"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reminds me a lot of Dukakis."

Jim Pinkerton writes:

In '88, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was leading the Democratic White House hopefuls. On April 12, he debated his remaining Democratic rivals in Manhattan. One of them, Sen. Al Gore, mentioned the Massachusetts prison furlough plan that Dukakis had defended. Under that particular program, criminals - even murderers sentenced to life in prison without parole - had been granted, Gore noted critically, "weekend passes." But Dukakis dismissed Gore: "Al, the difference between you and me is that I have run a criminal justice system. You haven't."...

[Dukakis] had been fatally wounded, politically, by Gore... he just didn't know it....

Pinkerton himself, as director of research for the George H.W. Bush campaign, worked on keeping the weekend passes issue alive, and it destroyed Dukakis.

...Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton reminds me a lot of Dukakis. As he was two decades ago, she's from a big state, has a lot of money, is ahead in the polls - and she's been grievously injured. This time, the issue isn't prison furloughs, but driver's licenses for illegal immigrants in her "home" state of New York. Clinton has broadly defended Gov. Eliot Spitzer's unpopular plan, even as most New Yorkers have reviled it....

This issue, like the weekend passes issue, resonates deeply with the voting public, "but not inside the 'nominating wing' of the Democratic Party":

So once again, Republicans are sniffing political blood.