Nothing unites Republicans like Clinton, says Sullivan

Hillary Clinton has extraordinary negatives, argues Andrew Sullivan, commentator for the Sunday Times and TheAtlantic.com, on the eve of Super Tuesday. "She galvinises the conservative movement in ways no other Democrat can. Against John McCain, she and she alone enables the Republicans to forget their deep internal divisions and unite. Nothing - nothing - unites them as she does."

This, writes Sullivan, explains why in Arizona, Kansas, Missouri, Virginia and Nebraska - states where George Bush has won twice for the Republicans -Democratic governors and senators have been endorsing Barack Obama not Clinton.

"If you're the next generation of Democrat, trying to appeal to the centre of the country, Obama is your candidate," he says. "Clinton takes the party and national politics back to the polarised red-blue ideological past. The danger of this is that if you are someone in the middle - on the purple edge of the red-blue divide - then the polarising nature of Clinton might mean that, if she were the candidate, you might vote Republican. Obama is the salve for this syndrome."

Sullivan argues that the contraction of the Democratic field to just Clinton and Obama has helped the Illinois senator's electability."You could see it at the Clinton-Obama debate last week [see report below]," says Sullivan. "Clinton did not do poorly. All her strengths were on show: the policy mastery, the gaffe-free talking points, the Clinton record in the 1990s. But that made his [Obama's] ease all the more impressive. Most crucial, Obama seemed like a president. In his body language he carefully upstaged her without looking as if her were trying. By the end of the debate he was pulling her chair back for her."

Will Democratic voters realise Obama is their best bet against McCain? Or will inertia and fear keep Clinton's hopes alive? Sullivan concludes: "Never underestimate the capacity of the Democratic party to screw it up."

FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 3, 2008