Hillary for president – is it inevitable?

It is inevitable! Hillary R. Clinton WILL be president of the United States. She is the future!!! At least that's what I read and hear from just about everywhere.

Is it inevitable?

Yet somehow, I get this gut feeling that Hillary will always be the “future” of the Democratic Party – and somehow never its present.

DESPITE ALL THE rhetoric being spewed these days about how we ought to regard the one-time Goldwater Girl from suburban Park Ridge who went on to become first lady of both Arkansas and the United States, a U.S. senator from New York AND Secretary of State as THE presidential nominee for the 2016 election cycle, I’m skeptical.

Perhaps it is because the tactics being used now to put forth Clinton’s name as the ultimate front-runner just seem too over the top. Almost as though people don’t want us to look too closely at the situation; otherwise we might go ahead and find someone else.

Hillary, of course, gave a presidential campaign of her own a serious go-around back in 2008. She caused a political brawl that resulted in us not knowing for sure that Barack Obama would win the Democratic presidential nomination until literally all of the primaries and party caucuses across the country were over.

She lost, despite going into that election cycle as the favored candidate whom no one could possibly crush.

EXCEPT THAT OBAMA did exactly that. He took an early lead in the primaries so that even when states with more socially conservative electorates started rejecting the idea of Obama en masse, HE still had the lead overall.

 

Perhaps had Hillary Clinton managed to jump to that early lead (instead of losing the Iowa caucuses of ’08), an Obama campaign would never have managed to gain momentum.

Would we want to lose the "Vice?"

As I see it, Clinton is trying to ensure that such a thing will not happen again in 2016 – should she decide she actually wants to run for president. The fact that Priorities USA Action is committing itself to raising campaign funds for Hillary is a significant boost!

Because, let’s be honest, she hasn’t even declared a candidacy yet. According to the typical rules of electoral politics, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination to succeed Obama (whom I suspect most voters would pick again if he could legally run for a third term in office) ought to be none other than the vice-president.

EXCEPT THAT, LET’S be honest, Joe Biden is no Barack Obama. He’s a guy who slumped into a scandal some decades ago that supposedly made him damaged goods. Obama let him redeem himself to the point where his obituary will lede with the fact that he was V-P of a historic presidency!

Did she learn from '08 mistakes?

Not that he did much of anything of significance on his own, except reduce the level to which the word "plagiarize" will turn up in that future obituary.

Which may be the only reason Clinton can get away with trying to make herself the front-runner. Does anyone think Biden can beat her? Is there anyone who really wants to have the go-around of running for president?

That is why some people believe Rahm Emanuel is conniving enough to come up with a means by which he could run for president. Even though when speaking in public he always acts like a true Chicago politician – in thinking that the mayor’s office is the most important political post on Planet Earth and that getting a White House to live in would be a demotion!

What's more fun; being Prez? Or telling Prez what to do?

AFTER ALL, WHY want to be president, if all it means is that the future mayor of Chicago will be calling you up, trying to tell you what you ought to be doing.

Although I have to admit to thinking it would be intriguing how the conversation played out the first time a “President Hillary Clinton” received a phone call on her private line from a “Mayor Emanuel.”

I’m unsure which one of them would turn out to be more prickly in demeanor!

Personally, I’m not sure what to think of who will be the next president. It feels like “Hillary, by Default” more than anything.

Would we keep him, if we could, for 3rd term?

I SUSPECT I’M not alone in not being eager to have a second “President Clinton” just because I know how much the concept will trigger the ideologues into a war. How much will they be scared into nonsense at the concept of “Hide the girls, Bill Clinton’s back in the White House!!!”

Do we really want to relive the nonsense rhetoric of the 1990s? Even if some of the trash talk that Obama has generated in this decade makes that seem subdued, I can’t help but think we need to move beyond all the current political personas in our search for leadership.

And I don’t see that happening any time soon.

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