Ubiquitous
2016-08-25 21:48:02 UTC
Weve got a presidential campaign that stars one of the most
polarizing, divisive and talked-about figures in American life, an
international celebrity and lightning rod for all sociopolitical topics
going back a quarter of a century.
And shes become a bystander in this race.
On Thursday, after the usual barrage and tumult of nuttier-than-a-
Skippy-factory stories about the Donald Trump campaign, Hillary Clinton
didnt show up until page A15 of that days edition of The New York
Times, in a story in which she practically begged America, Hey! Over
here! Im in this thing too!
It turns out Clinton has some sort of tax proposal. (She wants to raise
them.) Nobody cares. It wont pass. Nothing she says matters. These
days she might as well be reading Twilight fan fiction at her
rallies. She is the first major presidential candidate since James
Monroe ran unopposed in 1820 who could spend October of election year
in Fiji if she wanted to.
Hillary Clinton, it appears, will be elected president on Nov. 8 and
probably by a margin in the wide to vast range. She has so much
money, shes become Richard Pryor in Brewsters Millions, struggling
to unload it all before the deadline. This week she opened a field
office in Lubbock, Texas, a state that hasnt voted for a Democratic
president since 1976.
The enthusiasm about Clinton being the first woman to reach the
presidency will fizzle quickly. Indeed, it has already fizzled because
the fresh, exciting, renewing aspect of her ascendance is effectively
canceled by her persona. Shes a 68-year-old FBI-branded liar who for
years has been at the levers of a breathtakingly sordid fee-seeking
apparatus in which praising Goldman Sachs in return for $675,000
constitutes among the least alarming maneuvers. First woman president
implies novelty, and Hillary Clinton is the opposite of that. It
implies outsider status, and she gets a nope there too. It implies you
blazed your own trail away from the patriarchy, but Hillary would be an
obscure lawyer somewhere if it werent for her husband.
Get ready for the winner-by-default president. Hillary Clintons
selling point, and the one thats probably good enough for America
right now, is that She isnt He. But so is every other person (but
one). How many of them could also have beaten Donald Trump? Not only
Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren but Al Gore, John Kerry, Walter Mondale
and Alec Baldwin must be shaking their heads and wondering why they
didnt run. (Thought bubble over Baldwins head: I could have been the
stable, even-tempered voice of reason in this race.)
Voters can change their minds quickly, but in Clintons case
it wont even be clear what they think in the first place.
Clinton may have been dreaming and scheming for this since she took
that job on the Watergate committee, but she still figures to be an
accidental president, a beneficiary of circumstance in the same strange
category as Gerald Ford. There is much chatter in DC these days about
the meaningless, journalist-invented concept of a mandate, a voodoo
belief that a president elected by a wide margin can do whatever he or
she wants.
Voters dont think that way, though: As soon as Barack Obama started
doing unpopular stuff, they remembered they were still allowed to have
opinions and opposed his policies, then immediately began installing
Republican roadblocks to the Obama agenda starting with the election of
Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy just one year into the new
presidents term.
Voters can change their minds quickly, but in Clintons case it wont
even be clear what they think in the first place. A double-digit win, a
Hillary Clinton mandate, would mean what, exactly? What does she
stand for? Her early Flower Power radicalism, best expressed by her
trippy Wellesley commencement speech in which she said politics was
about opening up ecstatic and penetrating modes of living? Her wonky
moderate turn in the last six years of the (first) Clinton
administration? Her support for the Iraq War and for Wall Street as
senator? The sharp turn left she made this summer, after primary
season, solely to secure the endorsement of Bernie Sanders? Even
Hillary must go to sleep at night wondering, Wait a sec, which me am I
this time? You cant vote decisively for a blur.
An astonishing (but kinda not really) NBC News/Survey Monkey poll
released this week has her winning the presidential race by 9 points,
even though just 42 percent of voters said Clinton has the personality
and temperament to serve, just 23 percent agreed that she cares about
people like you, just 20 percent said she shared their values, and
only 11 percent said she is honest and trustworthy.
Your average IRS auditor/ambulance chaser who moonlights as a used-car
salesman enjoys better numbers. Unfortunately for Clinton, as of Nov.
9, she will no longer enjoy the benefit of comparison with Trump.
Americans are about to get the first landslide president we didnt
want.
--
New Comprehensive List of Hillary's Accomplishments:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
polarizing, divisive and talked-about figures in American life, an
international celebrity and lightning rod for all sociopolitical topics
going back a quarter of a century.
And shes become a bystander in this race.
On Thursday, after the usual barrage and tumult of nuttier-than-a-
Skippy-factory stories about the Donald Trump campaign, Hillary Clinton
didnt show up until page A15 of that days edition of The New York
Times, in a story in which she practically begged America, Hey! Over
here! Im in this thing too!
It turns out Clinton has some sort of tax proposal. (She wants to raise
them.) Nobody cares. It wont pass. Nothing she says matters. These
days she might as well be reading Twilight fan fiction at her
rallies. She is the first major presidential candidate since James
Monroe ran unopposed in 1820 who could spend October of election year
in Fiji if she wanted to.
Hillary Clinton, it appears, will be elected president on Nov. 8 and
probably by a margin in the wide to vast range. She has so much
money, shes become Richard Pryor in Brewsters Millions, struggling
to unload it all before the deadline. This week she opened a field
office in Lubbock, Texas, a state that hasnt voted for a Democratic
president since 1976.
The enthusiasm about Clinton being the first woman to reach the
presidency will fizzle quickly. Indeed, it has already fizzled because
the fresh, exciting, renewing aspect of her ascendance is effectively
canceled by her persona. Shes a 68-year-old FBI-branded liar who for
years has been at the levers of a breathtakingly sordid fee-seeking
apparatus in which praising Goldman Sachs in return for $675,000
constitutes among the least alarming maneuvers. First woman president
implies novelty, and Hillary Clinton is the opposite of that. It
implies outsider status, and she gets a nope there too. It implies you
blazed your own trail away from the patriarchy, but Hillary would be an
obscure lawyer somewhere if it werent for her husband.
Get ready for the winner-by-default president. Hillary Clintons
selling point, and the one thats probably good enough for America
right now, is that She isnt He. But so is every other person (but
one). How many of them could also have beaten Donald Trump? Not only
Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren but Al Gore, John Kerry, Walter Mondale
and Alec Baldwin must be shaking their heads and wondering why they
didnt run. (Thought bubble over Baldwins head: I could have been the
stable, even-tempered voice of reason in this race.)
Voters can change their minds quickly, but in Clintons case
it wont even be clear what they think in the first place.
Clinton may have been dreaming and scheming for this since she took
that job on the Watergate committee, but she still figures to be an
accidental president, a beneficiary of circumstance in the same strange
category as Gerald Ford. There is much chatter in DC these days about
the meaningless, journalist-invented concept of a mandate, a voodoo
belief that a president elected by a wide margin can do whatever he or
she wants.
Voters dont think that way, though: As soon as Barack Obama started
doing unpopular stuff, they remembered they were still allowed to have
opinions and opposed his policies, then immediately began installing
Republican roadblocks to the Obama agenda starting with the election of
Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy just one year into the new
presidents term.
Voters can change their minds quickly, but in Clintons case it wont
even be clear what they think in the first place. A double-digit win, a
Hillary Clinton mandate, would mean what, exactly? What does she
stand for? Her early Flower Power radicalism, best expressed by her
trippy Wellesley commencement speech in which she said politics was
about opening up ecstatic and penetrating modes of living? Her wonky
moderate turn in the last six years of the (first) Clinton
administration? Her support for the Iraq War and for Wall Street as
senator? The sharp turn left she made this summer, after primary
season, solely to secure the endorsement of Bernie Sanders? Even
Hillary must go to sleep at night wondering, Wait a sec, which me am I
this time? You cant vote decisively for a blur.
An astonishing (but kinda not really) NBC News/Survey Monkey poll
released this week has her winning the presidential race by 9 points,
even though just 42 percent of voters said Clinton has the personality
and temperament to serve, just 23 percent agreed that she cares about
people like you, just 20 percent said she shared their values, and
only 11 percent said she is honest and trustworthy.
Your average IRS auditor/ambulance chaser who moonlights as a used-car
salesman enjoys better numbers. Unfortunately for Clinton, as of Nov.
9, she will no longer enjoy the benefit of comparison with Trump.
Americans are about to get the first landslide president we didnt
want.
--
New Comprehensive List of Hillary's Accomplishments:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.