The Democratic party needs to embrace open competition for leadership of the party.

[StevieM]

50. This is an unfair characterization of HRC's 2008 presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton was not seen as a future president when she first went to the Senate. She did not have the poll numbers, and she did not have powerful supporters. Then she went out and built up her support among the people. Her poll numbers in early 2005 were surprising, and entirely self-earned.

If Hillary Clinton had not been the front runner by virtue of her poll numbers, she would not have had nearly as many endorsements. And if she was down in the polls, she probably wouldn't have gotten any. By contrast, lots of other candidates get party support even when they are not polling well. Hillary only gets it when she has support from the American people to begin with.

Not that any of this matters too much. There were plenty of powerful people behind Obama from the beginning. He was a heavyweight from day one. And I don't think these supporters made a bit of difference for either Obama or Clinton.

The reason people get away with belittling Hillary's efforts in that race is because she was so successful in the first 9 months of 2007. She ran an incredible campaign and built up a huge lead that she did not originally have. When she lost it, history was rewritten to claim that she had the big lead all along and that it had somehow been gifted to her by the party establishment.