Hillary Clinton's national lead is slipping faster in 2016 than it did in 2008 wpo.st/3gs31
Sanders' Surge Threatens a Replay of 2008 for Hillary Clinton
With new and damaging revelations coming from the e-mail scandal this month and the Democrat Party establishment perhaps turning on her, Hillary Clinton suddenly looks not just vulnerable, but perhaps destined to lose again. She shouldn’t be nervous, as Cillizza advises. To borrow a line from Geena Davis from The Fly, “Be afraid – be very afraid.” On the eve of Iowa, the second coronation looks ready to turn into another usurpation.
Can Bernie Sanders Pull an Obama on Hillary?
It is not impossible to imagine a similar decline this year, nor to conceive of the brutal snowball effect that could deprive [Mrs.] Clinton once again of the only real ambition she has ever held. First, she would lose Iowa; then she would lose New Hampshire; and then, inspired by the muttering and the grumbling and the inexorable sense of déjà vu, a critical endorsement would go the other way. Perhaps Elizabeth Warren would issue a catastrophic vote of no confidence? Perhaps a “Draft Biden” team would spring up overnight? Or perhaps, most cruelly of all, the FBI would issue its final report just as [Mrs.] Clinton was licking her wounds and nursing herself back to health. These are the prospects that keep consultants up at night. And they damn well should, too.
“I’m getting a little PTSD on the whole Iowa thing,” a “2008 veteran” told Politico yesterday. “It’s a little troublesome to watch. The whole lack of enthusiasm, someone gaining momentum on her — that’s the troubling thing.” Indeed, it must be, and not least because a “lack of enthusiasm” isn’t a problem that one can counter with either smart strategy or breathless hard work. As Shaffer’s Salieri could not will his way into the possession of Mozart’s gifts, so Hillary can do next to nothing to overcome her near-fatal lack of charisma. For two decades now, the press has ruminated on her toxic personality and her awkward tin ear, and for two decades the naysayers have responded to the critique with an assurance that the engineers are just one soft reboot away from getting the software fixed once and for all. Suffice to say that they are not. If Hillary does prevail — in either the primary or in the general — it will be despite, not because of, her librarian’s mien. When she can rely upon a gracious appointment or a spousal favor, she is golden; when she has to cross no man’s land under her own steam, she is a hot mess. Has American politics ever played host to a candidate whose talents fell so short of expectation?
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