How would you like to be Hillary Clinton these days? Eight years ago she embarked upon a coronational processional that was supposed to make her president of the United States by universal acclamation - in essence, the way Barack Obama eventually was. She was supposed to be unopposed. The White House was supposed to be handed to her on a silver platter, just like her Daniel Patrick Moynihan's New York Senate seat was eight years before that.
It didn't turn out that way.
But The One was such an overhyped sensation that I'm sure Hillary has since been able to rationalize what for her had to have been a shocking, stunning, out-of-the-clear blue-sky defeat. It was a fluke. It was the worst possible timing. Something that can't possibly be repeated. With the weak Democrat "bench," there would be nobody to stop her this time. Her $2.5 billion campaign warchest would see to that. And in 2016, her life's supreme ambition, that to which she is entitled, her payback for all those years of standing by Mr. Bill and all the infidelities and humiliations he inflicted upon her over the years, would finally be hers, hers, all hers.
And Obamunist lightning is, indeed, not striking twice. Bernie Sanders? A septuagenarian white guy that uses podiums to hold himself up. Joe Biden? Bad comedy act who forgets his pants half the time. Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chaffee? Who?
And yet, the 2008 el foldo swoon is happening again. And this time there's no wunderkind submarining her, no excuses to be made, no mitigating factors in which she can seek solace and PR cover, and nothing from which any amount of bilious screeching can distract. Hillary Clinton isn't being beaten; Hillary Clinton is losing. And Hillary Clinton is losing because she's an awful candidate of whom her party's base is sick to death and of which they want no more part.
And she knows it. Which helps explain her lame deceptions and delusions....:
Q: Why haven't you directly apologized for setting up and using a private email server as secretary of state?
A: "Well, I understand why people have questions and I'm trying to answer as many of those in as many different settings as I can. What I did was allowed by the State Department. It was fully above board. Everybody in the government with whom I emailed knew that I was using a personal email, and I have said it would have been a better choice to have had two separate email accounts. And I've also tried to not only take responsibility, because it was my decision, but to be as transparent as possible."
Q: Has the email issue damaged your campaign? For example, in terms of morale among staff or in fundraising or getting your message to voters.
A: "No. Not at all. It's a distraction, certainly. But it hasn't in any way affected the plan for our campaign, the efforts we're making to organize here in Iowa and elsewhere in the country. And I still feel very confident about the organization and the message that my campaign is putting out." [hilarious emphases added]
....to her iron-fisted paranoia:
Democrat presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton might be worried about maintaining that status, asking [millennials] attendees at a Cleveland, Ohio, event to sign a loyalty pledge before being allowed to enter, writes Salena Zito at Real Clear Politics.
Zito posted a picture of the pledge on Twitter. It reads, "I _______ commit to vote for Hillary Clinton." Below that is a list of volunteer opportunities with checkboxes. They include "Collect signatures" and "Host a grassroots fundraiser."
We've seen party loyalty oaths lately, which make perfect sense when an interloping outsider is attempting a hostile takeover. But candidate loyalty oaths? "Vote for me, or else"? Yeah, THAT's going to kindle the fires of "Ready for Hillary"-mania.
This Cleveland event was sparsely attended and, for La Clinton Nostra, downright depressing:
The event here wasn’t just a failure to connect with millennials, but a fundamental inability to read her audience and adjust her speech — or perhaps laziness, or a sense of entitlement that she shouldn’t have to work this hard for support. Perhaps it was all of that.
“Fired up! Ready to go!” an early speaker shouted as he prepared the crowd for [Mrs.] Clinton. He received only a smattering of polite claps, despite several attempts to get the crowd excited. …
[Mrs.] Clinton spoke for thirty minutes on voter suppression, gun control, women’s reproductive rights; she called Republicans “terrorists” and championed foster care. The only time she caught the audience’s attention was with a brief mention of college affordability.
It was as if time had passed her by.
You could say that, if it had ever found her in the first place. That's one sense in which age is not relevant, as Hillary Clinton was as much of a grating, irritating, unbearable battleaxe a quarter of a century ago as she is today.
Amusingly, it's over two months further down the campaign line, and Big Labor is still refusing to "put out":
AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and other national labor leaders are holding out for Hillary Clinton to make a stronger commitment to the movement's issues before agreeing to endorse her bid for the Democrat nomination.
Instead, reports the Hill, Trumka has been flirting with an endorsement for Senator Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, even though the vice president hasn't entered the race.
"Say you're in love with a girl and want to marry her. She's playing it cool. So you figure the best way to make her jealous is to flirt with someone else," Democrat strategist Brad Bannon said.
But Trumka and other labor officials are angry over how the Obama administration handed trade issues and do not appreciate that [Mrs.] Clinton hasn't taken a clear stand against the Trade Promotion Authority bill that passed this summer.
In other words, she thinks that Trumka should be prostrating himself before her throne, but it's Trumka who is demanding that she bow and curtsey before his. In the meantime, he's not just "flirting" with Slow Joe, but actively pursuing him, at an event which was both packed and vastly more enthusiastic for the veep than anything the Empress saw this afternoon. And remember, Biden isn't even officially in the race yet.
As Yeats once wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Or the Left.
Thus is life in the Hillary Trap.
Especially for its namesake.
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