She won’t go away.
That’s what Democrats say about Hillary Clinton going into the midterms on November 6. Some are worried her high profile will harm the party’s chances of taking back the U.S. House of Representatives.
But beyond that, another possibility could be equally worrisome: That she wants another shot at The Donald in 2020.
Chances “Not Zero”
Last week, in its report that Clinton is “not going away — and Democrats aren’t sure what to do about it,” Politico quoted one of her top apple polishers, Philippe Reines.
“It’s curious why Hillary Clinton’s name isn’t in the mix — either conversationally or in formal polling — as a 2020 candidate,” he told Politico. “She’s younger than Donald Trump by a year. She’s younger than Joe Biden by four years. Is it that she’s run before? This would be Bernie Sanders’ second time, and Biden’s third time. Is it lack of support? She had 65 million people vote for her.”
Actually, Clinton’s name is “in the conversation,” given her ubiquity on the talk circuit and television, not to mention her super Pac, Onward Together, as The New American noted in early July.
Democrats might not want Clinton as a campaign surrogate, as Politico reported, but Reines averred that “there’s no one in the Democratic Party who has anywhere near a base of 32 million people. That’s multiples of what a Sanders or a Warren have.”
Reines said Clinton can’t be dismissed because she lost in 2016: “Chalking the loss up to her being a failed candidate is an oversimplification,” Reines said. “She is smarter than most, tougher than most, she could raise money easier than most, and it was an absolute fight to the death.”
Will Clinton run? “It’s somewhere between highly unlikely and zero,” he told the webzine, “but it’s not zero.”
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon doesn’t agree. The man who helped put Trump in the White House thinks Clinton will run and should run.
“She’s a lion in winter,” he told Politico, referring to the aging English King Henry II, who in the twilight of his life worried that none of his three sons was worthy of the throne. Other than Clinton, who can the party offer as a serious candidate?
“Not only is she running, she should run. In the Democratic Party, the question is can anybody throw a punch or take a punch, and one thing we know about Hillary Clinton is she can take a punch.”
Writing in the New York Post, Michael Goodwin elaborated on Bannon’s assessment.
“So let us run through the parade of likely applicants, starting in the Senate: Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand,” he wrote. “Anybody stand out?… None strikes me as a heavyweight contender who could lead the party and go toe-to-toe with Trump.”
Goodwin continued: “Sanders is running on vapors, Booker is a lightweight who embarrassed himself with the Spartacus shtick and Gillibrand is a do-nothing hack,” while “Warren imploded with her disastrous DNA test. Her silly repetition of the now-disproven claim that she has significant Native American ancestry opens her to endless ridicule and further diminishes her already narrow appeal.”
Other possibilities, Goodwin wrote, are Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Not to mention three more possibles from New York: Gotham Mayor Bill de Blasio, Gov. Mario Cuomo and anti-gun fanatic and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“The list, then, is long, varied and growing — but not compelling,” wrote Goodwin. “Clinton, despite her enormous flaws and two presidential defeats, can’t be ruled out as the party’s best hope.”
Please, Hillary, Shut Up
Whatever Clinton’s plans for 2020, more than a few leftists are concerned that she won’t shut up now, during the run-up to the midterms.
The New York Times’s Michelle Cottle concluded that “someone needs to perform an intervention before she further complicates life for her fellow Democrats,” particularly given her comment that her husband’s lubricious turn with Monica Lewinsky was not an abuse of his power because she was an adult.
But beyond that, Clinton “remains broadly unpopular.”
With Republicans threatening to make the Democrats “own her,” the message to Clinton from Cottle and those of her ilk?
Shut up!
Photo: AP Images
