You can say this for Hillary Clinton: she's proving to be a lot more prescient than popular.  Ever the meddler, the vengeful presidential wannabe advised Joe Biden way back in August not to concede the election under any circumstances.  Little did she know that it would be Trump who took her advice.

Not only that, but Hillary was savvy enough to predict why the 2020 election results would demand scrutiny.  She enumerated the reasons, which sound surprisingly like the ones Trump's legal team is contesting before he is willing to make a concession speech.  Talk about taking a page from the opposition's playbook!

Among other things, Hillary predicted that the election would be very close and "drag out."  Considering how far off the mark most political gurus were in that regard, perhaps she should become a pollster.

Hillary may have been on to something.  But the question is, what will she be up to next?  My grasp of her political ideology goes back some half-century to when she was still Hillary Rodham.  As some of this blog's readers know, this octogenarian was in the audience when Hillary, as class spokesperson, delivered a scathing rebuttal to the commencement speaker, the late Senator Edward Brooke, at her graduation from Wellesley College fifty years ago.

Her unexpected venom against Republican Brooke — the first black senator elected since Reconstruction days — set the tone for Hillary's lifelong dismissive harangue against anyone who disagreed with her view of the world.

Hillary's public résumé may be impressive — first lady, U.S. senator from New York, secretary of state, and the first female candidate for U.S. president — but the fact is that the political merry-go-round's golden ring has disappointingly eluded her.  And if she considers that unfair and even dishonest, what must she be feeling now that some Democrat other than herself is poised to move into the White House?  Wasn't she the one who had twice before measured the drapes for the Oval Office?

She can give the Biden team all the advice in the world and pretend it's offered out of pure altruism.  But it's really just an ingratiating show, a way of keeping herself "out there" and viable when the spoils flow from a Democrat victor.  In reality, the only one Hillary's concerned about is Hillary.

Her Heinous's chief objective is figuring out what's in it for herself.  Appearances aside, she must surely be conflicted by the election results.  Will she be back in Washington in some sort of "official" position that enables her aging self to stay in the public eye?  She is no spring chicken, but that does not seem to matter anymore.  She's still younger than both Biden and Trump.  Anything could happen.  Dum spiro spero.

On the other hand, there must be a certain degree of humiliation in the knowledge that Biden could win.  If anyone supposes that Hillary Clinton feels either redeemed or exonerated by this possibility, he underestimates the depth of her vanity.

The fact is that Biden appears to have succeeded where she did not.  Not only that, but if he does win, he will take with him a female vice president poised to slip into the role that Hillary has so long coveted!  One misstep by the cognitively challenged Joe Biden, and he will become a "transitional" president faster than he anticipated.

Imagine Hillary's envy!  So unfair!  Bested, as it were, by someone who was tapped as veep primarily because she is female and partly black!  What are Kamala Harris's credentials compared to her own?  She slept her way to political power with a mayor many times her senior.  She has served in a federal post — as a junior U.S. senator — for less than a full term.  She had a dismal primary run, forced out by unpopularity early in the game.  So why is she entitled to lead the country?

Aside from that, there's the matter of Joe Biden having accomplished something she could not.  And the pity of it is that she is restrained — in public anyway — to ascribe his victory to the Democrats' wholesale manipulation of votes!  So it makes it seem as though Hillary lost to Trump because of her own shortcomings.  On top of that, prior to this year, Biden took a shellacking in every one of the presidential primaries he entered.  He was dead in the water after his try back in '08, until Barack Obama plucked him from future oblivion and made him his grateful, unthreatening vice president.  And now that old guy has presumably done what Hillary could not!  There are a lot of wannabe Republicans out there who are envious of Trump's win at the presidency.  Democrats have jealous wannabes of their own.

In contrast to Biden, Hillary had battled valiantly through two primaries.  After she lost to Obama, she picked herself up, joined his Cabinet for another notch in her political belt, and battled her way back to victory in a Democrat primary eight years later.

For the last four years, since her defeat at the hands of her once-upon-a-time friend, Donald Trump, Hillary has characterized herself as the victim of a rigged election, a collusive effort between the Trump team and Vladimir Putin's meddling thugs.  (Not surprisingly, one hasn't heard any suggestion of Russian malfeasance in this election.)

Yet Hillary dares not admit to herself that Biden is more popular than she or ran a better campaign.  (In fact, he ran no campaign!)  So instead, she has offered up the explanation that those who were duped by treacherous Trump in 2016 have finally come to their senses.  And oh, by the way, if only she had run again!

If Biden is sworn in on January 20, what might we expect Hillary's next move to be?  Maybe authoring another book about how heroically she suffered as the gullible voters' sacrificial lamb?  For sure, she will not willingly remove herself from the limelight.  The electorate may have long concluded that the lady is not going anywhere.  But in Hillary' power-lusting heart of hearts, she is still on her way to the ultimate prize.

Image: Nathania Johnson via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.