Beltway folk hold silly notions.  Hillary is deemed formidable, and Republicans should hope she does not win the Democrat nomination in 2016.  I disagree.  Hillary is a weak candidate for president, and if she is nominated, she will lose the general election.

Consider four aspects of a Hillary candidacy in the general election: (1) foreign policy, (2) domestic policy, (3) candidate appeal.

The sole executive experience of Hillary in her life has been as Obama’s secretary of state.  During those years, she did nothing but leave a dreadful legacy for America.  In 2016, it is certain that American foreign policy will be seen almost universally as a huge failure: Russian aggression in Ukraine, Syrian civil war, Iranian nuclear weapons, rogue and dangerous North Korea, Benghazi and the cover-up of that scandal, unstable Egypt, lost victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, the looming calamity of European national sovereign debt defaults…and so on.

It is always difficult for a party nominee to run against the current White House occupant if he is from the same party.  When that nominee held a key office in that president’s administration, then that disavowal is even more difficult.  When that key office presided over a disgraced area of that president’s failure, then the nominee is truly stuck.  Candidate Hillary will try to run away from President Obama’s foreign policy, but she cannot run away from Secretary of State Hillary’s own administration of that foreign policy.

Hillary will face a similar problem in domestic policy.  ObamaCare is becoming the “gift that keeps on giving” for Republicans.  In the crippled last two years of Lame Duck Obama’s administration, he will either have to accept hard medicine from a Republican Congress and undo his own dubious accomplishment or fight a bitter rear-guard action hoping that somehow this putrescent legislation stops stinking.  

The special problem for Hillary is that her single initiative in the domestic policy area was the equally unpopular HillaryCare.  She is, in fact, the only important Democrat to have strongly pushed socialized medicine.  How can she disavow ObamaCare without also disavowing the idea of socialized medicine which was the heart of her signature scheme?

If foreign policy and domestic policy both work against Candidate Hillary in 2016, what does she have going for her?  Hillary will be close to seventy years old in 2016, and she will have been a fixture in Washington for almost one quarter of a century.  If Washington is perceived to be the problem and not the solution, and if voters are looking for truly new approaches, then it is hard to imagine a candidate less appealing to voters in Flyover Country. 

The left doubtless hopes that her gender alone will drag Hillary across the finish line in 2016, but if she is nominated because it is “her turn,” then it is much more likely that this would profoundly offend many voters who are in genuine distress and find the whole idea of Washingtonian entitlement offensive.  Her ego would be seen by these unhappy millions to be more important than their suffering.  Besides, the despicable treatment by the left of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann makes it clear that the left seeks only compliant women like Bill Clinton’s wife to carry their banner in elections.

Millions of Americans will also understand that she is the candidate only because Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton fiercely defended her boorish husband’s lecherous advances towards powerless women.  Mrs. Clinton is not a champion of women, but rather the coordinator of campaigns to quiet injured women.  Another problem for Mrs. Clinton trying to run as a “group identity” candidate is the fact that looking at post-Obama many America, most voters will recoil at yet another woefully incompetent but perpetually aggrieved “group identity” president.  Besides, Republicans have a host of women, Hispanics, and black conservatives who can trump Hillary’s dull life story as a pampered middle-class Chicagoan and then the privileged wife of a consummate politician.

The Republican nominee and running mate will pose the insurmountable problem for Hillary.  Republicans will nominate people who have actually solved problems, like Scott Walker, or taken politically courageous stands, like Ted Cruz.  This candidate will not be the grimy residue of a Washington political dynasty, but likely a self-made man (or woman) whose life story is inspirational and not sordid.  Hillary reflects the utter vacuity of leftism today: she is probably the best that the left has to offer America today, which means that it has nothing to offer America at all.  This is why Candidate Hillary will flop.