Late last year, many U.S. political analysts believed that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York would easily win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2008. Now, while Senator Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, Senator Clinton is reconsidering her political future.
去年年底，许多美国政治分析人士认为，纽约州参议员希拉里.克林顿能在2008年轻而易举地成为民主党总统竞选提名人。而现在，巴拉克.奥巴马参议员即将成为民主党提名人，而克林顿参议员正在重新考虑自己的政治前途。
After this year's final Democratic primary elections, last Tuesday night, Barack Obama made a speech many people would have thought highly improbable a year ago. "Tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States of America."
上星期二，民主党今年最后一场初选宣告结束。奥巴马参议员晚上发表了一次演说。在一年前，很多人都觉得这是不可能的事情。奥巴马说：“今晚，我能够站在这里说，我将成为民主党的提名人，参加美国总统竞选。”
A short time earlier, Hillary Clinton addressed her supporters. "Now the question is, where do we go from here?" And given how far we have come, and where we need to go as a party, it is a question I do not take lightly," she said.
在奥巴马发表演讲前不久，希拉里.克林顿也对自己的支持者们发表了讲话。她说：“现在的问题是，我们下一步要做什么。考虑到我们已经做了这么多工作，以及我们作为一个政党需要往哪里走，这是一个我必须严肃对待的问题。”
It was not the speech she had hoped to make.
这并不是克林顿所希望讲的话。
As the primaries concluded, Clinton did not concede the Democratic nomination to Obama, but it was apparent that her rival had the support of enough delegates and superdelegates to become the party's nominee.
在初选结束的时刻，克林顿没有在民主党提名人之争上向奥巴马认输。但是，她的对手显然已经获得了成为提名人所需的足够党代表和超级代表的支持。
With the primary season over, political analysts are assessing the factors that caused Senator Clinton's defeat, when her victory had seemed almost certain months earlier.
随着初选的结束，政治分析人士们正在评估是什么原因导致几个月前还几乎志在必得的克林顿参议员最终败给了对手。
That sense of inevitability, both inside and outside the Clinton campaign, may have led to overconfidence, according to University of Virginia political professor Larry Sabato.
美国维吉尼亚大学政治学教授萨巴托认为，也许因为克林顿竞选班子内内外外都觉得她一定会赢，所以导致了克林顿的过分自信。
"They thought they were going to knock Obama and everybody else out of the box with the first few primaries and caucuses, and they were just dead wrong," he said.
他说：“他们以为在最初的几场初选和党内预选中就能把奥巴马和其他人都淘汰出局，在这一点上，他们是大错特错了。”
The seeds of defeat for the Clinton campaign may have been planted as early as 2002, when Senator Clinton voted in favor of waging war in Iraq. Although she later renounced support for the war, that vote may have put Clinton at a disadvantage against Obama, who opposed the war from the start, according to Bruce Miroff, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at Albany.
克林顿竞选失败的种子也许早在2002年就已经种下了。当时，克林顿参议员投票赞成对伊拉克发动战争。美国纽约州立大学阿巴尼分校的政治学教授米罗夫认为，虽然希拉里后来放弃了支持伊拉克战争的立场，但是那次投票也许使她和奥巴马相比处于不利的位置上，因为奥巴马从一开始就反对同伊拉克作战。
"Because Hillary Clinton voted for the resolution in 2002 authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq, there was always the likelihood that there would be a significant anti-war challenger to her in the Democratic primaries, and that a lot of the activist base of the party would rally behind such a challenger. So the premise that Hillary was a kind of inevitable nominee was always questionable," he said.
他说：“由于希拉里.克林顿在2002年投票支持授权布什总统对伊拉克采取军事行动的决议，所以一直都有可能出现一位具有实力的反战者在民主党初选中向她提出挑战，而且民主党的许多活跃人士还会团结在这位挑战者的身后。所以以为希拉里绝对没有问题会被提名的想法一直是有问题的。”
Also, some analysts say Clinton made a mistake by touting her experience at a time in which voters preferred change. Indira Lakshmanan has been covering the campaign as a political correspondent for Bloomberg News.
此外，一些分析人士还说，在选民们希望看到改变的时候，克林顿却在宣扬她从政的经验，这是一个错误。彭博新闻社报导选举的政治记者拉克什曼南说：
"Initially, all of her slogans had to do with experience and readiness, and eventually then it became 'Ready to change, ready to lead.' More and more, there was this evolution in her campaign, trying to then say, 'Wait a second, I am the change agent, I am the person who has the experience to make change happen.' But it was not a nimble enough operation, it seemed, to adapt quickly to, apparently, what the American electorate wanted in this election cycle, which was 'change, change, change,'" she said.
“最初，她所有的口号都是和她的经验和她准备就绪有关，最后她的口号变成了“准备变革，准备领导”。她的竞选越来越出现这样的演变，试图说，‘等一下，我就是变革的力量。我就是有经验，可以实现变革的人。’但是，这个过渡看起来不是太敏捷，很明显没能很快地转变到美国选民所想要的‘变革，变革，再变革’。”
Tactical errors also seem to have played a role in Clinton's failure to win the nomination. Sabato said the Clinton campaign spent too much of its money in trying to win the first contest of the season, the Iowa caucuses, in which Senator Clinton finished third.
战略性错误也是克林顿没有赢得提名的一个因素。政治分析人士萨巴托说，克林顿的竞选班底为了要赢得第一场选举花了太多的钱，那就是爱奥华的党团选举。结果克林顿在那场选举中仅获得第三。
"They spent far too much on Iowa. They probably should have skipped it. John McCain skipped Iowa, and he is the Republican nominee. You can skip Iowa. You can get away with it. They wasted an awful lot of the money that she collected, and she was the fundraising leader at the end of 2007," he said.
However, both Sabato and reporter Lakshmanan believe the Clinton campaign did not try hard enough to win in other states that held caucuses instead of primary elections.
不过，萨巴托和记者拉克什曼南也认为，克林顿在其他举行基层党团选举，而不是初选的州也没有下足够的功夫。
"And it turned out Obama won essentially an insurmountable lead by the middle of February, largely due to his success in caucus states," she said.
拉克什曼南说：“最后的结果是，奥巴马在2月中旬的时候获得了基本上无法超越的领先地位。这在很大程度上是由于他在基层党团选举中的胜利。”
Some problems in the Clinton campaign were beyond the candidate's control. Professor Bruce Miroff says Senator Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, was seen as a skillful politician and a huge asset to the campaign, until he began making unpredictable comments, especially regarding racial issues.
克林顿选举中的另一些问题却是她无法控制的。米罗夫教授说，克林顿参议员的丈夫、前总统比尔.克林顿一直被看成是一个富有经验的政治家，是她竞选中的一笔巨大资产，直到他后来说了一些没有预测的话，特别是在种族问题上。
"So it was assumed by everybody that this was a big advantage for Hillary Clinton. Rather, what we saw was that some of President Clinton's more unruly personal habits stepped on her campaign and caused problems that she certainly did not need," he said.
他说：“几乎所有的人都认为，这是希拉里.克林顿的一个巨大的优势。但是，我们所看到的是，克林顿总统的一些难以控制的个人习惯影响了希拉里的竞选，造成了一些不必要的麻烦。”
Another setback for Clinton was when the delegate-rich states of Florida and Michigan, which may have been likely to support her, were penalized for holding their primaries too early in the year. Due to a compromise, delegates from those two states will receive only a half-vote each at the party convention.
造成克林顿挫败的另一个原因是佛罗里达和密西根这两个拥有众多代表票的州因为太早举行初选遭到惩罚。这两个州很可能是支持克林顿的。根据后来达成的一项妥协方案，这两个州的代表在举行民主党大会时只能拥有一半的投票权。
Despite these factors, Hillary Clinton came closer to winning the Presidency than any other woman in U.S. history. Her bid to become the first President's wife to return to the White House as President herself generated enthusiasm through the entire primary election season, and fell just short in the end, narrowly defeated by the first African-American to win a major-party Presidential nomination.
尽管存在上述的种种因素，希拉里.克林顿比美国历史上任何一位女性都更接近于赢得总统宝座。她争取成为第一个总统夫人返回白宫自己担任总统。这种意向在整个初选季节中激发了选民的热情，只是最后以微弱的劣势输给了美国历史上第一个赢得重要政党总统候选人提名的非洲裔美国人。 |