Let me get this out of the way, right up front. Yes, I do believe that Hillary Clinton will be the next Democratic nominee for President. As to whether she or the Republican nominee (whoever that turns out to be) actually wins the Presidency, well, I’d put that at about a 50/50 proposition. It could go either way.
The major challenge I think Hillary Clinton faces in her quest for the Presidency is the following: keeping close enough to President Obama so as to maintain the support of his liberal Democrat supporters, while at the same time keeping her distance from President Obama’s very unpopular liberal agenda – particularly Obamacare.
For example, Hillary was the poster boy (girl) for the government takeover of healthcare when she was First Lady. She was in charge of the super-secret group of 500 people working behind closed doors to come up with the Clinton plan to take over American healthcare. The plan they came up with was even called “Hillarycare.” Fortunately, it never went anywhere, and was at least in part responsible for the Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, in 1994.
So she obviously had to support President Obama’s effort to do basically the same thing under Obamacare (as Secretary of State she was after all a member of Obama’s cabinet.) But when the rollout turned out to be a total debacle, and she realized her connection with it might potentially hurt her, she needed to distance herself from it. Rather than her speak out publicly, her husband did the heavy lifting for her.
Obama was getting the most criticism for having promised that if people liked their healthcare insurance, they could keep it, which turned out not to be true. Bill Clinton criticized Obama saying “I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the President should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people to keep what they got.”
You can be sure that Bill and Hillary Clinton are closely coordinating any major statements being made nowadays. And chastising the sitting Democrat President over his premier accomplishment would certainly classify as a major statement.
One candidate who was UNsuccessful in mastering the art of keeping your predecessor close enough so as to benefit from the relationship, but not so close as to be burnt by the closeness, was Al Gore. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, had been impeached for perjury relating to unbecoming behavior in the White House. Al Gore was afraid that he’d be tainted by the Clinton stain, so he kept Bill Clinton at arm’s length throughout most of the 2000 campaign. Gore lost the election, narrowly, to George W. Bush, even though he did win the popular vote. Had Bill Clinton been actually involved in the campaign, it’s quite likely that Gore could have picked up 500 or so more votes in Florida out of the millions cast, which would have put Al Gore, rather than George W. Bush, in the White House for the next eight years.
So Hillary Clinton’s challenge, is keeping Barack Obama close enough that she can take advantage of his star power with the Democrat base, but not so close that she alienates independents and those who see his policies, particularly Obamacare, as destroying the country. Whether she can maintain the proper balance, will probably determine whether she’ll be our first woman President, or whether that honor will go to someone else, in the future (preferably a Republican!)
See you next week.