Waiting for Hillary to decide
Email scandal forces her out of the shadows, writes William Marsden .
For months now, Hillary Clinton has been playing a cat-and-mouse game.
Over the last three months, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential candidate-in-waiting has disappeared from public view, only to pop up here and there for the occasional low-key speech.
Last year she promised to announce — or renounce — her candidacy after the new year. But so far nothing. Instead, she has remained in the shadows watching as potential Republican candidates such as Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz, governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, have emerged to test the waters.
All that ended this week when scandal over a private email account forced Clinton out of seclusion.
The charge is that during her four-year term as secretary of state she broke the law and violated national security procedures when she used a personal email account with her own home-based server, instead of the State Department server.
Lawyers with the department and the National Archives say no laws were broken and the use of a personal email address was not unusual. But the government is looking into whether Clinton may have violated security rules.
As she gets closer to what almost certainly will be her inevitable candidacy, the risk that scandal could bring her down is ever-present. Were that to happen, the question for the Democrats is: what is the bench strength?
So far, Clinton has no rival. Her popularity far out-strips any other potential Democratic candidate. She is 42 points ahead of her closest possible rival, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and 46 points up on U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden.
Other potential rivals such as Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and former Virginia senator Jim Webb barely register — averaging about two per cent.
None of them are serious contenders for the Democratic nomination. But that would quickly change in the unlikely event Clinton bows out.
In that case, Warren could become the front-runner. She has earned a national profile as founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and as an unrelenting campaigner against deregulation, Wall Street bankers and the major insurance companies she blames for the 2008 global economic crash.
Despite the fact Warren has said several times she is not running, all that could change if Clinton withdraws. Warren has a growing number of backers who believe the party needs a fresh — and more liberal — face.
“When (Warren) says she’s not running, she’s not running against Hillary,” said David Karol, a political scientist specializing in nomination politics at the University of Maryland. “If Hillary were not to run, it’s a different situation and she would have to reassess.”
Meanwhile, the senator from Massachusetts is playing the waiting game. She has withheld her endorsement of Clinton, claiming she first has to prove her liberal credentials. Warren’s backers view the former first lady as old news and a Wall Street candidate.
As vice-president, Biden normally would be one of the frontrunners. But the fact that he has run for president three times and failed miserably doesn’t give him much hope. One problem is his age: he will be 74 in 2016. The other problem is the “goof” factor.
“Washington appreciates him much more than the public does,” Karol said. “He does say goofy things some times and that is his image. So whenever he does that, the press plays it up.”
Looking down the bench, the choices get thinner and thinner. Sen. Sanders says he intends to run on the Democratic ticket. The problem is he’s not a Democrat. He’s an independent and about as left-wing as anybody in the U.S. Congress. What’s more, he would be 75 years old when he took office.
“He’s older than Biden. No, nobody other than a small number who follow politics very closely knows about Bernie Sanders,” Karol said.
Three newcomers wait in the wings. None of them has a national profile.
O’Malley, 52, is a former Baltimore mayor and two-term governor of Maryland. He’s tall, goodlooking and beams confidence. But when he declined to run for a third term, he left the state with a deficit and his chosen successor lost.
Then there’s Webb, 69, the former senator from Virginia. He served as a marine in Vietnam and as secretary of the navy in 1987. He is also the author of 10 books.
In a recent interview with National Public Radio, he said he is caught between his love of writing and his leadership abilities.
“I would get out and write and miss, you know, the leadership environment,” he said, which is why he is considering a run for the White House.
Since 1992, the Electoral College voting system has given Democrats a big edge. History shows their party’s control of Pacific and northeastern states gives them an automatic 242 votes, just 28 short of the 270 needed to win. If they can take Florida or a combination of swing states, such as Ohio, Iowa and Virginia, they win. The Republicans, on the other hand, start with only 179 sure votes.
That’s a big head start for the Democrats that almost makes the presidency theirs to lose. It raises the question of whether Clinton’s candidacy really matters even when the bench strength looks weak.