WI: Hillary Clinton voted against Iraq war

It seems to me a major roadblock to her winning the election is her record of supporting the war and Obama's speech against it. If she had voted against the war her campaign would not be under that cloud and she would have already won the primary.
 
Well… is that the POD?

Because it seems to me Clinton is not the sort of person who would vote against the war. It seems to me that she both believed in going to war, and did so out of political positioning for her Presidential run.

For her to vote against the war would require her to be quite a different person, or for the Democrats of that time period having something resembling a spine so that she could go along with them.


Even assuming she did vote against the war it really doesn't help her as much as you might seem to think. "Progressives" still don't like her, she's still running with the same poor campaign team, and so on.

Does it increase her chances of winning? Absolutely. But it's not some foregone conclusion the way you present it.
 
It depends. It might make a difference if she asks te right questions about the post war plans.
 
It would require her to make the decision that the war will be unpopular by 2007. But that's an unlikely calculation. Consider her reasoning in 2002 and 2003:

If the war in Iraq goes well, I'll need to be seen as having supported it in order to win the 2008 election. If the war goes poorly, the American people will be more inclined to elect a Democrat.

The only risk in voting for the war is another Democrat winning the nomination. Perhaps she was counting on her family's control of the machine and access to money sources, domestic and foreign, to secure the nomination.
 
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