Mark Warner: Hillary Clinton Not Inevitable

For the first time since speculation about the 2008 presidential race began to heat up, a Democratic contender is openly questioning whether Hillary Clinton can win the White House.

"I think Senator Clinton can be competitive across the country, but I think one of the things we as a party are going to have to do is look at the ideas on how we get the country back on the right track," former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner told NY1 News on Wednesday, in quotes picked up by the New York Times.

"Simply having anger at Bush or his administration isn't going to get us there," the Virginia Democrat added, in comments that sounded like a thinly veiled reference to Mrs. Clinton's frequent attacks on the White House.

The former first lady has predicted that Bush will go down as the "worst president in history," and has suggested that he tricked her into voting for the Iraq war by cherry-picking intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

But Warner said Democrats would need to do more than generate negative noise about the Bush administration, and urged his party to look beyond Mrs. Clinton's star power.

"We need to not simply look at the personality, but look at the ideas," he said.

"I find all across the country there is a real sense that what we as Democrats have to do is not simply be competitive in 16 or 17 states, but actually have candidates that can win all across the country."

Despite her frontrunning status in every Democratic presidential survey since 2002, Mr. Warner told NY1 that Mrs. Clinton was not the presumptive Democratic nominee.