WaPo: Democrats Are Stuck With Hillary

by JASmius



If Chris Cillizza wanted to set off a mass donkeycide, I can't think of a better way to do it:

Dear Democrats: It’s too late to start over.

As in, there’s no replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton as your party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination. Not with Vice President Biden — even if he runs. Not with former vice president Al Gore. (I mean, come on.) Not with your ideal rich-person-with-no-record-and-a-fresh-faced-appeal…

Actually, Chris, Donald Trump is pretending to run on the Republican side.

The simple fact is that getting into a presidential race this late — and, yes, August before the election year is very late — has a disastrous recent history. Then-Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) entered the 2012 race in August 2011 and within three months had become irrelevant.

Well, to be fair, Chris, his fifty-three-second debate brain fart did have something to do with that.

Former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee got into the 2008 Republican race late — and never went anywhere.

Well, to be fair, Chris, it was more about questions as to whether Senator Thompson had the "fire in the belly," not so much when he jumped into the race.

Ditto Wes Clark in the 2004 Democrat nomination contest.

Don't even remember the details of that one, honestly.  But then General Clark couldn't break through the Howiemania of the time, either.

What all of those failed candidacies have in common is that their best day — at least in terms of polling — was their first day. It was all downhill from there.

True, but due to other factors, not their comparatively late entry date.  And in none of them was their party in the strategic position that the Democrats are in now, it being a (theoretically, anyway) open race with a preemptively presumptive frontrunner a step short of a de facto incumbent that intimidated away any initial challengers from its already weak "bench" now spiraling down the drain, leaving its already dim, flickering 2016 chances to be extinguished altogether.

It may indeed already be too late for the Dems to change horses in early-to-mid-stream, but here's the thing, Chris: They know that Hillary is going to lose, they never liked or believed in her in the first place, their support was always more duty and obligation than energy and passion, and they are willing to do anything to escape the Hillary Trap, even if it means turning to fossilized buffoons like Biden and Gore and Sanders.

I mean, what the hell, right?  Any one of them or Hillary are going to lose forty-plus States next November.  Might as well go down with their actual preference.

Exit question: Is it even too late for this guy, Chris?