Sunday, May 18, 2008

Will Hillary Sit Election Out?

Probably not, but I have a strong hunch she many just do a lot of sitting on her hands.
Mrs. Clinton has many possible futures:

  1. She could in fact get the Dem nomination, although that looks very unlikely;
  2. She could get named (by her nemesis, called "BO" by her staff) as the vice-presidential candidate, which also seems unlikely, given the fact that Republicans are even now getting ready to run her anti-Obama remarks as commercials;
  3. She could accept an offer from John McCain to run as V-P nominee on the Republican ticket – again unlikely, but not impossible;
  4. She could, as she’s said she would, campaign vigorously for the Obama ticket (probably an Obama-Edwards team), although I doubt the Illinois Senator will ask Bill Clinton to stump for him; or,
  5. She could go through the motions of campaigning for Obama in order to keep her racial “creds” with Black voters.

    Here’s the reality: Hillary doesn’t want to be vice-president, which she probably sees as involving daily attendance at funerals for foreign dignitaries. Long-ago vice-president John Nance Garner, said of the V-P office that “it isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.” Mrs. Clinton, meet Mr. Garner.

    Hillary Clinton wants to be President. She doesn’t want to be some junior Senator’s second-banana. She doesn’t want to spend four years “waiting for something that never happens.”

    In fact, Senator Clinton wants to become President Clinton, part II. If I had to wager whether she will ever become President, I’d bet she will – perhaps as early as 2012. Even n the 2020 election, she will be the same age as John McCain is now. She'd be younger than Reagan when he defeated Mondale. She has a "passionate intensity" that I doubt will wane until she's older than Robert Byrd is now.

    Barack Obama looks like a weak candidate. We’re already hearing speculation that he might be another George McGovern, a man who lost 49 states.

    Have you seen Obama lately? He started out as a beanpole, and he’s now close to anorexic. He sounds dispirited. He can’t seem to shake his role as a punching bag, an easy target with enough skeletons in his closet to stock a good-sized graveyard. Most white voters in important states want nothing to do with him.

    Thus, there may well be an opening for a new Democratic candidate in the 2012 election. President McCain in the next election will be: (1) feistier than ever; (2) older than dirt.

    Non-President Obama in 2012? He’ll be a much-wanted graduation speaker at left-slanted universities. He will chant “Yes we can!” to puzzled audiences who are aware that “No, he didn’t.”

    He may also take over the leadership of MoveOn.org. He may even admit that he, Bill Ayers, and Rev. Wright in fact have a top-secret handshake. Alternatively, he may change his name back to “Barry Obama” as it was in days of yore.

Michelle Obama will be doing her “community outreach” job in Chicago, although she won’t have revealed exactly what it is she does. Her salary will be $500,000 a year (up from $350,000), but she'll still be complaining about how much it costs to send her daughters to Princeton.

If McCain wins the election, as he probably will, Hillary Clinton could be – and probably will be – the Democratic nominee in 2012. Since she’s impressed many people as the pit bull of American politics, she might even win the race – perhaps against McCain’s V-P choice, who should be Sarah Palin of Alaska. If Hillary think Sarah would be an easy opponent, then she'd better engage in some cogitational re-calibration.

Aren’t American elections as non-stop as they are perpetual fun?

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