Here’s how the argument in favor of a Hillary candidacy goes: She has already been through two winning presidential campaigns. She has unrestricted access to the best Democratic strategist on planet Earth. As soon as she declared her candidacy, an infrastructure would immediately shuffle into place around her. And she can raise more money than God. “Can you imagine what Bill Clinton would have done in the Internet age?” asks Joe Trippi, architect of Dean’s grassroots presidential-primary campaign. “Would it have been a quarter of a billion, a half a billion dollars? It’d have put Howard Dean and me to shame. So if you ask who out there would benefit most from this great sea change of grassroots mobilization, it’s Hillary.”

And sure, Hillary’s polarizing, but according to a nationwide Quinnipiac University poll conducted on December 16, George Bush’s negatives are even worse than hers—by six points. According to Opinion Research Associates, a Little Rock polling firm, her approval ratings in the recently red state of Arkansas remained well above 50 percent throughout some of her toughest years in the White House. (In 1998, they were at 65 percent.) In Florida, whose electoral significance need not be explained here, a Quinnipiac poll from December 7 revealed that 45 percent of all respondents wanted to see her run for president—a number that’s ten points ahead of John Kerry, nine points ahead of John Edwards, one point ahead of John McCain (!), 25 points ahead of Arnold Schwarzenegger (assuming the Constitution were changed on his behalf), and only three points behind Rudolph Giuliani (who couldn’t win the Republican nomination anyway, though he’ll probably be so rich by 2008 that he could finance his own race as an independent).

And in New York, Hillary is certainly no longer Nurse Ratched. She has managed to transform her approval ratings from 36 percent (April 2000) to 65 percent (last week). Among married women, her most surprising problem-constituency in 2000, her numbers are now at 64 percent. The latest Quinnipiac polls even show she’d beat Rudy if he ran against her for Senate in 2006. Rope lines don’t bother her now; she’s more relaxed around the press. Pete King remembers going to a new-firehouse dedication with her not long after September 11. “I’m sure most of those guys voted for Bush,” he says. “But by the time the event was over, there were more flashbulbs going off . . . One on one, she’s very engaging.”

“The truth is it is different running against a woman. the language is not the same. I’ve seen folks run against women as if there’s no difference. And it comes off bad.”
—George Allen, Senator (R)

It’s also important to remember: In 1980, Democrats were praying Reagan would run in the Republican primary, believing he was too conservative. They were wrong. In 2000, they were thrilled that a man as seemingly vacuous and inexperienced as George W. Bush was on the ticket. That didn’t work out so well either.

“A lot of my colleagues dream of running against her,” says Ed Gillespie, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “I’m not one of them. I still think we beat her, but she’s very smart, and she’d be a viable woman candidate for president, and that’s a different dynamic—a lot of women and small-business owners who’d be inclined toward the Republican nominee could take a second look and say, ‘Maybe we should have a woman president.’ ”

Campaigning against a woman can also be an interesting exercise in minefield-walking. Just ask Rick Lazio. Or George Allen, the Virginia governor turned senator who has twice run against female candidates (and just stepped down as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee). “The truth is, it is different running against a woman,” he says. “The phraseology is not the same, the language is not the same. You need to be a gentleman, but you can’t just let them flat run over you either. I’ve seen folks run against women as if there’s no difference. And it comes off bad.”

I’ll admit it. When I began writing this story, I dismissed Hillary-in-’08 supporters as utterly deranged. I chalked up their enthusiasm as sheer liberal folly—the folly of a party that never learns, the folly of a party that manages to self-immolate quadrennially. But I’ve since come to understand their enthusiasm. You can see how Hillary could thread the needle of the Electoral College, pulling along just enough people to carry Arkansas, Florida, New Mexico. She’s astoundingly disciplined. She knows how to deflect the bad and the ugly. And she’s one of those people who (like her colleague Chuck Schumer) are so hell-bent on getting what they want that it’s hard to imagine them failing.