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How would Hillary do it? — 33 Comments

1. In unrelated news, Biden and Warren recently tripled their armed security personnel…

2. HRC has been, of late, even more annoyingly ubiquitous on television than before, and it is not likely that this is for the sole purpose of promoting her silly new book. She knows that Pocahontas will probably remain in front, thus leaving an opportunity for her as a somewhat less extreme female candidate (and undoubtedly more palatable to Big Tech and Wall Street).

3. You’ve forgotten another prerequisite: at least four of the leading candidates have to have some sort of nasty accident.

   Note, under the current regime (1980-), there has yet to be an occasion where support did not coalesce around one or two competing candidates, nor has there been any occasion wherein more than five candidates were at all competitive in a given nomination donnybrook; most candidacies disappear quickly. Superdelegates were potentially decisive in 2008 and 1984, but not at any other time. The last contested convention occurred in 1976, at the but end of the transitional era of delegate selection (1952-76). The last convention which required more than one ballot was the Democratic convention of 1952.

4. Of all possible Democrat candidates, Hillary is the ONLY one who already has a demonstrated ability to lose to Donald Trump. This is hardly an augury of success in 2020. The Dems haven’t re-run a Presidential loser since Adlai Stevenson sixty years ago.

   Of course Hillary still wants to be Prez but now that her aura of “inevitably” has been shattered, it’s hard to see how anybody else could find her a convincing candidate.

5. I think that Lemu Emu would probably prove to be a better candidate than any of the entirely forgettable, Three Stooges crew that the Democrats have assembled, madly cackling Saint Hillary of the tent included.

6. Can Hillary just announce and start running this week or next? She’s missed some debates, but that’s OK, people already know who she is.

   I’ve checked the web and haven’t found any clear deadlines for this. Iowa isn’t until February.

7. huxley:

   I read somewhere (don’t have time to look for it right now) that she is too late to get on the ballot in a lot of states. I assume that means she’d have to mount a write-in campaign.

8. Can Hillary just announce and start running this week or next? She’s missed some debates, but that’s OK, people already know who she is. I’ve checked the web and haven’t found any clear deadlines for this. Iowa isn’t until February.

   That worked out real well for Gary Hart in 1988.

9. Art Deco: Not the question. Try again.

10. Biden is out for the count, but stumbles around punch drunk and doesn’t realize it yet. Warren likes to tell tall tales that will come back to hurt should she end up the nominee. Harris is fading fast. The rest are on the fringes. IMO their best bet is Gabbard but she fails to gain much traction. Hillary can’t ride in on white horse claiming she ‘won’ in 2016 and expect to actually win over deplorables to capture an electoral victory.

    November, 2020 is still a long way off, but the democrats are broken into factions that seem hate each otther. We’ll see.

11. I read somewhere (don’t have time to look for it right now) that she is too late to get on the ballot in a lot of states. I assume that means she’d have to mount a write-in campaign.

    neo: Sounds reasonable. Thanks.

    It seems we live in such a screwy time with all sorts of gray areas and corner cases being toyed with.

12. Art Deco: Not the question. Try again.

    It wasn’t the question, it was the answer. You can try again reading it and digesting its meaning.

13. “The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. “

14. The whole idea reminds me of the slightly unsavory meme that shows Hillary in a swaddling mumu walking along a beach with Bill following behind. A speech bubble above Bill’s head reads, “Must stay upwind.”

15. Art Deco:

    I saw your answer, and its meaning is quite unclear.

    Here is Hart’s history for the 1988 election. I fail to see it as relevant to huxley’s question about Hillary. Hart was sunk by a number of things, including several stories that broke during the campaign, rather than anything inherent in his in-and-then-out trajectory during the primaries.

    My impression of huxley’s question was that it was a technical one about ballots and primaries. I answered it briefly here.

16. Hillary recently said “Maybe there does need to be a rematch. I mean, obviously I can beat him again.” Poor thing must be delusional.

17. Here is Hart’s history for the 1988 election. I fail to see it as relevant to huxley’s question about Hillary. Hart was sunk by a number of things, including several stories that broke during the campaign, rather than anything inherent in his in-and-then-out trajectory during the primaries.

    If you recall, he left the race in 1987 after the Donna Rice scandal. He tried to re-enter it at the end of the year. In spite of having name recognition well in excess of any other candidate, his attempt was a disaster.

    For forty-odd years, candidates have generally spent a couple of years building an organization. One of the very few who was able to enter late and perform satisfactorily on the fly was Jesse Jackson. Jackson was at the time the most broadly recognized black politician in the United States and his favorability ratings among blacks exceeded 90%. He had a ready constituency right there, and he had the network of black churches at the ready to go circulate the petitions. HRC doesn’t have that reservoir of good-will and the team the Clinton’s have relied on over the years are over 70 now and have other things to do with their lives.

18. Art Deco:

    What do you mean “if you recall”? That link I gave you goes into the situation in detail.

    I happen to agree with you that the entire way of choosing nominees has changed so much that Hillary is a long long long shot. But I think it is quite clear that Gary Hart’s situation, and the reason he wasn’t nominated, was mostly not technical issues related to the nomination process, if was a series of scandals that emerged and caused him to drop in and out and in again. His history seems largely irrelevant to Hillary Clinton and in particular to huxley’s question.

19. Why are the Democrats even having a primary? If Trump stole the election and Hillary is the Rightful President, why don’t they just nominate her for a second term?

20. I don’t think the Party will let Tulsi Gabbord be the candidate.

    At this point I think Clinton’s chances are as good as any. I don’t think Biden or Saunders will make it. Kamala is already done. Warren seems to be it if Clinton doesn’t enter.

    Warren seems to have appeal mostly to white leftists. If it is Warren vs Trump I expect to see him take a record part of the black vote.

21. His history seems largely irrelevant to Hillary Clinton and in particular to huxley’s question.

    It isn’t irrelevant. He was a well-established public figure who tried to re-enter at the last minute. Didn’t work. The public was bored with him and his staff had scattered to other candidates or gone on to other pursuits. That’s your most on-point precedent for what you all fancy she’ll do.

22. Happened to do some traveling along the East coast recently, and the only political advertising by Democrat Presidential candidates I noticed were several large, very prominent billboards on tall poles with Tulsi Gabbard’s picture and a slogan on them, especially in the Carolinas.

23. Jim Webb entered the race in 2015 but soon backed out because he realized that as a moderate democrat he had no chance. The man is a highly decorated veteran, former Secretary of the Navy, former senator, scholor, respected author, etc. The DNC decided in backroom deals to stifle Sanders and crown the Shrew Queen. The rest as they say is history.

24. Well, if the Democrats allow a Hillary third try, they deserve what they’ll get. She’s insisting that she “won” last time.

    Plus, the comparison between Warren’s slim and vigorous appearance and Hillary’s weight and lack of charisma won’t work in Hillary’s favor.

25. I say YES! I want Hillary to be the Democrat’s nominee for that is a sure fire way of guaranteeing Trump’s next win. mic drop.

    Seriously though (and I was serious about Hillary guaranteeing Trump’s win) – does anyone else blame Obama for the Democrats lack of leaders? As the last Democratic President he should have been the “de facto” leader for the party; But, now that he no longer has any use for them he doesn’t speak out except to blame others for his policies failures still showing or taking credit for Trump’s successes.

26. Well, if the Democrats allow a Hillary third try, they deserve what they’ll get. She’s insisting that she “won” last time.

    Kate: True, but the other candidates are also no-hopers to beat Trump IMO.

    Warren is the strongest but her economic plans are so radical, that anyone with a brain, a job and/or portfolio, will run like hell. Then there’s the Liawatha stuff, which will likely bother the working class types Warren needs.

    Hillary almost did beat Trump but lost by a razor-thin margin of 70,000 votes in three states, which would have flipped those electoral votes to her. Presumably, the Clinton machine still exists, albeit diminished.

    The Democrats don’t get to choose the best candidate this time. They get to choose the least worst who might still be able to beat Trump. I’m not sure how the procedural issues of a Clinton swoop-in would work, but I can imagine some Democrats in 2020 under some circumstances holding their noses and settling for Hillary.

    Sanders and Biden look like history. What if Warren blows up for some reason? Do Harris or Buttigieg look substantial enough against Trump? Maybe Gabbard picks up steam?

    Hillary is pretty horrible but she is fierce and battle-hardened.

27. Art Deco:

    What do you mean “what you all fancy she’ll do”?

    I certainly don’t “fancy” it. Did you read my post? You certainly missed some important points, if you did.

    This was my very first sentence: “Let me say at the outset that I don’t buy this scenario.” And this was my very last sentence: “But as I said, I don’t see it happening.” So I stated twice, once at the beginning and once at the end, that I don’t think Hillary will be running.

    I don’t see how I could have made it any clearer than that. So your statement that Gary Hart in 1988 was “your most on-point precedent for what you all fancy she’ll do” isn’t on point at all. I don’t fancy that’s what Hillary will do, and I made that clear.

    But also, your summary of what happened with Hart in 1988 is deficient. You write:

    [Hart] was a well-established public figure who tried to re-enter at the last minute. Didn’t work. The public was bored with him and his staff had scattered to other candidates or gone on to other pursuits.

    Leave out much? At that link I gave you, this is the fuller story, and I repeat my contention that it is mostly irrelevant to Hillary Clinton’s situation in 2020. Hart’s downfall was not because he tried to enter at the last minute and people were bored with him and he lost his staff. There were a lot more important things going on with Hart that caused his downfall:

    On December 20, 1986, Hart was allegedly followed by an anonymous private investigator from a radio station where he had given the Democratic Party’s response to President Reagan’s weekly radio address. That alleged investigator report claimed that Hart had been followed to a woman’s house, photographed there, and left sometime the following morning. This allegation would ultimately cause him to suspend his planned presidential campaign. After Mario Cuomo announced that he would not enter the race in February 1987, Hart was the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in the 1988 election.

    Hart officially declared his candidacy on April 13, 1987.

    When Lois Romano, a reporter for The Washington Post, asked Hart to respond to rumors spread by other campaigns that he was a “womanizer”, Hart said such candidates were “not going to win that way, because you don’t get to the top by tearing someone else down.” The New York Post reported that comment on its front page with the headline lead in “Straight from the Hart”, followed below with big, black block letters: “Gary: I’m No Womanizer.'”, and then a summary of the story: “Dem blasts rivals over sex life rumors”.

    In late April 1987, The Miami Herald claimed that an anonymous informant[A] contacted the paper to relate that Hart was having an affair with a friend, claimed it was the equivalent of the Iran-Contra scandal, provided details about the affair, and told the Herald that Hart was going to meet this person at his Washington, D.C., townhouse on May 1. As a result, a team of Herald reporters followed Donna Rice on a flight from Miami to Washington, D.C., then staked out Hart’s townhouse that evening and the next Saturday, and observed a young woman and Hart together. The Herald reporters confronted Hart on Saturday evening in an alley about his relationship with Rice. Hart replied, “I’m not involved in any relationship,” and alleged that he had been set up.

    The Herald published a story on May 3 that Hart had spent Friday night and most of Saturday with a young woman in his Washington, D.C. townhouse. On that same day, in an interview with E. J. Dionne that appeared in the New York Times, Hart, responding to the rumors of his womanizing, said: “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” At some point the reporters for the Herald learned that the New York Times was planning to feature the quote in their article on Sunday. When the two articles appeared on the same day a political firestorm was ignited. On Sunday, Hart’s campaign denied any scandal and condemned the Herald’s reporters for intrusive reporting. Hart later noted that his “follow me around” comment was not “challenging the press with a taunt”, but, made in frustration, was only intended to invite the media to observe his public behavior, and never intended to invite reporters to be “skulking around in the shadows” of his home.’ “He did not think of it as a challenge,” Dionne would recall many years later. “And at the time, I did not think of it as a challenge.”‘ Nor did Hart’s comment influence the Miami Herald to pursue the story.

    The next day, Monday, the young woman was identified as Donna Rice, and she gave a press conference also denying any sexual relationship with Hart. Hart insisted that his interest in Rice was limited to her working as a campaign aide. However, “the facts floated on a sea of innuendo.”

    The scandal spread rapidly through the national media, as did another damaging story about angry creditors of the $1.3 million debt Hart had incurred in his 1984 campaign. Media questions about the affair came to dominate coverage of Hart’s campaign, but his staff believed that voters were not as interested in the topic as the media was. Hart’s staff believed that the media was filtering his message. A Gallup Poll conducted that week for Newsweek (but published the following week) found that 55% of Democrats believed that Hart had been truthful, and 44% of them were unconcerned about the issue. The polling of all voters was even more favorable to Hart. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of the respondents it surveyed thought the media treatment of Hart was “unfair”, and 70% disapproved of covert surveillance by the media. A little over half (53 percent) responded that marital infidelity had little to do with a president’s ability to govern.Time magazine had similar results: of those polled, 67% disapproved of the media writing about a candidate’s sex life, and 60% stated that Hart’s relationship with Rice was irrelevant to the presidency.When queried about the matter, Cuomo remarked that there were “skeletons in everybody’s closet.”

    On May 8, 1987, a week after the story broke, Hart suspended his campaign after The Washington Post threatened to run a story about a woman Hart had dated while separated from his wife, and his wife and daughter became similar subjects of interest for tabloid journalists.

    At a press conference, Hart defiantly stated, “I said that I bend, but I don’t break, and believe me, I’m not broken.” Hart identified the invasive media coverage, and its need to “dissect” him, as his reason for suspending his campaign, “If someone’s able to throw up a smokescreen and keep it up there long enough, you can’t get your message across. You can’t raise the money to finance a campaign; there’s too much static, and you can’t communicate. Clearly, under the present circumstances, this campaign cannot go on. I refuse to submit my family and my friends and innocent people and myself to further rumors and gossip. It’s simply an intolerable situation.” Hart paraphrased Thomas Jefferson and warned, “I tremble for my country when I think we may, in fact, get the kind of leaders we deserve.” Hart later recalled, “I watched journalists become animals, literally.”

    …The unprecedented nature of the investigation and reporting on Hart’s personal life was widely noted and reported at the time; the New York Times said the situation “will certainly provoke a needed debate on his contention that the system has gone out of control.”

    Having withdrawn from the presidential race, Hart left for Ireland to spend time away from the media with his son. He rented a cottage in Oughterard, though he remained in contact with key members of his team.

    So to recap the first act of the drama: Hart entered the race in a timely fashion, was doing well and was considered the front-runner or a front-runner, and then was driven out by a series of events that the media covered in a sensationalistic way, including a number of allegations of sexual carryings-on. Hart dropped out as a result, and yet kept in touch with “key members of his team.”

    Then there was the second act:

    …[N]ews did filter out was that he was not excluding a return to the race.The New York Times also pointed to his odd ambivalence toward the presidency even before being caught by “the system”: “Only half of me wants to be President. […] The other half wants to go write novels in Ireland. But the 50 percent that wants to be President is better than 100 percent of the others.”…

    In December 1987, Hart returned to the race, declaring on the steps of New Hampshire Statehouse, “Let’s let the people decide!” Hart said that the other candidates did not represent his new ideas of strategic investment economics, military reform and “enlightened engagement in foreign policy.”…He initially rose to the top of the polls nationally, and second behind Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in New Hampshire, but was soon confronted with more negative stories about prior debts from his 1984 campaign.

    So he re-entered and again he was doing well. And then there were more negative stories about him in the press, this time about money. After that he never did well again, and didn’t stick around long but quit shortly after:

    He competed in the New Hampshire primary and received 4,888 votes, about 4 percent. After the Super Tuesday contests on March 8, in which he won no more than 5 percent of the vote, Hart withdrew from the campaign a second time.

    Your story does not fit the facts of what happened to Hart, and it is irrelevant to what we are discussing with Hillary Clinton.

28. I think she will be the candidate, that she will not actually enter any primaries, and that the next event will be the surge of one or more Democrat Governors driven by the MSM. She will need a VP with some demonstrated support. There will be no clear leader as the convention approaches, and she will will probably take the third ballot.

    Her biggest challenge is to avoid peaking too soon.

    Biden is her placeholder among Democrats who are put off by the Progressives. He can be destroyed at the appropriate time. There was a piece in the NYT yesterday titled: What Hunter Biden did was not illegal, but it should be. A few weeks of NYT CNN WAPO stories like that will put him out to pasture if he is still a factor next year.

    There is an actual Clinton Machine of loyal influential Democrats. There is no other machine in existence at this time. IMO the Clinton Machine conceived the impeachment drive and is the organizing element. It provides a mechanism to reward Swamp Creatures in a future administration for helping damage Trump. It controls the dominant narrative, which is that Trump sought help from Ukraine and is generally incapable of being President. That all right thinking people see that he should be removed.

    The Kurd – Turkey issue looks bad and is coming at an unfortunate time, but it may also backfire on Erdogan, which could be very good. There is suddenly strong support to go after him in the US, and apparently a lot of support to sanction him in the EU. A Post-Erdogan Turkey would be very good. I think Trump will emerge much more positively from the Turkey – Kurd issue than it appears right now. He has already signaled that Erdogan could see a damaging reaction from him.

    We may also see a stock market meltdown, or lots of coverage of any drop. Endless piling on will help the narrative of Trumpian incompetence.

    If you thought the last three years were noisy, hold on to your hat. You are about to be treated to an entirely new level of crazy.

29. An added thought: Hillary has a major contribution to make to US history, to bring about the destruction of what I call the Boomer Democratic Party.

    Trump will obliterate them in 2020. He will bring about an actual restructuring of the left over Cold War establishment, as well as managing the fallout from the collapse of the GOP in the 2022 election.

30. “…major…’

    But not as major as POTUS44.

    He got the ball rolling and the rest of ’em, extraordinarily inspired—transformed?—by “transformation” are just running with it—lemming-like—with determination, creativity and panache.

    (Though one would never, ever want to downplay the heartfelt contribution of Hillary’s priceless “It’s-my-ball-and-if-you-won’t-let-me-bat-cleanup-I’m-going-home-and-taking-my-ball-with-me” attitude regarding Presidential elections.)

31. As you all should know, I’m terrible at predictions. In fact, I’m kind of a Wrong Way Corrigan of predictions.

    Neo’s analysis, of Hillary’s desire and chances of gaining the nomination, is completely sensible to me. I suspect she and the DNC share this view. However I think this underestimates or mistakes Hillary’s (and Bill’s and Chelsea’s) motivations for staying in the public view and the nomination conversation. Namely, she’s still working the crowd for money, and lots of it. She knows the chances of being nominated are slim, and I doubt she really wants to be POTUS. Her recent public appearances and comments – the one above about defeating Trump “again” – are very Trump like in that they plow her into the news cycle, which gets her attention and invites to speaking engagements, maybe sells some books, but no more than that.

    She is vile and corrupt, and she’s run two terrible campaigns for POTUS, but she’s not dumb. She has to know that having lost twice she has absolutely no chance of winning a third time. The only thing she might be willing to do is campaign for a few months so as to put more money in her pockets.

    One of my sisters, a far left liberal who favors Harris and Warren (mostly Warren now), when asked what she thought of Hillary re-entering the race said, “Oh, God help us!”. This was not intended as a sign of support. I suspect a significant majority of Democrats, especially the ones in power, feel the same way.

32. Ah, The Clinton Family Charitable Foundation(s) Amalgam
    “It just hasn’t been done RIGHT yet!”

33. If she wins a couple of large states – California, New York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania – she could prevent others from having enough on the first ballot, even if she didn’t have a huge percentage herself.

    After that, there will be blood on the floor.

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