Hillary Clinton, Barbed and Bellicose

[KoKo]

The other night, a prominent Democrat I know made the craziest statement.

“I don’t think Hillary’s going to run,” he proclaimed, silencing the room. He might as well have said that he’d just spotted Bigfoot pilfering rhubarb from the White House vegetable garden or that Arnold Schwarzenegger was in line to play Lear on Broadway. (“Cordelia, I’ll be baaaaack.”) He was humming some kind of loony tune.

His evidence?

“She seems tired,” he said, and that’s when all of us cracked up. Oh, yeah, she seems positively exhausted. That explains the juggernaut of a book tour, the CNN town hall and all the other interviews, including the doozy with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, which I’ll turn to in a bit. If there was nap time in there, I missed it.

Without yet becoming president, she has ascended to some level of saturation exposure that’s above and beyond omnipresent. At this point she’s practically ambient. Her “inevitability” may boil down to the fact that no one can imagine a political ecosystem — nay, a habitable environment! — without her. When it comes to the Clintons, we apparently have two choices. Put them on Rushmore, or put them back in the White House.

And yet.

She is walking a tightrope, and the challenge and peril of it become clearer all the time. The question isn’t whether she’s running: Of course she is, and the only newsworthy announcement down the road would be that she’s getting out of the race. The question is whether she can belittle Barack Obama as much as she must in order to win, but not so much that it plays as an act of sheer betrayal.

She needs the voters who elected him, twice, and who maintain affection for him. She also needs the voters in the throes of buyer’s remorse. Many of them jilted her for their romance with him and now see it as a heady but heedless affair. Can she exploit that, but in a high-minded, diplomatic fashion?

More at NYT...good read...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/opinion/hillary-clinton-barbed-and-bellicose.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&pgtype=article

[TwilightGardener]

1. Barbed, Bellicose, but mostly Backstabber.

[Faux pas]

6. Amen! +1000

[BeyondGeography]

2. Did she ever come up with an organizing principle after all that bloviating condescension?

I have one for her: Don't say stupid stuff.

[TwilightGardener]

7. Why does no one remember "It's the economy, stupid"? I thought

that was the Clintons' famous slogan back when. Apparently THAT was suitable for a great nation.

[earthside]

3. She is tired and tiring ...

... and I think she will implode early in the primary season against a 'mainstream' challenger running to her left (which won't even be very far left).

That said, I think the likelihood of her running has diminished since her book came out: she is too rich; too old; too conservative; too elite for a 2016 Democratic Party that is going to want a real populist fighter after eight years of 'No Drama Obama' and the reactionary, obstructionist Repuglican Congress.

[Nay]

4. IMHO, the "voters in the throes of buyer's remorse" with respect to Obama

are NOT EVER going to consider her as a step up from Obama. How could they? She is to the right of Obama at this very moment; no one could possibly think that she would be progressive, could they? If so, well, people are so stupid that they deserve what they get. It's too bad the rest of us will go down the toilet, too.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. All she's missing is the smirk and cowboy boots.

[tularetom]

8. She was S of S while all this bad policy was taking place

And yet she presents no evidence that she lifted a finger to prevent any of it.

It's 20/20 hindsight, Monday morning quarterbacking and a snail trail of typical Clinton slime.

She seems to have forgotten why primary voters rejected her in 08 and at this rate she's going to be seriously overexposed by 2016.

[TwilightGardener]

9. She pushed for a bigger Afghan surge. I don't remember her input much at all

on securing troops in Iraq beyond 2011. She pushed to topple Qaddafi. She pushed to topple Mubarak and supported Morsi/Muslim Brotherhood. She teamed up with her ever-loyal little buddy Panetta (who somehow managed to be by her side in various capacities for four years, even though I'm not sure he knew diddly-shit about anything but insider politics) and her crush Petraeus to do hinky shit with arms to rebels. She's forever in thrall to McCain and the neocons. She owns much of what went wrong from the first term, that Obama is now steering away from.

[tularetom]

10. I'm glad you brought up Petraeus

A few months back there was a post here on DU reacting to a prediction that William Kristol made on fox news where he said that if she got the nomination she would select Petraeus as her VP running mate.

Of course everybody ridiculed the statement because it was made by an idiot.

But even a blind clock finds an acorn twice a day or something like that. In light of what she's done since then I wouldn't be surprised if she actually did something that dumb. She's amazingly unaware of how out of touch she is with not only Democratic primary voters but the electorate in general.

[TwilightGardener]

11. She revealed that after he left in disgrace, she had dinner with him

and was trying to buck him up because she knows all about cheatin' men or some such crap. Something truly smells about those two. Not affair-wise, but covering each other's backs for whatever went down in Libya/Benghazi and Syria. Which Obama probably never knew about.

[WillyT]

12. K & R !!!

[WillyT]

13. Kick !!!

[JaydenD]

14. I don't understand how she is called intelligent and brilliant.

I consider her more on the stupid side with the idiotic things she ends up saying.