Dick Morris is, grudgingly, making a second career of agreeing with me:
The Hillary email scandal changes the calculus surrounding Senator Elizabeth Warren’s consideration of a White House bid.
Until now, getting into the race would be seen by the party faithful as a betrayal.
Hardly, Dick. The party base detests Mrs. Clinton as much as they adore Fauxcahontas, remember?
In the name of personal ambition, Warren would have hurt the chances of the obvious nominee — Hillary.
Who is neither "obvious" nor possesses any realistic chances at the Democrat nomination, much less the presidency.
She would have paid a price reminiscent of that which dogged Ted Kennedy for challenging Jimmy Carter in 1980. Democrats blamed the defeat of that year on the splits and fissures caused by the Kennedy candidacy and retaliated against him in the Senate.
When the real reason he lost is because he had sparked the worst economic downturn since the (first) Great Depression along with an inflationary spiral, reduced America's prestige to such a nadir that Iranian ragheads conquered our Tehran embassy and captured fifty-three Americans free of any fear of the slightest repercussion, and brought the U.S. to the brink of defeat in the Cold War and accompanying nuclear annihilation.
And he was facing Ronald Reagan. The might also have had something to do with it.
But now, Democrat loyalists are increasingly being thrown into a panic. What happens if Hillary gets knocked out? What if she can’t run? Or if she is so damaged that she can’t win? What would the party do then? Nominate Bernie Sanders???
In other words, they're beginning to realize what I've been trying to tell them and everybody else for the past two-plus years.
By her stubborn refusal to play by the rules, Clinton has triggered a document hunt for her emails that will consume this year and too much of the next one, fanning doubts about her viability as a candidate.
She's a Democrat, Dick; "refusing to play by the rules" is both a Donk entitlement and part of her job description. And this "document hunt" wouldn't slow down her candidacy in the slightest if the latter was viable in its own right. But it's not. It's just that the "conventional wisdom" is finally coming 'round to that realization, although not yet far enough to openly acknowledge the true reasons why: That HRC is old, tired, yesterday's news, a failure from all the way back in 2008, and one of the worst political campaigners to ever pretend to kiss a baby,
So now Warren may subtly change her posture from "I won’t run" to "I’ll let my supporters introduce my name so that if Hillary falters, our party has an alternative."
"If"? She "faltered" seven years ago. "Establishment" Democrats have just been so bereft of imagination until now that nothing ever occurred to them but this Weekend At Bernie's exercise.
Warren will still profess her preference for Hillary as the nominee, but, with the filing deadlines looming ever closer in the key states, she will likely let her name be introduced simply as a fallback should Hillary get into trouble. And, as Hillary digs herself deeper into scandal by her pigheaded stubbornness, Warren will look better and better.
Warren will "look better and better" because, for Democrats, she is. She has none of Her Nib's drawbacks or the mountain of Clinton scandal baggage. She's Hillary Clinton circa 1992.
David Freddoso has also jumped on my island as well, and "gets it" about the Empress's electoral moribundity a lot more than the Toe-Sucker does:
“The Hillary Juggernaut,” the Salon headline blares. “Why Clinton may already be unstoppable.” The piece, by Walter Shapiro, goes on to make the case that Clinton’s ability to raise money effortlessly, the potency of her husband as a surrogate (as well as nostalgia for his presidency), and “emotional support from a significant percentage of women voters” makes her nomination inevitable.
It sounds like a pretty strong argument. But the article appeared almost exactly nine years ago, in March 2006. Democrats entered the 2008 presidential cycle with the full expectation that Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. So did Republicans [including me] — entire books were written and a now-famous Citizens United movie was produced in order to thwart her. Yet after a drawn-out primary process, the Democrats decided they could do better. And they did.
The Hillary die-hards hung on as long as they could in 2008. But Clinton’s married name was ultimately insufficient to compensate for her sub-par personal and campaigning skills, her lack of “likeability,” and her perfectly adequate but not commanding grasp of issues. [emphasis added]
In a phrase, as a national candidate, Hillary Clinton sucks canal water. Her only chance at even being competitive in a general campaign would be if the GOP were daft enough to match Dems' lack of imagination by putting up the fifth Bush bid since 1988. Pretty much any other Republican candidate would defeat her easily, and Scott Walker would wipe up the floor with her. Remember Barack Obama's "forward" slogan from 2012? Could a Hillary Clinton ticket be any more garish a symbol of going "backward" rather than "forward"?
Yes, Elizabeth Warren is an ideologically incontinent leftwing extremist - the Howard Dean of 2016, in essence. The difference versus 2004 is that back then Democrats thought that John Kerry might be more "electable" than "YEEEEAAAARRRGH!!!!"; they have no reason not to know that that's not the case with Mrs. Clinton now. And if they're going to lose anyway, they're going to go down as who and what they are - and Fauxcahontas exemplifies that vastly more than Hillary! has in at least twenty years.
And, remember, if 2016 shapes up as a Scott Walker landslide, Barack Obama is far more likely to just cancel the election and decree himself another term. Something which the Left, and a lot of LIVs and NIVs, will wildly and hysterically cheer.
One thing's certain: Dems are not going preemptively concede the election by nominating a woman they despise AND that cannot win.
That that realization is burbling to the conventional wisdom surface this early shows how nakedly obvious it is and has always been.
Good thing I chose such a big island. There's plenty of room for the rest of y'all.
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