Medusa Borgia: I will assimilate you.
Posted on 02/19/2014 11:05:00 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Handicappers in the presidential race abhor the opposite of a vacuum—a campaign two years out where one candidate seems to blot out the entire field. Thus a mini-chorus now rises, and may swell, questioning Hillary Clinton’s apparent lock on the 2016 Democratic nomination. It’s a predictable reflex, but in cold, hard reality, logic suggests that the lock is authentic, not just apparent. And in modern history, or virtually all American history, Hillary’s inevitability is unprecedented for a non-incumbent.
First, the logic. Who can seriously challenge her march toward a closing night acceptance speech at the next Democratic convention?
With a deft touch of humor more enjoyable than enlightening, Matt Bai suggests that Hillary is “no more likely to clear the Democratic field and avoid a primary … than Dennis Rodman is to become her Secretary of State.” Her fundraising advantages and her strength among “party regulars” make “her vulnerable to another grassroots challenge.”
But history doesn’t metronomically repeat itself. There is no Barack Obama waiting in the wings this time—and the last time, he wasn’t exactly in the wings. He had captured the party’s attention and admiration from the moment he commanded the national spotlight with a stunning keynote speech at the 2004 convention. It’s utter mythology that he came out of nowhere in 2007; some of the smartest Democrats, including Clinton loyalists like Greg Craig, who had defended the president during impeachment proceedings, signed on with Obama early on.
MSNBC’s Krystal Ball has her version of the 2016 Obama, and argues that Hillary shouldn’t run because the “moment” calls for someone like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, someone “clearly passionate, living and breathing and feeling … the plight of the worker, the middle class.” Hillary, Ball asserts, can’t do that because she was once on the board of Walmart and recently accepted speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. That attack, if an opponent advanced it, could and would be swiftly confounded by the Hillary who, in the penultimate primaries of 2008, in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio, emerged as a powerful, persuasive tribune of blue-collar and middle-class Americans.
Of course, there is another slight problem with the Warren option: She’s joined all the other Democratic women senators in signing a letter urging Hillary to run. Warren will probably be out there all right—stumping for Hillary, not against her.
But let’s not stop here. Where would a grassroots challenger find the resources to mount a credible campaign? Obama relied heavily on the Internet. And Hillary’s commanding position among big givers shouldn’t obscure a decisive truth: the fundraising prowess of her own yet-undeclared campaign, and of outside groups like Ready for Hillary, is not the driver of her dominance, but a reflection of it. Most small donors on the Internet and social media are likely to flock to her. In the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, she has a six-to-one lead among Democrats. That is replicated in survey after survey. Women voters overwhelmingly support her, with younger women adamantly for her. So are the young in general—and Democratic men as well.
Hillary also defeats every Republican by at least eight points in the new McClatchy-Marist numbers —and trounces Chris Christie, once the most electable Republican, whose ratings have fallen off the George Washington Bridge, by 21 points. This matters deeply to Democrats; most of them bear no resemblance to the Tea Party purists who crave kamikaze candidates like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. Democrats are intent on holding the White House for 12 or 16 years because so much hangs in the balance, from economic fairness and Obamacare to the cause of climate change and the make-up of the Supreme Court.
The other current pundit staple is that maybe Hillary won’t run. Don’t bet on it. If she sat out 2016, the odds on favorite would probably be another veteran of the primary gauntlet, Vice President Joe Biden. But he’s a good guy, maybe the most effective Veep ever, and he doesn’t deserve a bad political ending. When Hillary enters the contest—she will as long as she’s healthy, and despite empty rumors there’s no reason to doubt that—I hope Biden doesn’t run and I believe he won’t. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo can’t; he would lose his and her own state to Hillary and he would be gone before the primaries ever got there. His financial base prefers her. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley would struggle financially too, and would lose early on. Maybe he’ll jump in anyway, in hopes of a vice presidential nod.
I wouldn’t recommend it, but there’s no accounting for miscalculation. Howard Dean could declare—in the end, he won’t— or former Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer could campaign on a pro-gun platform. At most, each could play a bit part before being dispatched forthwith.
Historically we have seen nothing quite like this; if not never, then hardly ever. In 2000, Al Gore became the only non-incumbent to win every primary and caucus; but he nearly lost New Hampshire to Bill Bradley, which would have consigned Gore to a long slog to the nomination. In 2004, John Kerry nearly duplicated Gore’s feat, but he had been utterly written off before his surprising upset victory in Iowa.
In the distant past, two non-incumbents sauntered to nomination because they were imposed by their immensely popular immediate predecessors: Martin Van Buren by Andrew Jackson at the second Democratic convention ever held in 1836, and William Howard Taft by Theodore Roosevelt in 1908—although Taft had lost two of the four first ever Republican primaries. William Jennings Bryan won the Democratic nomination unanimously in 1900 after his opponent, Admiral George Dewey, the Spanish-American war hero, repeatedly tripped over his own tongue and was out of the race two months before the convention.
It was another war hero, Ulysses Grant in 1868, whose situation most closely parallels Hillary’s. His predecessor in the White House, who had barely avoided conviction in an impeachment trial, didn’t and couldn’t impose any candidate on the Republican Party. On the strength of his own position, Grant prevailed unopposed. In this very different era, 2016 may see other names on Democratic primary ballots, but they will prove to be tokens, not threats.
The last refuge of the Hillary doubters is that she won’t learn from the past and will repeat the mistakes of 2008. It’s a telling admission that the only person who can defeat or dent Hillary Clinton on the road to her nomination is Hillary Clinton. But as I’ve already noted, she was a changed and far better candidate by the end of her contest with Obama. In 2016, her message won’t center on her experience—that will speak for itself. It won’t be a call to restore the Clinton years or merely continue the Obama years. Obviously she won’t run against the Obama record, but for something beyond it. She’s smart, and she knows she has to offer a vision for the future. And her tempered tone now is exactly right: she shouldn’t be setting out that vision in the off-season, but when the country rather than the political class actually turns its eyes and ears to the campaign. (In fact, that’s what Bill Clinton did in a series of big picture speeches in 1991.)
Nor will Hillary repeat the tactical blunders, disarray and mismanagement of her previous presidential effort. She will rely on both newer, younger people and the best of her past political advisors like Harold Ickes and pollster Geoff Garin, who came on and became a guiding strategic force in the later stage of 2008, when she was steadily gaining ground. Ready for Hillary has already recruited top Obama organizers who have mastered 21st century ways to communicate, micro-target, and turn out voters. Finally, surprise of surprises, Bill Clinton will confound the skeptics: he will play an invaluable supporting role, a plainly influential but subordinate one. He is a great campaigner, the best in a generation, who won’t freelance his own alternative campaign.
There is criticism that all the talk of inevitability hurts Hillary. But Hillary and those who are close to her have never suggested publicly that she’s inevitable. Out in Iowa, and then in New Hampshire, she will insist over and over, as she should, that she is taking no vote for granted. She hasn’t even said she’s running yet, although she is. And all this is just the way things are. Operatives and observers can’t help noticing it and writing and broadcasting it—and there are journalists who, well, inevitably push back against it. That’s in their occupational DNA.
The Republicans know it too. From contorted Benghazi conspiracy theories to Rand Paul’s babble about Monica Lewinsky, they are attacking Hillary fiercely because they fear her most. And they should be very, very afraid.
Ulysses Grant was a long time ago; today Hillary Clinton is in all but unique situation in our presidential politics. No, Dennis Rodman won’t be anybody’s Secretary of State. But Hillary will win the 2016 Democratic nomination. Maybe, more than maybe, she already has.
You do what you're supposed to do. She could win the White House away from Hillary. How is it possible to understate the importance of that?
Besides, the real threat was bankruptcy through Alaska's ridiculous loophole that allows political parties to drive the Governor out through frivolous lawsuits. Once that was handled, what extra stress did she have that any other popular conservative candidate won't have, or doesn't have?
Anyway, it's moot. For whatever reasons, she won't run. I just hope she doesn't lead everyone on this time through some damn "listening tour," and instead gets behind a candidate with real potential from the beginning. If she won't lead, she can at least not distract the focus again.
All are symptoms of what is to come.
Why did the press ignore the firebombing of Sarah Palin’s church?
http://www.examiner.com/article/why-did-the-press-ignore-the-firebombing-of-sarah-palin-s-church
Accelerant poured around Palin’s church - Arson: entrances and exits were targeted; the senior pastor says he’s not aware of any threats.
http://www.adn.com/2008/12/15/623876/accelerant-poured-around-palins.html#storylink=cpy
Why do people think Obama is going to leave office in 2016?
God help the United States of America.
“There is no science fiction this bad.”
Well,,,, I tried to read some 10 volume thing by L. Ron Hubbard that was pretty bad.
Shrum is a bottom feeding apparatchik. This screed is a job application to Hillary’s 2016 campaign
Any more incredible than nominating obama?
Consider this: Hillary is strongly tied to both.
God’s judgement upon this country.
No wonder am thinking hillary is the fourth rider of the Apocalypse
Hopefully, he can write it again in eight years.
I have never read L. Ron Hubbard and I never will. He is the founder of Scientology. I have heard it said that he got into the scientology scam because he was failing as a writer.
Someone may just put that old “hag in the bag” and drop her in the river like they used to do with unwanted cats. (I am not advocating violence here, just observing).
Joe Biden - “...maybe the most effective Veep ever...”
‘Nuff said.
“I have never read L. Ron Hubbard and I never will. He is the founder of Scientology. I have heard it said that he got into the scientology scam because he was failing as a writer.”
He was writing sci fi for a long time before he established his “religion,” which I heard he did on a bet.
From Hubbard bio:
Hubbard has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention in 1948: “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.”
I had read Hubbard wrote some bad science fiction but wasn't able to make enough money to support himself. In addition to his bad writing he needed scams that cheated people out of their money and he was also arrested for petty theft.
Other science fiction writers knew Hubbard was a liar, a thief and a scam artist.
De Camp wrote to Asimov, “Don't say you haven't been warned. Bob [Robert Heinlein] thinks Ron went to pieces morally as a result of the war. I think that's fertilizer, that he always was that way, but when he wanted to conciliate or get something from somebody he could put on a good charm act. What the war did was to wear him down to where he no longer bothers with the act.”
Scientology made Hubbard rich. He then lived the last years of his life alone in paranoid delusion trusting no one and he died of mysterious circumstances probably murdered by David Miscavige or some of his other assistants.
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.