Posted on 06/10/2015 4:32:33 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Almost exactly two months after Hillary Rodham Clinton’s official announcement that she’s running for president, she will give her first “official campaign announcement speech,” on June 13, according to her Twitter account.
In other words, the Clinton campaign wants a do-over. Her first rollout was the most disastrous nonfatal presidential campaign debut in modern memory, so she wants another.
Her initial announcement video in April — which most outlets accurately reported as her official announcement — was well done. After that, everything went downhill; a steady stream of news stories and damning allegations about her family foundation and tenure as secretary of state has dogged her almost daily.
Her best moment since announcing was when she was captured on grainy security video at an Ohio Chipotle franchise buying a burrito bowl. ABC News and MarketWatch dubbed it an “adventure.” Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin explained that Clinton’s excellent adventure was “fun” and “new.” “We’ve never seen her get a burrito before.”
Put “Burrito Day” in the win column.
In the loss column: plummeting poll numbers. In March she enjoyed a 15-percentage-point lead over Jeb Bush, according to a CNN poll. She had roughly similar double-digit leads over Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Scott Walker.
Those leads have nearly evaporated. Bush, whose rollout has also been less than stellar, now trails Clinton by eight percentage points, according to CNN (but only by three, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll). Walker and Rubio are three percentage points behind her and Paul is one.
Worse, the public is souring on her, like a carton of milk left out in the sun. More Americans now view her unfavorably rather than favorably (50 percent to 46 percent), her worst polling performance in 14 years. Fifty-seven percent believe she is untrustworthy, and fewer than half (47 percent) said she cares about people like them. Remember back in 2008 when her image took a beating in her bruising primary fight with Barack Obama? Her image is worse today.
She reminds me of Fred Thompson in 2008 or Rick Perry in 2012. Her best day in the polls was the day before she announced.
But fear not, the Clinton campaign has conveniently found a strategy that says none of this matters very much.
She reminds me of Fred Thompson in 2008 or Rick Perry in 2012. Her best day in the polls was the day before she announced. Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman report in the New York Times that the Clinton team has turned its back on a “nationwide electoral strategy,” opting instead to reassemble the Obama coalition of 2008 and 2012. To do that, Clinton needs to run to the left and pick polarizing fights that galvanize low-information and hard-to-motivate voters.
The days of trying to win swing voters and independents are apparently over. Today it’s all about that base. “The highest-premium voter in ’92 was a voter who would vote for one party some and for another party some,” James Carville, a longtime adviser to the Clintons, told the New York Times. “Now the highest-premium voter is somebody with a high probability to vote for you and low probability to turn out. That’s the golden list. And that’s a humongous change in basic strategic doctrine.”
Carville’s right that it is a big change in doctrine, but it’s unclear whether the doctrine is right. So far the entire theory rests on the precedent of one candidate: Obama. “If she won,” Martin and Haberman write, “it would suggest that the so-called Obama coalition of young, nonwhite and female voters is transferable to another Democrat.”
As I’ve been writing for a while, I’m extremely dubious. Here are four reasons. First, Obama didn’t really run as a polarizing figure in 2008. He ran as a post-partisan reformer who would end gridlock and fix the failures of the two-term incumbent (as did George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him).
Second, Obama was a very good politician without much baggage (that the media were willing to report on). Clinton is a mediocre politician with mountainous baggage. Third, Obama’s coalition has never been transferable to any other cause or politician, despite the president’s best efforts. And last, Clinton is running to stay the course.
The Obama veterans around Clinton boast of their willingness to break with the practices of the past. But it looks more like they can’t break out of their own Obama bubble, running the same plays for a very different quarterback.
— Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review.
It does appear that the stinky old 60s hippy does plan on using the Kenyan’s industrial strength RACE CARD though.
now that’s goin to leave a mark
Leave a mark...on a blue dress? LOL!
I actually DO feel sorry for Monica. What a way to ruin your life. Clinton is SUCH a schmuck USING a young woman that way...and don’t even get me started on his awful WINO. (Wife In Name Only)
We will know she is truly desperate when she comes out in black face...
I don’t feel sorry for Monica. I would not have done what she did at 19. And I was a normal, attractive, outgoing female. I did some goofy things, but Please......
Problems for Team Hillary -
Crackers still make up 70% of the country. You can’t win without white votes.
The high Black turnout for Obama was a one-time (well, two-time) event, because one of “their peeps” was in it. They won’t be so enthusiastic to turn out for a rich honkey beotch.
Plus, she’s gonna have to pander to them on every issue - softer policing, supporting rioting, voter ID, even reparations - all of which will further piss off white voters.
Team Hillary is doomed. Republicans, name your President.
You are correct on Hillary but..
The republicans want to name Jeb. Or at least the GOPe Does..
Jeb will loose. The base will stay home and Hillary will likely win. If she manages to get her own parties nomination.
Welcome, Newbie!
No, it isn't. She isn't "Black" which is the only qualification Barack Obama has.
RE: She isn’t “Black” which is the only qualification Barack Obama has.
Ahh, but she’s a woman, and the USA has never had a woman president yet.
The diversity crowd will insist that we have the “first” this or the “first” that for president.
Heck, eventually, the first gay president or atheist will be on the table.
This is true, but the support for a "Historic first" "black" is far wider and deeper than the support for the first hateful vicious ugly crone.
We will not see massive black turnout in support of Hitlery. She simply doesn't inspire much love among her supporters and without that enthusiasm she won't get much support.
Hillary is a non-threat. We better hope she is the nominee because she will get beaten like a drum.
Thank you Diane in Wisconsin. I appreciate that.
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