(Will) Time to rethink Hillary Clinton 2016

The Washington Post ^ | November 7, 2014 | George Will

[2ndDivisionVet]

Now that two of the last three Democratic presidencies have been emphatically judged to have been failures, the world’s oldest political party — the primary architect of this nation’s administrative state — has some thinking to do. The accumulating evidence that the Democratic Party is an exhausted volcano includes its fixation with stale ideas, such as the supreme importance of a 23rd increase in the minimum wage. Can this party be so blinkered by the modest success of the third recent presidency, Bill Clinton’s, that it will sleepwalk into the next election behind Hillary Clinton?

In 2016, she will have won just two elections in her 69 years, the last one 10 years previously. Ronald Reagan went 10 years from his second election to his presidential victory at age 69, but do Democrats want to wager their most precious possession, the presidential nomination, on the proposition that Clinton has political talents akin to Reagan’s?

In October, Clinton was campaigning, with characteristic futility, for Martha Coakley, the losing candidate for Massachusetts governor, when she said: “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” Watch her on YouTube. When saying this, she glances down, not at a text but at notes, and proceeds with the hesitancy of someone gathering her thoughts. She is not reading a speechwriter’s blunder. When she said those 13 words, she actually was thinking....

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Can this party be so blinkered by the modest success of the third recent presidency, Bill Clinton’s, that it will sleepwalk into the next election behind Hillary Clinton?

George Will must be giddy - dismissing Clinton is foolish and he's going to regret writing this piece. Clinton will be selling the usual Democratic Party cant, she's arrogant, an insufferable bore and an uninspiring public speaker, and she's got no record of any substantive accomplishment in public life.

And so what? All of those things are word-for-word descriptions of Barack Obama in 2008. Like Obama, Clinton will be positioned as an epochal figure, a member of a supposedly oppressed group who has a chance to make history by her election to the presidency. She'll get the women's vote, only question is by how much. She will have the media working long and hard on her behalf, any attack on her positions, views or statements will be treated as an attack on all women, and liberals will project all sorts of nonsensical liberal fantasies onto her, just as they did with Obama. Bill will be back in his element, getting Hillary through SNL appearances, Jon Stewart appearances, Steven Colbert appearances, and he'll also be reminding chastened Democratic Party bigwigs that he told them so about Obama in 2008.

And her opponent is not likely to be a fresh Tea Party face with bold conservative ideas and the charisma to get people thinking about those ideas. It's likely to be Bush or Christie - non-conservative, ashamed of their conservative base, determined to prove to the imaginary "Democrat-Lite" voting bloc that they're not so different from Hillary and just as boring.

[campaignPete R-CT]

No. Hillary won’t sell in the Heartland at all.

I recall the “excitement” of Bill Clinton ‘92 across the Midwest ... he was new on the scene.

Obama ... he was new on the scene.
Jimmy Carter ... he was new on the scene, and voters already had tired of him by November. He barely hung on.

Hillary will be a disaster for the DEMs. New on the scene? Anyone with any sense in that party knows she’s a mess, but do they have the constituency to stop her?

Somebody else will be the nominee. O’Malley, Cuomo, Warner (?) Take a guess. Not Warren. Whoever has the scrappiness the go to Iowa and NH and beat her.

[Cowboy Bob]

Can someone please remind me of Clinton’s “landslide” victories in ‘92 and ‘96? /sarc

[monocle]

If Hillary is nominated, her choice of a running mate might well doom her election from the start because of Hillary’s age and her publically known health problems.

[cynwoody]

George Will must be giddy - dismissing Clinton is foolish and he's going to regret writing this piece. Clinton will be selling the usual Democratic Party cant, she's arrogant, an insufferable bore and an uninspiring public speaker, and she's got no record of any substantive accomplishment in public life.

If she's what you say she is, and she is, then George got it right.

While trying to out-commie Elizabeth Warren, the fake affirmative-action Injun, who was present at the speaking event, Hillary told us business doesn't create jobs. That's going to be a tough one to live down.

[urbanpovertylawcenter]

Brought to You by Ross Perot? The 43% clinton landslide of 92!

And a distracted, bored, wrist watching Bush 41. Do not forget the fawning prestitutes.

[muir_redwoods]

"Why did Democrats think they would be helped by luring anxious and disappointed young people out of basements and into voting booths?"

That's a pretty good question right there.

[muir_redwoods]

Hillary is the democrat Bob Dole. 2016 is “her turn”.

[Sacajaweau]

Bubba was all about the women’s vote (aka the sheep) and being the first black President.

[Alberta's Child]

You forget that Hillary Clinton was thrown under the bus in 2008 by Democrats.

I don't think they've ever trusted the Clintons since the 1994 "Republican Revolution," and I'm pretty sure the party base will have serious reservations about putting up a white candidate who is nearly 70 years old and whose career includes a stint on the Wal-Mart board of directors.

[oldplayer]

Geek,
I wish . . . Oh, how I wish! that I could disagree with you.
Oldplayer

[MNDude]

Entitlement candidates rarely do well...look at the GOP. Then again, that’s what they’ll probably select as well.

[Texicanus]

No thanks, Hillary is a retread. She’s going to try to tell you again what big government can do for you and what you can’t do for yourself. She may appear to shed her socialist stripes, but underneath she is still the same old Hillary. She will lie like Obama to win the prize and then it will be deja vu with a vengeance. Let us take the advice of the elder President Bush, “Not now, wouldn’t be prudent”.

As a Texan, I cannot name one thing the Clintons, especially Hillary, has accomplished for us and America except to make us wary of big government and its overreach into our lives.

Older Texans still remember the sight of smoke and the burning of the Branch Davidian religious compound near Waco. That is where the federal government and local authorities, under the mistaken belief that federal firearms laws had been violated, laid siege for 51 days between February 28 and April 19, 1993. It ended with an FBI assault during which the compound burned down in a fiery inferno of flames, burning flesh, and exploding ammunition, killing 77 people inside. To my knowledge, there has been no actual evidence of violation presented and no one from the administration has ever been held accountable. The Clinton administration demonstrated to Texans and other states what government can do for you.

I think Hillary’s administration would not hesitate to use federal force over states rights, if it came down to it. The old saying “Once burned, twice shy” may be more than applicable in her case.

[Gaffer]

.....and she's got no record of any substantive accomplishment in public life.

Well, one could consider being a very accomplished liar something substantive. :0)

[gunnyg]

yeah, see hillary and waco massacre..................

[Excellence]

the world’s oldest political party — the primary architect of this nation’s administrative state —

The Founders did not design an administrative state.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

The moonbats want a rabble-rousing, blank-slate messiah, and Hillary “Sir Edmund” Clinton ain’t it. She has no charisma. Fauxahontas is the next Carter/Clinton/Dean/Obama.

[Excellence]

: “She is smart, tough and savvy and has a capacity to learn from failure and adjust. But . . . people are bored of her and feel like she has been talking at them forever. . . . She is a dull, grating, inauthentic, over-eager, insipid elitist with ideological blinders yet no particular vision and is likely to be reduced to running on a dubious promise of experience and competence while faking idealism and hope — a very common type of presidential contender in both parties, but one that almost always loses.”

George will quoting Yuval Levin, and a well-targeted jab.

[Caipirabob]

I don't think they've ever trusted the Clintons since the 1994 "Republican Revolution," and I'm pretty sure the party base will have serious reservations about putting up a white candidate who is nearly 70 years old and whose career includes a stint on the Wal-Mart board of directors.

Between the Clintons and the absolute disaster wrought on them by obama, I image that most rape-crisis centers in liberal areas are being overwhelmed..."Sir, technically what happened isn't what you think happened..."