Posted on 04/22/2015 8:37:18 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Thousands have run for president, but only one candidate has ever unrun for the office: Hillary Clinton. Ever since she finally announced her entry into the contest a couple of weeks ago, she has been unrunning with ferocity. First she road-tripped a minivan 1,000 miles from New York to Iowa to … listen.
Listening tours (or sessions) are supposed to add a little fabric softener to a politician’s starchy image, buffing their scaly reptilian exteriors down to kid-leather smoothness. The technique worked for Clinton in New York, where booking upstate listening stops helped her win a Senate seat in 2000. Listening is the epitome of unrunning, allowing a candidate to do nothing at all but remain operational. Today, Clinton is listening in New Hampshire, and a full-time physician has been assigned to her care, lest the pure calm of bland political chitchat turn her life signs negative and she unruns herself to death.
Why is Clinton unrunning? If the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination were a Little League baseball game, the party would have already recognized Clinton’s insurmountable lead and invoked the mercy rule to give the victory to her. By unrunning, she avoids the intense political debate that would only call attention to her underfunded, unannounced and relatively unknown rivals, Martin O’Malley, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chafee and Joe Biden, all of whom are un-unrunning at various paces.
With nine months until the first presidential primary, Clinton can’t afford to actively run for president. Indeed, if she had her druthers, she probably wouldn’t even be unrunning now. She was pressured by the constant press attention about when she was going to announce and the email controversy. That sort of press attention was positive media attention she couldn’t control, and only by announcing could she dial it down. The email controversy was negative media attention she couldn’t control without the attention-deflecting machinery of a campaign. Indeed, she may be the first politician to announce for the presidency in order to decrease attention in her candidacy.
She’s succeeded wildly. Her coffees, roundtables, discussions and “spontaneous” meetings with voters have immersed her campaign into a box of dry ice and slowed it to the lowest metabolic levels. Suspended animation would look vigorous compared to what Clinton is now doing. This is smart. Steady coverage on the inside of newspapers is exactly what she wants. I buy what Team Clinton stalwart Donna Brazile recently told BuzzFeed’s Ruby Cramer about the campaign’s pacing (“There’s a rhythm. She’s starting off like Beethoven, with melodies and chords that people understand. But she’s got to end up like Beyoncé”) except to my ears early Clinton sounds more like a hobbled version of the Beatles’ “Within You Without You” than Beethoven.
Actively running for president at this point would be too politically damaging for Clinton. By actively running, she would have to declare herself for or against the current administration, something she doesn’t want to do until it presents some advantage. By unrunning, she can blend passively into the background, where she can be there but not here. Depending on how suggestible the audience that is listening with her, Clinton unrunning looks like a continuation of the Clinton and Obama legacy without explicitly saying so.
Having gotten what they wished for, an official Clinton candidacy, the press must now cover the Clinton 2016 slow lane the best they can. The press already knows almost everything about her, and she’s not going to voluntarily serve any fresh meat, so reporters and editors will have to go to the freezer and the landfills where her past is stored. That’s one reason behind the press excitement over Peter Schweizer’s Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Even if there’s nothing damning in the book, reporters can grind out hundreds of column inches on the subject and make it relevant to the campaign. The only alternative until the campaign awakens from dormancy will be profiles of the 24-year-old staff wizards (I’m sure they exist) who are vitalizing the Clinton campaign. I shudder.
What should ordinarily follow unrunning would be running, but that won’t be possible for Clinton. Until the 2016 campaign boiler room fires up with an identity of its own, she’ll be rerunning her 2008 campaign, necessitating yet another transition in her candidacy. According to POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush, the Clinton campaign plans to spend more time generating calm and less time fighting the press than it did in 2008. We’ve got plenty of time to come up with a snazzy phrase to describe the new, yet-to-be-released Clinton method, but until we come up with a winner, how about “un-rerunning”?
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Double-unrunning would mean taking an unrunning campaign several gears lower than a silent John Cage composition. Dash to your keyboard and send me emails with definitions of these variations: “triple-unrunning,” “reverse-unrunning,” “bellyfeel running,” and “duckspeak running” (Shafer.Politico@gmail.com). Subscribe to my email alerts before I declare my list full. My Twitter feed is like a multiverse. And, am I the last writer on the planet who promotes his RSS feed?
Nobody’s talking about the perfect Dem to challenge Hillary right now:
Anthony Weiner.
He’s got nothing to lose by running. Hillary can’t attack him over the sex scandal, because she doesn’t want to touch that subject with a 10 foot pole. Hardly anyone on the left likes Hillary, so this is about the only opportunity Weiner has where Dems would actually welcome him into the race. He’s also young enough and radical enough to get the younger generations’ votes, and he cuts into Hillary’s New York/East Coast base as well.
Sure, his “wife” is Hillary’s girlfriend, so this probably would never happen, but if Anthony cut those strings I bet he could make this a contest.
And that, sir, is the death of your republic.
I hope you are right about Ted Cruz. When he is finished down there, in eight years, he can come back to Canada and serve as PM.
The only person who does not know that is not likable is Hillary.
She is running a campaign where she has no positive mojo with the common people, but she acts as if she does.
This lady is the most interesting ignoramus I think I have ever seen.
Brilliant!
Well that answers where Chelsea got the cool 10 mil to pay for her NYC apartment. Charlotte will be next in line for the payola train.
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Chelsea's husband gained access to investors who had ties to the Clintons---
even as reports surfaced that Mezvinsky's hedge fund had "underwhelming" returns.
The WSJ reports extensively on the fund's underperformance since its inception. Also reported was Mezvinsky's mediocre investing and strategizing. Back in 2011, Mezvinsky, now 37, and two former Goldman Sachs colleagues — Bennett Grau and Mark Mallon — began raising money for Mezvinsky's Eaglevale Partners LP hedge fund. Some of Eaglevale's investors included Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein, a slavish Democrat supporter, said he had "always been a fan of Hillary Clinton."
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The Clinton/Goldman Sachs connection sounds awfully familiar. Then-Pres Clinton's WH
aide Rahm Emanuel also worked as a Goldman Sachs lobbyist.....both at the same time.
more below
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FACTS ON FILE Then-Secy of State Hillary gave her close aide, Huma Abedin, “State Dept special status".....Abedin was working for Hillary at State....... AND simultaneously working for Bill Clinton, as a private contractor for his company, Teneo Holdings.
Abedin, reportedly had private email addresses on the Clinton email server system (underlining Democrats' greatest fear: the intersection of undisclosed foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s secret email address. Huma Abedin's sweetheart deal: (1) an outside private six-figure consultant at the State Department, and, (2) “special government employee” status, and worked a sideline---as a private contractor.
One of Huma's clients was Bill Clinton's Company----Teneo Holdings----self-described as a dual-track political/banking consulting firm that calls itself the “next chapter in strategic advisory.”
more below ///
HUMAN EVENTS BACKSTORY: A former employee of bankrupt MF Global accused former president Clinton----chairman of Teneo's advisory board----of collecting $50,000 per month through his Teneo advisory firm in the months before MFG careened towards its Halloween filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, as hundreds of millions of investor funds disappeared.
Teneo was hired by MF Global’s former CEO Jon S. Corzine (an ex-Goldman Sachser) to improve his image and to enhance his connections with Clinton’s political family, said the employee, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared retribution, according to HE.
The source, who is no longer associated with MF Global, said Teneo is a dual-track company with one side devoted to merchant and investment banking and the other side set up to provide image and strategy consulting services. The Teneo contract with MF Global lasted some five months, the source said. The board cancelled it after Corzine resigned.
The trustee for cheated MFG investors later sued JPMorgan bank for return of about $450M that MFG had wire- transferred out of its accounts to JPM's bank.
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An earlier NYT's expose tarred Bill Clinton w/ Teneo's sub rosa dealings. Teneo is run by Clinton aide---Doug Band. Prosecutors found Band and Clinton listed in pedophile's Jeffry Epsteiin's records as having a shocking 21 email addresses and tele nos.
Can you say money laundering? L/E recognizes multiple phone nos and email as the classic MO for money-laundering and tax evasion.
granny clinton is an evil snake and as such is sneaky clever and devious.
she really is not the “brilliant” person that shes advertised to be.
and shes a real dud with NO political skills.
If Hillary won’t say anything then the GOP will have to speak for her. She must be drawn out and necklaced by Obama’s policies.
Her strategy only works if the GOP candidates fight among themselves and leave Hillary alone.
The Clintons and their backers look to the UN, and to George Soros, and to anti-American countries (who have a vested interest in a weak U.S. national defense [what Hillary and her administration in waiting call "SMART" national/international defense/diplomacy] and a weak U.S. economy).
When Americans (of all stripes) understand that this is where the Clinton's money and muscle comes from, they will understand why her election is so bad for them.
It couldn't be clearer and that is why the MSM is going along with Hillary's "Un-running" campaign.
Goldman Sachs - the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Cruzes.
Is there no family in the oligarchy that GS doesn’t have ties to?
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