Posted on 04/10/2015 4:58:54 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
...It may even be the case that some of these Democrats with rattled nerves are less anxious about Clinton’s prowess against Republicans than about the fact that all of the party’s hopes now rest on her shoulders. Her campaign has become a single point of failure for Democratic politics. If she wins in 2016, she won’t ride into office with big congressional supermajorities poised to pass progressive legislation. But if she loses, it will be absolutely devastating for liberalism.
Hillary Clinton, who reportedly will announce her candidacy this weekend, is such a prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination that she more or less cleared the field simply by behaving like someone who was going to run. That’s as much a testament to her political talent as it is to her nominal association with the boom times of the late 1990s. But it’s also the source of genuine anxiety among liberals, who worry she’ll enter the general election rusty and untested unless someone formidable dares to challenge her in the primary.
This sounds like a reasonable point, until you apply the logic to all other major political races, where favored candidates labor tirelessly to avoid primary campaigns, whenever possible. No losing Senate candidate has ever looked back and wished he’d endured a primary to loosen him up, and no winning Senate candidate ever has ever attributed his victory to the months he spent doing battle with members of his own party. Senate Republicans attribute the two recent election cycles they spent in the minority to undisciplined activists backing primary challengers, and attribute their recent victory to hobbling those activists.
In Hillary Clinton’s case, though, there’s still a good argument that the Democratic Party could use a contested primary this cycle: not to toughen up Clinton’s calluses, but to build some redundancy into the presidential campaign. It may even be the case that some of these Democrats with rattled nerves are less anxious about Clinton’s prowess against Republicans than about the fact that all of the party’s hopes now rest on her shoulders. Her campaign has become a single point of failure for Democratic politics. If she wins in 2016, she won’t ride into office with big congressional supermajorities poised to pass progressive legislation. But if she loses, it will be absolutely devastating for liberalism.
If you’re faithful to the odds, then most of this anxiety is misplaced. Clinton may have slipped in the polls by virtue of an email scandal and her return to the partisan trenches more generally. But she's still more popular and better known than all of the Republicans she might face in the general, her name evokes economic prosperity, rather than global financial calamity, the economy is growing right now, and Democrats enjoy structural advantages in presidential elections, generally.
But all candidates are fallible, and most of them are human, which means every campaign labors under the small risk of unexpected collapse. The one real advantage of a strong primary field is that it creates a hedge against just such a crisis. Right now either Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or Jeb Bush is favored to win the Republican primary, but if both of them succumb to scandal or health scares, the GOP can shrug it off knowing that other seasoned Republicans have infrastructure in place, and are poised to swoop in if necessary.
If nobody serious challenges Hillary Clinton, nobody can be her understudy. In the near term that isn’t a problem, but if doubts about her inevitability develop late in the year or early next, the placid silence in the Democratic field will grow eerie.
The GOP’s dominance in last year’s midterms (and the dividends their victory in 2010 keeps paying) exacerbates this risk. The House of Representatives probably isn’t in play next year. The Senate barely is. Hillary Clinton must by now have reconciled herself to the possibility that her first two years, and possibly more, will be gridlocked, or defined by unsatisfying compromises with congressional Republicans. Her imprint on the Supreme Court might be dramatic, or she might end up replacing one liberal justice of particularly advanced age.
The opportunity facing Republicans is precisely the reverse. The current distribution of power on Capitol Hill is such that if a Republican wins the presidency, he will come into the White House with his party in complete control of Congress, confident he'll be able to alter the balance of power on the Court for a generation. He will have eight years worth of Democratic progress on issues like health care, immigration, and climate change to roll back. The nature of our system makes it easier for opposition candidates to ride the political pendulum back toward their ideological comfort zones than for incumbent candidates to keep it aloft.
As Ed Kilgore wrote for TPM, “It’s just a matter of time until a competition breaks out that culminates with demands and promises to repeal everything Obama ordered, including regulations needed to implement everything Congress passed since 2009.”
For better or worse, if Clinton becomes president, her greatest accomplishment might be to rescue Obama’s legacy from a bottled up campaign of retribution. That’s an awkward agenda to run on (though if the Supreme Court wipes out billions of dollars in Obamacare subsidies this summer, it will be an easy agenda to dramatize). But it’s an incredibly important objective either way. And there’s no backup plan.
Perhaps because we won't let them... ;-)
Rand Paul claimed yesterday that new bad news for Hillary! regarding her “Foundation” is coming down the pike shortly.
Holder had a big hand in that.
“...It may even be the case that some of these Democrats with rattled nerves are less anxious about Clinton’s prowess against Republicans than about the fact that all of the party’s hopes now rest on her shoulders. Her campaign has become a single point of failure for Democratic politics. If she wins in 2016, she won’t ride into office with big congressional supermajorities poised to pass progressive legislation. But if she loses, it will be absolutely devastating for liberalism.”
There is too much out there for the entire MSM to hide. With Obama, the MSM could control the message. Not so with Hillary.
Any attempt to cover for Hillary will result in more questions being asked. The rats best hope, IMHO is to run O’Malley and Castro, or Castro and O’Malley.
Imagine a Warren or a Castro on the United States Supreme Court.
Its just not the lib-tards that are worried, its the whole of America if this nut-job, saggy bag slut gets into office!!
Rats love the new and trendy. They don’t need anyone tested. Mush heads and sponges will vote rat, and enough other people will be fooled, and they win.
Are you kidding? Do you remember the last time he lived in the White House? He was doing really well with the chicks.
Go ahead and imagine Warren in the White House.
Hillary Clinton looks like an old tired fat woman. She elicits zero excitement from anybody. Otherwise she would not have to announce her candidacy via a tweet. Its pathetic. She is going to regret that she ever announced.
After this weekend she is going to have 3-4 GOP candidates dogging her night and day. Carly Fiorina is a one woman Hillary diss machine. Rand Paul loves to go after her and I’m sure Cruz and Walker will pile on. Its going to be a bash fest. I can hardly wait. Look for Sarah Palin to start sniping from the sidelines.
because her legs on on upside down?
Ted Cruz IS a great debater. And not just , because he is articulate in front of the media either. He won national debating championships while at Princeton. Plus he’s presented and won 9 oral arguments at the US Supreme Court. Plus he’s off the charts brilliant, not to mention charismatic and very likeable. Hilary has about as much charisma and likeability as dried bread from last week. Ted Cruz will cream Hilary in any debates.
That would describe every Democrat voter. If you told them their party’s platform they wouldn’t believe you. I’m not a student of psychology but there’s a term for it.
You’ve hit upon it! Cheap grace? Vicarious virtue? In their minds, voting Dim covers a multitude of sins.
I don’t think Bill wants her to win.
He’s happy with his nest egg and she’ll just rock the boat.
I’ve heard that Bill and Hillary live separate lives. If Hillary wins, then Bill would have to move back into the White House. He couldn’t come and go as he pleases the way he does now. He really doesn’t want to be back in the fishbowl, and he doesn’t want to have to live with Hillary again. At least that’s some of the rumors I have heard.
Oh yes. It’s more like a cult than a political party
You hafta wonder....what is the PGA Tour’s connection to global initiatives (as well as some of their other donors).Quid pro quo.
Since 2012, the Clinton Foundation has partnered with Humana, the PGA Tour and the Desert Classic Charities to present the Humana Challenge. The Humana Challenge has showcased the long-term health benefits of simple lifestyle and behavioral changes.
Another thing, Gingrich got beaten in Florida because Romney carpet bombed the airwaves with nasty anti-Gingrich ads, with Gingrich unable to respond because he’d basically run out of money. Romney always took the fight to conserve times more then he ever went after Obama. The guy actually believed Obama was “good man”. I don’t see how that is even possible.
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