Hillary Clinton's Impossible Dream
Hillary Clinton, still suffering from delusions of adequacy, has a dream. It is that Democrats will beg her to run again and be their savior. After all, she recently celebrated her historic 2016 win against President Donald Trump during an interview with Judy Woodruff.
Yes, the psychosis has progressed that far.
Still, the lineup of Democrat candidates is so awful that Clinton is actually tied with Andrew Yang in third place in the PredictIt political prediction market.
The betting market is responding to Clinton's not so subtle odor of desperation, as well as the apparent weakness of the field.
Far too many Republicans and Democrats alike view Clinton as the real-life incarnation of Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th fame, although this is perhaps unfair to Jason, since it was safer to be acquaintances with the machete-wielding psychopath.
Jason was the un-killable evil force. Just when the brave and plucky heroine finally incinerated him, he popped back up with his hockey mask on and creepy music in the background to teach her the error of her ways.
With Clinton, her political immortality is purely an illusion. In fact, there are only two Americans who really want her to run: Clinton herself and President Donald Trump. You could perhaps add Bill Clinton to that list if it would keep her away from the mansion a bit longer.
In light of the Left's outraged attacks on Ellen DeGeneres for not pushing George W. Bush out of the press box of a football game, perhaps the only remaining issue that can unite Republicans and Democrats is loathing of the corruption queen.
Usually, losing candidates see their approval ratings improve. Not Clinton.
Conservatives detest her even more now than they did in 2016 thanks to her starring role in the first administrative coup attempt. They are joined in disgust by a sizable percentage of liberals, who will never forgive Clinton for losing that election.
The problem for Clinton is that every day for the Democrats brings a fresh reminder of what they lost in 2016. The Democrats were within a hair of locking down full ideological control of America, likely forever, and Clinton fumbled away their perverse dream.
Think about what this moment meant for America, particularly if you were a liberal.
If Clinton had won, liberals would have a 6-3 majority on the high court, with almost no possibility for conservatives to win back the court in our lifetime. That would have been lights out for America.
Clinton singlehandedly brought about the greatest mass outbreak of schadenfreude in human history. That's not an easily forgiven achievement for liberals. Democrats blame her and are decidedly not with her this time around.
Clinton was left chucking lamps at staffers while John Podesta was giving his version of Winston Churchill's "Fight Them on the Beaches" speech to the world's saddest victory party. Clinton didn't even have the decency to thank her supporters since it was never really about them. With a Cilnton, it is always only about that Clinton, raw political power, and insatiable greed.
Clinton is waiting for Joe Biden to implode with the hopes that she will get drafted to replace him as the Democrat establishment choice.
Biden might oblige her. He was already in deep trouble, but the latest revelation that he may have also collected a small fortune from Ukraine may seal the deal. "Make the Bidens Richer Again" is not resonating as a campaign theme despite the triggered media's best attempts to black out any mention of Biden and Ukraine in the same sentence. Poor Joe may have no other choice in 2020 but to cast his ballot for President Trump to protect his ill begotten loot from the Cherokee maiden's wealth tax.
But even if Joe crashes, there will be no outcry for Hillary to take his place. Should she enter the race, she will be destroyed. Democrats do not reward presidential losers. The last Democrat nominee to get two shots was Adlai Stevenson, who got trounced twice by Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.
Democrats always put their losers out to pasture. Sure, a John Kerry might occasionally pop up like a whack-a-mole to whisper sweet words of treason in an Iranian mullah's ear, but Democrat general election losers are effectively done as national candidates.
If a candidate was ever going to buck this trend, it would have to be one that commanded broad respect, had strong charisma, and was viewed to have a good chance of winning. That's not Clinton. Her approval rating outside of the Clinton house is stuck somewhere between horrible and abysmal.
The absolute best thing that could happen for Republicans is if Democrats really do draft Clinton into the race. They won't. If you think the Bernie Bros were mad in 2016, the Cherokee's tribe will go on the political warpath if Warren is denied the nomination by Clinton chicanery.
One theory posited is that Clinton could be a compromise candidate chosen at the convention should no other candidate claim the nomination outright. Perhaps if it were still 2016. But the Democrats changed their rules after 2016, making this far less likely. A candidate has to win support from only a majority of the pledged delegates on the first ballot, when superdelegates cannot vote. The laws of political momentum suggest that no more than two candidates will dominate the field once voting starts. So if there is a road where Clinton could take advantage of the rules to sneak back in, it is a microscopic one that would require such a confluence of events as to be nearly impossible.
On the unlikely scenario that the first ballot is close but doesn't produce a candidate, I'm guessing that the superdelegates will throw their weight behind either the top performer in the first ballot or whoever is closest to an "establishment" candidate, which will likely be Biden.
Many Democrats are already suffering buyer's remorse on Warren, even though they haven't actually bought her yet. So there will be attempts to draft an alternative.
If not Clinton, then who is first in line to be drafted?
If Warren is Bernie Sanders 2.0, then the biggest threat to Warren would be Clinton 2.0, which is not Hillary. That would be Michelle Obama.
She is newer, fresher, and not despised as a loser by most of her party. She is also the candidate best poised to appeal to all the factions in the Democratic Party. Socialists will love her since they will strongly suspect she is one of them. The establishment would back her, assuming she is preferable to Warren. She wouldn't suffer from Warren's real and perhaps campaign-fatal problem with black American voters. Her approval rating is at its high water mark.
I would be surprised if she is not fielding phone calls urging her to enter the race.
Regardless, Clinton will continue to chatter from the sidelines, hoping for one last shot at her dream. But, as a national candidate, she is done. That impossibly morbid dream is over.
Fletch Daniels blogs at deplorabletouchdown.com and can be found on Twitter at @fletchdaniels.
Image: Natalia Johnson via Wikimedia Commons.