My
honest reaction to learning that the former Arkansas and U.S. first
lady/senator/Secretary of State is beginning her presidential campaign on
Sunday was to have a thought along the lines of “It’s about (insert obscenity
of your choice here) time!?!”
IT’S
JUST THAT the talk of Hillary Clinton running for president once Barack Obama
leaves office has been going on for so long that it really doesn’t seem like
news.
The
fact that she plans to use Facebook to issue a canned statement, along with
releasing some sort of video of herself talking, just doesn’t seem like a big
deal.
Particularly
since making her campaign declaration in such a way may sound “cool” and “neato”
(and whatever other choice phrases mean anything to the computer geek-oriented
crowd) to some, it seems to me and I’m sure many other politically oriented
people as a way of hiding from them. Or maybe I’m just trained to take Twitter
comments and ignore them as the ramblings of the vapid?
It’s
hard to interact with a video snippet on a computer screen featuring Hillary
telling us how much she wants to be president – a fact we all came to the
realization of some many decades ago.
THE
WASHINGTON POST is reporting that Hillary plans to follow up this Sunday
campaign statement (I can already hear the overly-religious amongst us complaining
that she’s somehow defiling the “Lord’s special day”) by meeting with small
groups across Iowa.
The
newspaper also reported Friday that Hillary is hiring political operatives to
be based in New Hampshire.
In
short, she’s already focusing on the two states that historically kick off the whole
campaign cycle. She wants that early jolt that, for all intents and purposes,
kills off any other person who has the nerve to think they can take the
Democratic Party presidential nomination away from her. Does anyone seriously get
excited at the concept of, “President Joe Biden?”
Remember
back late 2007 when Obama was a presidential hopeful whom nobody knew if he should
be taken seriously at all? He won those caucuses in Iowa and didn’t embarrass
himself in New Hampshire.
WHICH
HAD THE effect of ruining the sense of invincibility that Hillary had hoped to
develop for herself. She wound up getting dragged into a lengthy primary battle
that didn’t come to an end until the very end – and Obama wound up with the
nomination and, ultimately, two terms of the presidency.
Clinton
had to settle for the consolation prize of a cabinet post – albeit one of the
most powerful cabinet posts in the federal government.
And
one that literally did much to rehabilitate her public image that was way too
influenced by the distaste some people felt (and likely still feel) by her
husband, Bill.
Be
honest. If Hillary were to become president and Bill winds up being the first
male presidential spouse, you know it won’t be long before people make jokes along
the lines of, “Hide the girls! Bill’s back in the White House.”
BUT
THAT’S A gag for early 2017 – for now, we get to speculate about how Hillary’s
unofficial campaigning has gone on for so long that the public at-large is
already sick and tired of her.
Anything
she has to say on Sunday is going to be glossed over – or overly-speculated
upon by those people eager to distort it into a negative blow to her image!
In
fact, the big reason I can’t get all worked up over the upcoming Democratic
primary election cycle is that I can’t envision anybody else running a credible
campaign. It all seems like a preordained cycle to see how well prepared
Hillary is to run against the clowns like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul
who want to drag the image of the “Party of Lincoln” further into the ground.
Perhaps
we could get Martin himself to consider a presidential bid – not the Martin who
sang to us “King Tut.” But perhaps the one-time “Wild and Crazy Guy” who turned
a folded paper video into a Senate endorsement for Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.
-30-
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