Next up is this take on the race from Fareed Zakaria:
This is the problem with Hillary Clinton. She is highly intelligent, has real experience and is an attractive candidate. But she is terrified to act on her beliefs. In fact, she seems so conditioned by what she sees as political constraints that one can barely tell where her beliefs begin and where those constraints end.
Partly, this is a generational difference. Bill and Hillary Clinton grew up in an era of Republican dominance. For much of the last 30 years, the Republican Party has been the party of ideas (a point made repeatedly by Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Ronald Reagan was seen by much of the country to have rescued America from malaise and retreat. The Clintons' careers have been shaped by the belief that for a Democrat to succeed, he or she had to work within this conservative ideological framework. Otherwise one would be pilloried for being weak on national security, partial to taxes and big government and out of touch with Middle America's social values.For 30 years this has been the right bet. It's why Bill Clinton was the only successful national Democratic politician in that period. But is it still the right wager? Obama has grown up in a different landscape—with vastly different geopolitics, economics and culture. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have been the defining political figures of the recent past. Conservatism has lost its monopoly role. As a result, the new generation is not defensive about its beliefs, nor does it feel trapped into the old categories like hawks versus doves and markets versus taxes.
Vote your hopes, not your fears. We, the people, are the ones who have the final say. If we continue to elect leaders who take conservative dominance for granted, conservatives will continue to dominate. You cannot win a fight if you begin by assuming your opponents have the upper hand.
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