THE HILLARY CLINTON 2016 FANTASY

The Guardian had an interesting article yesterday about the speculation that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2016.  Given the overtly political manner in which Bill and Hillary Clinton have always conducted their lives it is a logical assumption that she will run.

You have to wonder if there's already a committee planning Hillary Clinton's presidential inauguration festivities for January 20, 2017. According to the political rumor mill, she's not only running, she's unbeatable.

In the past month alone, a "grassroots" movement readyforhillary.com has started a national finance council and selling T-shirts and other campaign basics. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri has formally endorsed Clinton, calling her the "best to lead this country forward". And House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California all but endorsed Clinton for president in an interview with USA Today last week, saying she would definitely win if she ran. Nevermind that the election is over three years away.

When Clinton joined Twitter in mid-June, she might as well have made her candidacy official. BuzzFeed Politics called it a clear move to appeal to young voters, her biggest weakness from her last campaign. She already has over 578,000 followers. That may seem small for a celebrity, but keep in mind that she's only made seven tweets thus far.

I can't wait to spend the next three years disrupting the Clinton narrative.  Democrats are counting on her gender being their ace in the hole, so to speak.  She would become the first woman to receive a presidential nomination from a major party.  Yes, that would be, strictly speaking, historic.  However, not all historic candidacies are the same.  I am convinced that Hillary will not benefit to the same degree that Obama did in 2008.  

First of all, president and vice president of the U.S. are basically the only elected offices that a woman hasn't held or currently holds.  So while a woman president would be new it's not as though there aren't already loads of high-level women, both in Washington and around the nation.  Each major party has nominated a woman for vice president.  There are three women on the Supreme Court.  There have been numerous female Cabinet members.  There are several women in the Senate and a great many more in the House, representing both political parties.  Women are governors, mayors, state legislators, judges as well as CEOs of major corporations.  There are a great many influential women in Hollyweird and the music industry.

In other words, women have long-since "arrived" and so the mere idea of a female POTUS is not at all far-fetched and, thus, not so monumental that women of all political stripes will drop everything and support the woman simply to be supporting a woman.  If Hillary were running in the 1970s that would be a much more likely prospect.  But then, the nation wasn't ready for such an outcome, obviously.  

That's the irony of it: we as a culture are now so ready for it that it's lost much of its impact.  I can't think of a single Conservative woman who would ever vote for Hillary.  There simply is no gender solidarity in the 21st Century.  And that is exactly as it should be.  She doesn't deserve a vote from a woman simply because of the accident of her birth.

As the Guardian article points out, there are other considerations that should give Democrats pause.

As fun as the Hillary speculation is, it comes with a myriad of problems. First and foremost, any political frontrunner gets pummeled. For all the supporters she's getting, there are also websites in place such as StopHillary2016.org. Attacks will mount. And certainly Hillary herself has reason to dislike being the clear favorite considering the last time this happened in 2008, a relative newcomer to the national stage, Barack Obama, beat her to win the democratic nod.

Speaking of Obama, an even bigger issue for the Democratic party is that Obama is still president. It's as if people are already writing him off as he struggles with scandals and to get anything accomplished. Instead of dealing with the problems that confront the nation today, including a huge debate over security versus personal liberties, it's easier to play fantasy president 2016.

The problem is the reality check will inevitably come. Just ask Obama.

In the meantime, of course, the pro-Hillary PR campaign rolls merrily along.  On Saturday the New York Times examined the suggestion made by some Republicans that Hillary was "old news":

The 2016 election may be far off, but one theme is becoming clear: Republican strategists and presidential hopefuls, in ways subtle and overt, are eager to focus a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton's age. The former secretary of state will be 69 by the next presidential election, a generation removed from most of the possible Republican candidates.

Despite her enduring popularity, a formidable fund-raising network and near unanimous support from her party, Mrs. Clinton, Republican leaders believe, is vulnerable to appearing a has-been.

A yesterday-versus-tomorrow argument against a woman who could be the last major-party presidential nominee from the onset of the baby boom generation would be a historically rich turnabout. It was Mrs. Clinton’s husband, then a 46-year-old Arkansas governor, who in 1992 put a fellow young Southerner on the Democratic ticket and implicitly cast the first President George Bush as a cold war relic, ill equipped to address the challenges of a new day. Mr. Clinton then did much the same to Bob Dole, a former senator and World War II veteran, in 1996.

A Republican approach that calls attention to Mrs. Clinton’s age is not without peril, and Democrats predict that it could backfire.

Predictably, the gang over at MSNBC attempted to portray this as an example of "sexism."

Guest co-host Katty Kay griped that "people wouldn't be saying this about men," referencing a comment from Mitch McConnell earlier this year that the Democratic field was like "a rerun of 'The Golden Girls.'" Of course, what Kay didn't mention in her slam was that the Senate minority leader was referencing the age of potential male and female candidates, including Vice President Joe Biden. Biden would be 74 upon assuming the election were he to run for and win the 2016 presiential election.

Leigh Gallagher, of Fortune magazine, chimed in with her agreement, referencing her "feminism":

"You know - I have a pretty - my bar for, sort of, feminism is pretty high, OK? And I read this piece and I thought, they wouldn't be saying this if it was a man."

Which is absurd, both in the sense that age is irrelevant and that men don't get the same treatment.  The issue isn't whether or not Hillary is too old for the job, obviously she isn't.  The question is a political one, namely whether or not her age will limit her appeal to younger voters, particularly younger minority voters who made all the difference for Obama in 2012.  

It's a legitimate question and, frankly, one that gets asked all the time by liberals when discussing Republican candidates, especially male Republican candidates.  For instance, the primary strategy of Kentucky Democrats in their quest to unseat Mitch McConnell is to portray him as being too old and out of touch.  The Times article also debunked this complaint by pointing out the Clinton strategy against Bush 41 and Bob Dole.

Finally, Politico posed the question that undoubtedly frightens Democrat strategists the most: What if she doesn't run at all?

For Democrats, there is no fallback: It's Hillary Clinton or probably a long bout of depression ahead of 2016.

Democrats openly describe their surprise at seeing such consensus around a candidate so early. The hope of retaining the White House in an open-seat election is very real - and the letdown that will set in among Democratic activists and operatives will be very deep if Clinton takes a pass on a campaign, as she may well do.

She has said she has yet to make up her mind, but few in the party believe that. The Clintons' ambition and the chance to make history as the first female president, they figure, will overpower any reticence about another grueling campaign or spending her golden years carrying the burdens of the world's weightiest job.

But if they're wrong, there is no obvious replacement. And the party would be looking at a mad scramble to fill the Clinton void.

"We would be at sea in a lifeboat with no food, no water, and no land in sight," said one veteran Democratic operative who has worked on presidential campaigns, and who, like most people interviewed for this story, asked for anonymity to speak candidly about the former first lady. "There is no Plan B."

It would be, the operative said, a "gut punch" to the Democratic party.

Another senior Democrat agreed, saying, "There's Hillary, and then there's, like, Plan K. There is no B or C or G or whatever."