Everyone seems to be drinking the Kool-Aid when it comes to Hillary Clinton’s prospective presidential campaign in 2008. True believers on both sides are getting swept up in the news cycle that has Senator Clinton leading the Democratic pack three years before the next presidential election.

Republican blood is boiling at the thought of their domestic devil getting a clear shot at the White House: it is the showdown that right-wing radio has been praying for since its conception.

Democrats are so giddy at the prospect of a Clinton restoration that they are lining up like lemmings to join the campaign without bothering to ask whether it might pull the Democratic Party over a cliff.

Recent polls showing Senator Clinton receiving a 69% job approval rating from her current constituents indicates that she has impressed many skeptical New Yorkers – including some Republicans – with her largely centrist record and conciliatory approach in the U.S. Senate. Our state’s voters have never tossed an incumbent Democratic senator out of office, and Republicans have been having a tough time finding a competitive candidate to run against her in 2006. So her steps to the right on issues ranging from abortion to immigration, her service on the Armed Services committee, and steady support of the War in Iraq suggest she is already aiming to impress a larger audience. Add to this internal triangulation the rock star treatment she still receives in partisan Democratic circles, and you get an impression of nomination inevitability.

But beyond the politics of celebrity, the fact remains that Mrs. Clinton is among the most polarizing figures in American politics, if not in all of contemporary American life. Conservatives may have turned hating her into a cottage industry, but a large number of Democrats and Independents don’t much like the prospects of a President Hillary Clinton either.

Speaking at the 92nd Street Y last month, Democratic fund-raiser and Hollywood powerbroker David Geffen raised a few eyebrows when he committed the cardinal sin of politics: he told the truth. “She can’t win, and she’s an incredibly polarizing figure,” he told the audience. “And ambition is just not a good enough reason.” Lloyd Grove of the Daily News reported that the audience subsequently broke out into “hearty applause.”

The 92nd Street Y provides about as close to hometown crowd for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential candidacy as is imaginable – the district leads the nation in Democratic donations. When rounds of “hearty applause” spontaneously break out after listening to a dissing the Democratic front-runner, it is not good news for the Clintons. The fact that her critic in this case was the most vivid stereotype of a Blue-State elitist – a gay billionaire Hollywood producer – that any beady-eyed televangelist could have conjured up is evidence of a broad group of increasingly disaffected Democrats.

The Democratic Party may prove unable to resist the combination of Mrs. Clinton’s celebrity, her liberal credentials, and the influence of their party icon, President Bill Clinton. But her nomination would show a startling lack of a learning curve among Democrats.

Politics is perception, and her recent record not withstanding, Mrs. Clinton remains associated with most the liberal elements of the Democratic Party. There is some reason for this: as the dependable American Almanac of American Politics describes, during Yale Law School “she worked with the attorney for Black Panthers accused of murder and clerked for a summer with Communist attorney Robert Treuhaft in Berkeley.” During the Clinton administration she was seen by liberals as a counterweight to her husband’s more centrist instincts, and now as senator she represents what is regarded as the heart of Blue-State America. The first female president is far more likely to be in the mold of Margaret Thatcher than someone perceived to be a liberal feminist activist.

The Democrats would do far better to nominate a ticket that attempts to balance negative associations behind the party with candidates from the heart of Red-State America such as Senator Byah of Indiana, former Senator Edwards of North Carolina, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, former Senator Kerrey of Nebraska, or Governor Mark Warner of Virginia.

Democrats need to take a deep breath and ask themselves whether the emotional satisfaction of a Hillary Clinton candidacy would be in their long-term best interests, or whether another rejection of a liberal candidate from the Northeast could mean the end of their party. After all, before southern centrist Bill Clinton became the first Democratic president re-elected since FDR, the Democratic Party had lost three consecutive presidential elections by more than 40 states. Losing another three consecutive presidential elections would compound those losses. It is true that the Democrats have been much competitive in the recent presidential elections than they were during the Mondale-Dukakis era, but nominating the most polarizing figure in American politics to be the party standard bearer is not the wisest way for a party to revive itself.

A word of caution to Republicans who assume that a Hillary nomination would amount to an automatic GOP coronation in 2008: Our country is closely enough divided that it is not impossible to envision a scenario where Mrs. Clinton squeaks into the White House. The Marist Poll shows that the Republican candidates who most clearly beat Mrs. Clinton are also the most centrist – front-runners Mayor Giuliani and Senator McCain. On the other hand, a Fox News poll shows that Mrs. Clinton’s star power could successfully defeat a bland establishment conservative candidate such as Senate Majority Leader Frist.

The 2008 presidential election has the potential to realign American politics. If Mrs. Clinton is the Democrats’ nominee, the polarization of domestic politics will get even worse, as professional partisans cast the election as an Armageddon-type battle between the far left and right. For all her centrist strategy, Mrs. Clinton will have a far easier time winning her Democratic primary than the general election, and that is always a sign of a candidate with a limited ability to reach out and unite the nation.