Perhaps she thinks the third time’s the charm, but charmed fellow Democrats are not. Twice-failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Friday that she’d like to be president — though she’s “not even going to think about it until we get through this November 6th election.”
Clinton made the comments during a Friday evening question-and-answer session with Recode Decode’s Kara Swisher. As the Hill reports:
“Do you want to run again?”… Swisher asked….
“No,” Clinton replied quickly, sparking laughter from the audience. But when Swisher pressed her further, she added: “I’d like to be president.”
Clinton went on to say that “there’s going to be so much work to be done” after a Democrat “hopefully” wins the next presidential election.
“The work would be work that I feel very well prepared for having been in the Senate for eight years, having been a diplomat in the State Department,” she said, listing off the qualifications that she often touted during her previous run.
She added that she’s not going to think about a possible run until after the upcoming midterm elections .
This leaves many insider Democrats none too pleased. They want Clinton to run — away from politics. For example, when asked on a March radio show when Clinton will “ride off into the sunset,” Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) replied, “Not soon enough.”
Even Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager, Patty Solis Doyle, piled on. Responding to comments the ex-first lady made at a March conference in Mumbai, India, she said that they’re “not helpful to Democrats going into the midterms and certainly not going into 2020.”
Clinton’s India offense was her boasting that in the 2016 election she “won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product” and that “are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward” — which, translated, could mean “deluded, balkanized, unstable, advancing forward toward a precipice.”
But this was simply another iteration of her campaign-trail “basket of deplorables” gaffe, a pejorative she applied to half of Donald Trump’s supporters.
This itself is merely what happens when leftists go off Teleprompter and their masks drop. Another example was Barack Obama’s saying in 2008 of white, working-class voters in old industrial towns, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
This is condescending and insulting, but it’s what many leftists believe. There are manifold good reasons to support Second Amendment-protected rights and to oppose raw-deal trade deals and, especially, the invasion by euphemistically named “undocumented workers” who really are undocumented Democrats. Yet much like a bad physician claiming that symptoms of a real problem are all in your head, Obama just dismissed the voters’ concerns as a psychological issue, a fit of prejudice-induced pique.
Of course, two sides can’t talk things out if one insists the other’s valid concerns are illusory. This tone-deafness, mind you, is largely why Trump won in 2016.
Yet another caught-with-his-mask-down moment was when New York governor Andrew Cuomo said this summer that “America … was never that great” (video below). He should be pressed for an answer on what country, present or past, has been greater. The reply might be interesting (especially if you could induce another mask drop).
As for Clinton, the feeling among even many Democrats is that she’s yesterday’s news when “new blood” is needed. Truth be known, however, Hillary was socialist before socialism was cool.
As I reported in 2016, “FiveThirtyEight.com wrote last year that based on the OnTheIssues.org scale, ‘She [Clinton] is as liberal as Elizabeth Warren and barely more moderate than [avowed socialist] Bernie Sanders.’ Even more alarming is a testimonial from former Bill Clinton political operative Larry Nichols. He said in 2015 that the first time he met Hillary, she was wearing a medal around her neck stating, ‘Proud member of the American Communist Party’ (video here; forward to 6:07).”
So is it any wonder that Clinton was unofficially but enthusiastically supported in 2016 by the Communist Party USA?
As for her being president of the USA, we probably don’t have to worry. As longtime Clinton watcher Thomas Lifson sagely sums up, “My own take is that she will not run. She’s too sick and too tired. This is mostly an effort to sell tickets to her speaking tour with Bill and keep donations flowing to her slush fund foundation, while Chelsea prepares to launch her own political career.”
Regardless, Democrats will have to worry about Clinton sticking around and sticking her foot in her mouth. For what former Clinton right-hand man Dick Morris said of Bill may apply to Hillary, too. He said that Clinton craves attention, that he’s like a solar panel, warm when the sun is shining but cold when it’s not. If so, I’m sure the GOP’s attitude toward Hillary is: By all means, shine on.
Image: flickr. com / Gage Skidmore
