Posted on 03/12/2015 7:41:38 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hillary will survive her email woes, but scandals serve as tests that show the strengths and weaknesses of politicians. What the email scandal showed is that Hillary lacks her husband’s breezy ability to weather political outrage. Instead her paranoia and resentment combine to make her scandals worse.
Democrats are looking for inspiration, but Hillary couldn’t whip up inspiration on a very special episode of Oprah. The petty resentment that Obama camouflages under a likeable exterior is out in the open.
That’s why the media doesn’t like her. Hillary doesn’t pretend to inspire. She’s running to win.
Obama could have been using a private email server out of Tehran and the media would have dismissed it as a non-issue. Hillary Clinton however is in the middle of a slap fight with the media. The email scandal is a warning that she won’t have a free ride to the nomination. If she wins it, the press corps will protect and serve her. But not until then. And if she falls, the Democratic Party is in big trouble.
Democrats don’t have a lot of non-Hillary options. While the left is pining for Elizabeth Warren to run, and the media’s sudden enthusiasm for Hillary’s emails was prompted by Warren’s hesitancy in even expressing any real interest in running as long as Hillary is inevitable, Warren 2016 remains a fantasy.
Outside the left’s fever swamps, Elizabeth Warren has low name recognition. Name recognition is the only way that Hillary Clinton got this far and Warren has even less charisma than Hillary Clinton. A speech by Warren feels like a lecture. Her public persona careens from outraged to befuddled. Her only advantage is that most people don’t think that she looks like the rich lawyer that she actually is, but that’s because she reminds them of a sour librarian scolding those darn kids making noise in the stacks.
Warren’s routine, fake outrage at the banks that fund her political movement, got old a while back. And she’ll have to tone even the fake outrage down if she wants cash from Warren Buffett. Her only possible reason to run is that if turnout for her next election follows the usual pattern, especially if a Democrat squats in the White House, she may not even be able to keep her seat in the Senate.
While the left’s skill at building a cult of personality around someone you wouldn’t trust to wash your car shouldn’t be underestimated, getting Elizabeth Warren elected tested their limits in Massachusetts. If the Democratic Party gets tied to Warren, it will be betting that it can sell four more years of Obama with Jimmy Carter in a skirt. It would have a better shot at bringing back Dukakis riding in a tank.
And nominating yet another Massachusetts Democrat whose last name isn’t Kennedy is a suicide mission for a party that already crashed and burned with Dukakis and Kerry.
But without Warren or Clinton, the slate looks even worse.
For those on the hard left, there’s always Bernie Sanders’ quixotic campaign to lose to anybody and everybody. Sanders recently said that Obama’s mistake was sitting down and talking to Republicans. That’s like running against Stalin on a platform of more Gulags.
Martin O’Malley, a Maryland governor best known for his rain tax, is still waiting in the wings, either to run for president or to get his ObamaCare site working. If Hillary has to back out, he’s the most likely to emerge as a consensus candidate, not because he’s done anything to deserve it, but because he’s the only Democrat below retirement age who wants the job and doesn’t rant aimlessly at the camera.
Under Obama, Maryland’s bedroom communities became a hive of fabulously wealthy government contractors and employees who want to keep on robbing Americans blind. If Hillary stumbles, he won’t lack for donors. He will however lack for less crucial items such as a personality and accomplishments.
O’Malley jumped on the ObamaCare bandwagon early and often. He came away with a trainwreck, having to entirely scrap his exchange site. Tax increases, including the rain tax, didn’t do much to endear him to anyone in Maryland.
6 out of 10 Maryland Democrats say that O’Malley would not make a good president. If he doesn’t have their support, whose support does he have?
That leaves Jim Webb, a man of unpredictable politics who is loathed by much of the left and ignored by nearly everyone else. Webb might be able to win over some of the working class whites that the party has lost, but the same left that thinks Hillary is practically a Republican and that Obama panders too much to the GOP, would do everything possible to stop him if he ever became a real threat.
Webb could go left. He’s already pushing the left’s income inequality meme in his campaign, but he’s stiff and awkward on that… and on everything else. Barring a major national security crisis in which the Democrats suddenly need someone with credibility who can do the tough talk without a teleprompter, he isn’t likely to rise to the top or even get noticed. Think of Wesley Clark and then forget about him.
Discounting wild cards, like ex-losers Al Gore and John Kerry trying to mount a comeback, or Vermin Supreme’s candidacy suddenly catching fire (he’s running on a platform of fully funding time travel) that just leaves the Democratic Party with Joe Biden.
Yes, Joe Biden.
Biden is good on the campaign trail (and nowhere else) as long as you ignore his inappropriate outbursts and strange behavior. He is also the only non-Clinton candidate in the race with name recognition. Considering that less than half of Democrats know that the earth revolves around the sun, assuming that they can recognize a candidate based on his or her body of work is excessively optimistic.
Biden is nothing if not memorable. And he’s been chomping at the bit. He didn’t take the second banana gig to wander aimlessly around the White House. If Hillary stays in, the real fight will be between these two miserable remnants of a failed administration squabbling over the nomination like two mangy dogs fighting over a lost hot dog. If Hillary drops out, Joe Biden immediately becomes the pack leader.
That’s when the left will pull out all the stops to get Elizabeth Warren into the race, which she’ll lose.
The Democratic Party’s non-Hillary option is Joe Biden. If the Republican Party fails to get its act together, Biden is also America’s non-Hillary option.
Biden has too many obvious and glaring flaws for the Democrats to let him beat Hillary, but without Hillary, it’s going to have a hard time keeping him from dominating a list of obscure candidates. Write off Hillary and the left unites behind Elizabeth Warren, the rest jump behind Martin O’Malley and the media has to go into overdrive to try and destroy Biden before he becomes their party’s nominee.
Either that or they embrace him.
Joe Biden may be a joke, but so is every candidate running. Hillary Clinton is Evita without the sense of style. Elizabeth Warren is a rich lawyer and academic inveighing against the 1 percent. Martin O’Malley had a rain tax. Bernie Sanders is the left-wing alternative that not even the left wants. Al Gore appears to be flirting with yet another presidential run. Biden may be a joke, but at least he knows it.
Biden thinks that he can get the minority vote by riding in on Obama’s coattails and polls suggest that he may be right. On a campaign trail against Bill Clinton, he would lose, but he’ll be campaigning against the same Hillary who was responsible for that awkward and uncomfortable UN email press conference.
And the media likes Biden. It hasn’t fallen in love with him as their new messiah, but it will accept him a lot faster than it will accept Hillary Clinton.
Biden’s loose lips are a liability, but they have yet to cost him anything. His embarrassing debate behavior and any ridiculous thing he says have become part of his brand. By linking his fortune to Obama, Biden became bulletproof. As a running joke, he’s immune from any standards of behavior.
And the real joke is that Biden may end up having the last laugh from the Oval Office.
Who else do they have? Jerry Brown? Mark Warner?
Plus, thanks to Obama, Jimmy is not the worst President that we have ever had any more.
My money is on a Castro. They are the Latino Obamas - commies with thin resumes and above average speech reading abilities.
Hillary! is just a frontman for Bubba, which most donkeys pretty much know instinctively. Sure, she’d push a lot of her own agenda, but when push came to shove, Billy Jeff would call the shots.
So it’s only matter of time before those clowns realize they can rope in the usual donkey party losers by running Moochelle as a stand-in for Obozo (who’s basically just a stand-in for Jarrett anyway).
The goal is to get a republican -any republican- into office right before the fit hits the shan.
Then spend the next 2 or 3 generations running against him, like they did with Hoover and Nixon.
The Democrat nominee will beat Jeb Bush in the election. The Republican Party will nominate Jeb Bush because the Party feels that a catastrophic loss is far better than a conservative win. Our political line u is actually conservatives with no Party against Republicans and Democrats who are actually a single party with Republicans being the junior division. The GOP leaders turning the effective running of the House and the Senate to Reid and Pelosi is a strong indication of that if not actual proof.
That's all true, but the 'style over substance' component is huge with the lefties. One of the only things hussein had going for him.
For whatever my prediction is worth, I would wager that it’s Al Gore.
Republicans will win no matter who gets the nomination, Jeb Bush included, and the Republicans will barely keep hold of the Senate. Since this is the election when by far the most Republicans are vulnerable, the result will be a near-lock on majorities in House, Senate and White House for all 4 years of the Republican president.
Much will get done. It will not all be to conservatives’ liking.
You know, I think there must be a very good reason that the Dems do not have a line of candidates. I wonder if they know the feces is about to hit the air movement device and don’t want to be at the helm when it does.
Of course they have an option: President For Life Barack Hussein Obama.
It will to be someone who is down for the shtruggle.
Seek, you make an excellent point. Think about past dem candidates that were “inevitable”. Muskie in `72; Teddy in `76; Gary Hart in `88, Richard Gephardt in `92 and Hillary in `08.
Long way to the nomination folks. Just who is lurking in the weeds for the dems?
I’m sure the DNC has a long list of hard line socialists they only have to sell them to the sheep.
Great writing, and sadly correct....
Warren? Going after the Native American vote?
“Do the Democrats have an alternative to Hillary?”
The Democrats have many options, and, since their goal is to win, Hillary is not really one of them.
Hillary’s plan is identical to her 2008 plan - have herself declared inevitable by her cadres of flying monkeys, sit back, and pick out her outfit for the inauguration.
Except now several divisions of flying monkeys have defected, she’s eight years older and looks it, and her once-devoted firewall in the press corps is leaking.
Their strongest candidate is Elizabeth Warren, but O’Malley is right behind. Both of these presuppose Castro as VP, they won’t nominate another African-American for major office for 50 years, because the 95% vote share is baked in AND the Mexican/Central American mestizo vote is going to dominate elections from 2020 onward.
A dark horse for the Dems is Jeb Bush as VP.
Hillary’s support is ten miles wide but 5 millimeters deep. One shove and she falls over.
You heard it here.
“Sanders recently said that Obama’s mistake was sitting down and talking to Republicans. That’s like running against Stalin on a platform of more Gulags”
But their base WANTS Gulags, and they want firing squads, too.
It’s going to take a huge helping of patriotism and self-control among the Democrat establishment to prevent the war their base is begging for.
Dems better find a new person—QUICK! How about John Kerry? Gov. Como of New York? What about a Pro Democrat General McCandless? Maybe Jane Fonda? The former Gov. of Virginia? Good old whats his name.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.