Ghost of Hillary haunts 2020 Dem hopefuls
Like the ghost in the attic, Hillary Clinton will not go away.
She is haunting the country’s body politic, a shadow president making so much noise about being wronged in 2016 that she is sucking up the media coverage that would go to others.
The others are the 23 or so Democrats running for president, most of whom nobody ever heard of. While they struggle to become known, Hillary Clinton elbows them aside.
When they go to her for advice — she has, after all, run for president twice — she does not talk about foreign policy or the economy, but how rotten Donald Trump is and how the 2016 presidential election was “stolen” from her.
“I think it’s also critical to understand, as I’ve been telling candidates who have come to see me,” she said last week, “you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you.”
One third of that statement is true — she was the nominee; two thirds are not. Hillary Clinton did not run the best campaign. Her campaign was a disaster. She was a disaster. She insulted half of the electorate by calling them “deplorables” even before the first vote was cast.
“So, part of our challenge is to understand what it will take to put together not only the popular vote, but the Electoral College,” she added.
That is good advice. It is also advice she should have given herself in 2016, when, capturing the popular vote, she lost the Electoral College to Trump.
But the only thing stolen from Clinton was her dignity in defeat, and that was dignity lost, not stolen. Now, to stay relevant, she and Bill Clinton, like two old vaudevillians searching for applause, roamed the country on their “Evening with the Clintons” tour before scant audiences.
At the last stop on the tour in Los Angeles, Clinton, talking about 2020, said, “We are a long way from when this election actually happens. We are just at the beginning.
“We’re just in the process of, you know, setting the table, figuring out what is going to happen, who’s going to emerge, what’s going to be the most effective themes and messages.”
Hardly had their tour ended than Clinton last week was in New Hampshire, the first 2020 presidential primary state, sounding as though she were “setting the table” with her at the head of it.
Speaking at Dartmouth College in Hanover, Clinton talked about the empowerment of women, which she called “the great unfinished business of the 21st century.” She might have added that the empowerment of women also included electing the first woman president — her.
She did not go that far, but chose to remain a ghost, a shadow president. But everyone got the message: she might run again.
But it is difficult. Bitterness in politics, as in life, can take you only so far.
It could have been different had Clinton not chosen to play the victim. The role does not enhance her image, but only demeans it.
She had everything going for her — the party nomination, the establishment recognition, money, endorsements, Barack Obama — and she still blew it.
“The fault, dear Hillary, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” Shakespeare might have observed.
Nevertheless, the cast of characters running for the Democratic nomination for president are so far to the left that collectively they look like a Moscow police lineup.
So, she must be wondering, why not me?
The Democratic Party, running out of other people’s money to pay for their cradle-to-grave free stuff programs, needs a dope slap from some adult to bring it to its senses if it is to avoid a disaster in 2020.
No Democrat running for president is going to defeat Trump by running on hate.
The Democrats ought to talk to Bill Clinton. Despite his faults, he was the last Democratic president who could bring people together and reach for the center. He could give them the dope slap they need.