This is a very nice Townhall article by Conn Carroll on Barack Obama and how he was not the Left’s Ronald Reagan (unless you count the way that Barack Obama, like Reagan, has made the argument against big government – however inadvertently, in Obama’s case). But I have a quibble. In short, I always have the same question in my head when I see lines like this:
Hillary Clinton will be a very formidable opponent.
…Why?
Enjoy your Sunday.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
Because stories like this suggest that maybe she doesn’t:
An internal debate among Hillary Clinton supporters about the timing of when she should launch her expected campaign for the presidency has erupted once again.
Several Democrats have told CNN that there is a desire on the part of Clinton and her innermost circle to go as late as possible. But the potential for a summer start to the official Clinton 2016 campaign, first reported this morning by Politico, is only one of the options on the table. The spring launch plan is still seen by most Clinton watchers as the most likely timing scenario. Under the spring scenario, Clinton could form an exploratory committee or other official vehicle, which has FEC-regulated restrictions for potential candidates, but would enable Clinton to publicly indicate her intentions and begin a new phase of the process without formally launching a full blown campaign until later in 2015.
Continue reading Does Hillary Clinton honestly and truly want to run for President?
The more you think about this story, the weirder it gets.
Democrats are beginning to worry that Hillary Clinton is creating a drought in Iowa.
A year out from the Iowa caucus, some party members fret that Hillary Clinton’s dominance in the Democratic field will leave the party high and dry as the campaign season intensifies. A lack of competition within the party may hurt fundraising and makes it hard to develop the new blood that often grows out of highly competitive races, some party activists say.
Continue reading Iowa Democrats kind of not ready for Hillary.
…if she were to suddenly take herself out of the race in, say, two months’ time, there would be a massive sense of doom within the party. The shock of the decision would reverberate for weeks — and maybe even months — making it hard for anyone looking to fill the void she left behind.
[snip]
Simply put: For Clinton to pass on the race — and especially if she waits until summer to make her decision public — would be absolutely disastrous for her party’s chances of holding onto the White House next November.
Continue reading The Left starts to gingerly contemplate reassessing the inevitability of Hillary.
Ed Rogers actually put the boot in, here. It was very entertaining.
…a few recent decisions by Clinton’s team have left me wondering whether Hillary Clinton is stuck in a time warp — and how that will impact her 2016 presidential run. She should be making moves to present herself as the fresh new Democrat for the next era. But recently, she seems to be doing the exact opposite.
Read the whole thing, including the bit where Ed Rogers mentioned all those legacy and retread politicians that the Democrats ran (mostly unsuccessfully) in 2014. Turns out that even Official Washington is noticing the remarkable lack of new blood in Democratic veins. Good stuff, good stuff. Oh, sure: I know that eventually the Democratic party will recover from this, but for right now it’s all making for fascinating viewing…
It is fascinating to think that this might be what torpedoes a Hillary Clinton presidential run.
Hillary Clinton is “furious” at husband Bill Clinton, according to Washington insiders, after his name came up in the latest sex scandal involving his disgraced former pal Jeffrey Epstein.
Sources at the funeral of Mario Cuomo also said they saw a peevish-looking Hillary angrily “storm” past the former president after he dutifully waited for her by the door of St. Ignatius Loyola Church.
But I guess that anything will do, if you’re a Democrat who really, really doesn’t want Hillary Clinton to win. How many of those are there? Guess we’ll find out, huh?
Via Hot Air comes a whisper of the back-alley brawls that are even now starting to formover the 2016 election, out there where nothing is really too low a blow and everything can be denied later:
While they aren’t acknowledging [Jim] Webb publicly, [Hillary] Clinton loyalists are keeping an eye on him privately. The week before Thanksgiving, staffers of Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime communications guru, pitched talk radio producers on the racy, sexually charged writings in Webb’s novels, according to a source. Webb was forced to fend off a similar attack in 2006, when Allen accused him of “demeaning women.”
Webb also has previously apologized for writing that a Naval Academy dorm was a “horny woman’s dream” in a 1979 Washingtonian magazine piece titled “Jim Webb: Women Can’t Fight.” The piece’s central argument was against allowing women to take combat positions in the military. If Webb were to ever attain traction, Clinton’s allies would certainly lob the rhetoric back at him.
Continue reading Scenes from the 2016 Democratic Shadow Gutter War: Clinton v. Webb.
I wonder if the New York Times is not entirely comfortable with the idea of a Hillary Clinton candidacy: “The Obama administration overturned a ban preventing a wealthy, politically connected Ecuadorean woman from entering the United States after her family gave tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to finance records and government officials.” Specifically, the woman (Estefanía Isaías) got a visa from Clinton’s State Department (the Times was very careful to note that) despite involved in, and I don’t know why I’m so surprised here, what was called ‘alien smuggling.’ Apparently the Isaias family is made up of very rich people with severe entitlement issues and at least two fugitives from Ecuadorean justice; but perhaps I’m being unfair about the ‘entitlement’ bit. The article makes it clear that the Isaias family has bought a time-share in US Senator Bob Menendez (D, NJ)… and I have to admit that if I had this kind of access I’d be severely tempted to use it to fix parking tickets (or extradition requests), too.
Via @NoahCRothman, who feels that this news is ‘explosive.’ And, honestly, it should be. But if it’s going to be explosive that’s going to be in the context of a primary campaign, and not, say, a federal corruption investigation. The odds of that happening to Bob Menendez and Hillary Clinton during the current administration are somewhere between ‘not a chance’ and ‘are you high?’
Moe Lane (crosspost)
It takes a person who has almost literally done nothing else besides politics her entire life to say something this dumb:
“And don’t let anybody, don’t let anybody tell you that, umm, you know, that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”
…I feel bad for the people who are contractually obligated to make a silk purse out of this nonsense, you know? I know I shouldn’t, because they wouldn’t feel bad for me; but I still have professional pride, and part of that is recognizing, and feeling empathy for, when other people have to take a hit to theirs. This is awful stuff to have to spin to anybody except a hardcore progressive, and possibly even some of them are wincing at this one.
The 2016 Democratic primaries are going to be fascinating. The idea is to run away from an unpopular President, guys. Towards the center.
Moe Lane
You’d think that there’d be tigers, at least. Or maybe jugglers.
Clinton Takes $225,000 Fee to Discuss High Cost of Tuition http://t.co/mMQxJuyhn0 pic.twitter.com/5AbbtuwswL
— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) October 14, 2014
Seriously, for 250 grand they couldn’t get Cirque du Soleil?