Standing in front of livestock at the 2016 Iowa State Fair, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton chortled, “I’m back!”  But she was dead serious.

Now, despite Joe Biden’s unlikely intentions to run for a second term, Hillary is back again – as if ambition would ever let her leave!

Hillary Clinton in 2016:

YouTube screengrab (cropped)

Five years younger than Biden, Hillary has no intention of being an old soldier who just fades away.   Ever since her college years at Wellesley, she has harbored political ambitions.  And when her husband landed in the White House, her dream of becoming the first female president of the United States took serious hold.

After her stint as First Lady, Hillary made all the right moves.   She ran for and won the US Senate seat in New York, a state where she had never resided.  After she lost in the 2008 presidential primary to Barack Obama, she served as his Secretary of State, as much to preserve her own public image as anything else.   

After the Obama years, the general expectation was that nominee Hillary would win the 2016 election over her once-friend, Donald J. Trump, a political neophyte. Though early on the contest seemed hers to lose, Hillary soon found herself in the crosshairs of her own unpopularity and the mood of the country for change.

Hillary took her presidential defeat badly – but she never really took herself out of contention.   After her defeat five years ago, some presumed she would trudge, if reluctantly, toward political extinction.  Indeed, four years later in 2020.  there was no groundswell for Hillary, and certainly less when Joe Biden, a Democrat, moved into the White House.   

HRC may be as crooked as the part in Jan Psaki’s red hair, but she has always been straight about what she wants.  And now, by wading into the midst of Biden’s misadventures, she is daring to take Ram Emanuel’s advice to never let a crisis go to waste.

In fact, with all of Biden’s humiliating defeats, it would seem like a promising time for Hillary to dust off the “reset button” she presented thirteen unlucky years ago to then Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov  -- and hand it to America’s voters.    Of course, back then, after Hillary Clinton embraced the Russians, she maligned them with charges of misinformation and election tampering.

Hillary is still smarting over Trump’s presumed theft of her crown jewel, the American presidency.  And now after a period of relative silence, Her Heinous is reimagining herself as the embodiment of “resilience” -- a cyclically regenerating phoenix rising not from her own ashes, but from those of the current inept administration.  Undoubtedly, Hillary considers herself far more qualified to lead the country than Joe, Kamala, or any of the primary wannabes.  And surely it must rankle her that a lightweight female is a heartbeat away from a president who appears to be fading fast.

So, Hillary has bolstered her comeback by, among other things, promoting herself on Master Class as a “cultural icon … a barrier-smashing leader who can teach others about building a strong sense of resilience.”  But let’s face it, the only thing Hillary wants to help build is a following for her next presidential run.

Along with her survival instincts, Hillary presents herself as a much-needed liberal voice of reason and moderation in these trying times.  She knows that many Americans who pulled the lever for Joe Biden now suffer from buyer’s remorse.  And among them, surely, are some partisans – particularly Democrat women -- who are still upset over her loss to Trump, and who still think she deserves to be America’s first female president.

So while some may view lingering COVID, unprotected borders, crime-ridden cities,  escalating inflation, and plummeting  Biden poll numbers as worrisome,   Hillary Clinton sees them as a possible way to her happy ending, last hurrah.  

Meanwhile, Bidenistas are biting their nails.  Even as they know the score, they manipulate it to reassure their base that Joe will be running again in 2024, even if he can barely walk in 2022, thinks it’s 2020, and already refers to Kamala as “President Harris.”  Troubled by the Veep’s increasing unpopularity, White House handlers feel an even greater urgency to keep up the Biden charade.

Meanwhile, some in the media are taking her challenge seriously, such as pollster Doug Schoen and former NYC Council president, Andrew Stein., who opine that a “leadership vacuum in the party” could be viably filled by Ms. Clinton, and viewing her as what they call a “change candidate,” though this term is not defined.

But other media types seem unimpressed.   For one thing, Hillary has been too glibly giving advice – and even warnings -- to her own party, such as admonishing it against taking a far left turn before the 2022 midterm. (Has she been watching Bill Maher?)

Hillary has gone so far as to harangue the Democrat-controlled Congress for not getting things done and to criticize a White House that “we cannot count on to be sane and sober and stable and productive.”  Ouch! 

Is this woman who once referred to half of American voters as “deplorables” now taking a page from the GOP playbook? Or is Hillary merely trying to be more of a scold than the present Enforcer-in-chief, who constantly wags a bony finger of blame at anyone other than himself?

But for Clinton, finding fault is a far cry from finding a way forward.  A lot of unlikely things would have to fall into place for her to construct the scenario of her dreams.  But rest assured, “Rule Resilience” will be her theme song in the years ahead.

After all, didn’t her husband Bill snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in New Hampshire during his crucial primary run for the presidency back in 1992?   Facing well-known opponents Senators Paul Tsongas and John Kerry, and plagued by revelations of his long-time affair with Gennifer Flowers and his questionable draft status during the Vietnam War, Clinton realized he had to win the Granite State or it was all over for him.  He had already fallen 20 points in primary polling in a matter of days.   And his campaign was in meltdown.

But a last-minute Dover event proved to be the game-changer. Bill was dynamic and contrite, telling the crowd, “I’ll never forget those of you that gave me a second chance, and if you give me that second chance, I’ll be with you till the last dog dies.”

Perhaps Hillary figures she, too, can go down in history as “The Comeback Kid.”  This is, after all, America.  Anything is possible …  at least until the last dog dies.