many on the right as a calculated maneuver in her and her husband's long-standing conspiracy to return to power.

I doubt she'll run in 2004. If she ever runs at all, I expect it to be either in 2008 (if next year's Democratic nominee loses) or 2012 (if next year's nominee wins). My thinking here is that Clinton wants to build up a record of her own in the Senate (where I generally think she's doing a good job, although I'd like to see some more pork in Buffalo, to be quite honest) and put some distance of time between her and her years as First Lady. Even then, I suspect that the stars are simply aligned that Hillary Clinton is more likely to become a person of enormous influence in the Democratic Party, but probably never actually President.

I know that the mere mention of Mrs. Clinton's name sends many on the right into fury, which I don't understand, but there it is. I can certainly understand the antipathy to the most visible national figure on the opposite side of the political aisle, but the hatred of Hillary seems to go deeper than that, at least in my perception. A typical comparison is that she's rather like Ted Kennedy, a figure to be revered on the left but who will never ascend to higher office because of dirty laundry. But that baffles me: no charge of "dirty laundry" has ever actually stuck or been proven true, and she was a victim of the one bit of dirty laundry that stuck to her husband. And the Ted Kennedy comparison doesn't work, to me, because - - well, Mrs. Clinton never did anything that left anyone dead. (I take it as given that Vince Foster really did kill himself.)

Anyway, my reaction to all the Hillary Clinton speculation is a mixture of "Why?" and "Who cares?"