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July 8, 2018

The signs pile up: Hillary is running

By Monica Showalter

Michael Goodwin has a good one out, arguing that Hillary Clinton is running for president again. He bases that thinking observations about her frenzied emails and email-based fundraising. It's news, and as good an argument as any that the still-angry former first lady, Senator and ex-Secretary of State is not done fighting and wants to take one last shot at winning it next time.

Goodwin observes that there are good reasons for it that shouldn't be ignored, writing:

First, because there’s no clear front-runner for the nomination 18 months into Trump’s presidency, Clinton remains the closest thing to an incumbent. She’s also got numerous advantages, from name recognition to campaign experience to an off-the-shelf Cabinet, that could give her a head start.

Second, a crowded, diverse field diminishes the chances of anyone knocking her off. Recall how Trump outlasted 16 GOP rivals by having a committed core of supporters that grew as the field shrunk. Clinton could be in a similar position — unpopular among many, but also unbeatable by a single opponent.

Third, looking ahead to the 2020 primaries, she sees no reason to fear the favorite daughters and sons in key blue states. She would almost certainly beat Sen. Kamala Harris in California, Sen. Cory Booker in New Jersey and Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York.

The amazing thing is, it's not even a complete argument. A few days ago, writing in the American Thinker, the very sharp Joel Gilbert (a professional film director) argued that other signs were unmistakeable that Hillary was running as well. He argued:

Hillary has a highly plausible path to the Democratic Party nomination, something no other potential Democrat candidate for president can say.  In the primaries, Hillary Clinton's name recognition and loyal voters would earn her an easy 25% of the vote, while the anti-Hillary vote would split among as many as ten other candidates at about 5-10% each.  This is not dissimilar to what Trump accomplished on the Republican side in 2016.  With a solid base of supporters, Trump was able to win primary after primary while the others split the vote.  Each time someone dropped out, Trump picked up about half of his supporters, with the other half disbursed among the other candidates.  This is a realistic path for Hillary to gain the Democrat nomination, and it is no doubt irresistible to her.

Hillary is the only potential Democrat with big money-raising potential and an existing fundraising mechanism.  That mechanism has been in place for 30 years!  Hillary also has as much as $1 billion in Clinton Foundation donations stashed away for just such a rainy day.  You didn't really think all that Russian oligarch money was sent to hungry children in Haiti, did you?

Hillary knows that the MSM will not only not criticize her for running in 2020, but celebrate her campaign because "she has unfinished business."  Hillary also knows that the MSM will repeat her talking points ad nauseam, as in "the 2016 election was stolen by the Russians" and "she's doing this for women to break the glass ceiling" as they serve up $10 billion in free earned media.  In addition, MSM journalists want jobs in the Hillary Clinton administration and won't risk her famous wrath if she wins.

Gilbert explores in depth the willingness of the Democratic Party establishment to put its thumb on the scales on her behalf, and the establishment's fear of the Clinton machine anyway, so the whole thing is worth reading here.
 
From a more ephemeral, day-to-day standpoint, it's been obvious on my own radar, too. A few incidents in particular stand out and they are generally recent ones:
 
I wrote about how Hillary was weirdly channeling Winston Churchill as if fantasizing about a comeback to power in an echo of the British statesman's path here.
 
I also noted how crazy she seemed to be getting as she tried to take credit for #MeToo in the wake of her enablement of Bill Clinton and her own efforts to discredit all of his many female sex-harassment accusers. To call her the founder of #MeToo is a delusion of grandeur.  What's more, it signaled she doesn't have enough to do with herself these days.
 
Then there was her Wellesley speech, which had a campaign-style flavor. It was accompanied by staff denials of her obvious health problems, and some observations about her rivalry with Elizabeth Warren, who is also hankering for the title of 'first woman president.' If for nothing else, she will likely run just to make sure Warren doesn't get it.
 
She Persisted? It looks like this is the way it's gonna go for the Democrats, even as other factions, such as the Obama faction, seems to be trying to rebuild the Democrats back in its old youth-hipster mode, Nancy Pelosi and her ilk seek to keep the dinosaurs in power, and the Bernie Sandersites seek to bring back old-line Soviet socialism.
 
What a wretched bunch these people amount to. The silver lining is that if Hillary persists, she'll keep the other Democrats from rising, at least if the law doesn't catch up to her.
 
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