The longer Hillary Clinton remains the Democrats’ idea of a standard-bearer, the better off the country will be. She should run in 2020. And 2024. And forever.
Another losing presidential candidacy is the best way she can serve her country.
C an you feel the excitement? Hillary Clinton is in The Atlantic, telling us how democracy is in crisis. She is on CNN, telling Christiane Amanpour that only when Democrats win back both the House and the Senate, “that’s when civility can start again.” She’s on tour: Together with her husband, she plans to embark on a post-midterm 13-city romp during which they’ll bedazzle audience members with “one-of-a-kind conversations [about] some of the most impactful moments in modern history.”
Does she have to spell it out for you, America? Hillary Clinton wants you to beg her to run for president in 2020. On behalf of America, I am answering. Hillary Rodham Clinton, I beg you: Please run again.
Hillary Clinton is precisely the candidate the Democratic party needs. And the Democratic party she represents is exactly the one the country needs: foolhardy, inept, dismissive of reality, blind to appearances, deaf to lessons, alien to the heartland, and contemptuous of the voters. The longer Hillary Clinton remains the Democrats’ idea of a standard-bearer, the better off the country will be. She should run in 2020. And in 2024. And forever.
Consider how Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of the Democratic party:
Age: Hillary Clinton is 70. She, 69-year-old Elizabeth Warren, 75-year-old Joe Biden, and 77-year-old Bernie Sanders are the party’s liveliest, most dynamic figures, right up there with its Capitol Hill leaders: 78-year-old Nancy Pelosi, 79-year-old Steny Hoyer, and 85-year-old Dianne Feinstein, who is running for reelection. If the party is going to reimplement the New Deal, why shouldn’t it be led by people who lived through it? There are a lot of bewildering technological changes happening, and we need astute, calming leaders who can tell us what it was like when the radio was invented. Which reminds me that Democrats are all about:
Ancient grudges. Hillary Clinton cannot let go of 2016, and she rarely ignores an opportunity to tell us why the rules of the game she lost so badly must therefore be changed. You’d think she’d be wary of sore-loser syndrome after she spent much of October 2016 denouncing Donald Trump for suggesting he would not accept the results of the election unless he won, but she continues to denounce the Electoral College. Oh, and the Russians. And James Comey. She has also blamed misogyny, fake news, the Citizens United case, Cambridge Analytica, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, political journalists, and the NRA for her loss. Democrats can never admit, “We lost at the ballot box. I guess we should broaden our appeal between the coasts.” There’s always a vast right-wing conspiracy to blame for blocking Democratic policies, and who better to lead the party than the woman who coined that phrase? Her politics of antediluvian resentment and grievance is in harmony with the mood of the Democratic party overall. As is her implicit endorsement of:
Trumpismo. “When they go low, we go high” went a catchphrase during the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Today Hillary and nearly all other prominent Democrats are arguing that it’s time to get down and dirty, that Trump and his party don’t fight fair and it’s therefore time to kick all previous norms in the undercarriage. “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Clinton told Amanpour. “The only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.” Barack Obama let the mask slip when he said politics was about thinking, “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends.” Clinton herself once defined the “deplorables” as limited to “half of Trump supporters.” Now Clinton is upfront about abandoning standards and worshiping only “strength.” That is indeed where her party is. Points for honesty! In a related matter, respect also for the Clintons’:
Shamelessness. Charging $750 for tickets to listen in on a conversation that will presumably rail against economic inequality is the kind of move we have grown to expect from the party of the Beverly Hills Bolshies and the Mercedes Marxists. No doubt the scam artists behind the Clinton Foundation will tell us to be enraged about Trump’s shady business dealings and the lady who destroyed untold numbers of emails to evade public disclosure even as she was feloniously mishandling classified information outside of secure channels will sound the alarm to Trump’s legal and ethical transgressions. As Trump is averse to shame, the Democrats reason that looking like hypocrites is not to be a cause of undue worry. Nor are the Democrats worried about being the party of:
Intellectual bankruptcy. Hillary Clinton channels the Democrats’ combination of pie-in-the-sky promises, such as free health care and free college for everybody, and vows to maximize collective happiness through better regulation. As Hillary recently explained to Rachel Maddow, “If you look at what this administration has done with respect to regulations on everything from asbestos to pesticides to labor concerns, this is going to begin to really have adverse consequences on many Americans.” Sure, let’s get excited about pesticides regulations. Make bureaucracy great again.