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What’s Wrong With Hillary? -- Jeff Greenfield [View all]
What’s Wrong With Hillary?
The GOP is fretting about Trump, but the Democrats’ likely standard-bearer could do just as much damage to her own party.
By Jeff Greenfield
March 14, 2016
As the notion of a Trump nomination has morphed from ludicrous to probable, analysts left and right have come to something of a consensus. Whether it’s Charles Murray in the Wall Street Journal, speaking for conservatives, or Thomas Frank in the Guardian, opining for liberals, the analysis focuses on the large cohort of Americans who have been effectively shut out of the economy for two decades or more. Trump’s feral insight has been to play on these grievances with a message that defines the cause—and the villains—in unmistakable terms.
Trump:
We’ve been played for suckers by foreign countries, by our incompetent leaders, by politicians who serve the elite, and who do the bidding of the insiders. We’re letting our worst enemies gain footholds across the Middle East. I don’t need their money; I can’t be bought. And the very crudeness of my language, the threats, even the bullying, tells you I have the stones to take these people on. And if the “experts” think I don't know what I’m talking about—how have the “experts” done in Iraq, in Libya, in protecting the jobs and incomes of regular Americans?
It’s not hard to think of potential Democratic candidates who would be well-equipped to respond to that argument: senators like Elizabeth Warren or Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, a younger Governor Jerry Brown, a Vice President Biden not weighed down by the death of his son. Indeed, Bernie Sanders could claim substantial exemption from Trump’s argument. And it’s certainly possible, maybe more than possible, to see Hillary Clinton winning a comfortable victory by simply gathering votes from those who see Trump as utterly unfit for the office.
But … if the discontent with the economy persists in the fall, or even deepens should the woes of China and Europe reach our shores, there is no Democrat more in the cross-hairs of an angry electorate than Clinton. Everything from her Wall Street financial links to her work as secretary of state become targets of opportunity. Those targets, further, are independent of the more obvious vulnerabilities: the possibility (remote as of now) of an FBI criminal referral; the eagerness of Trump to rebut any charge of misogyny by revisiting the most serious charges of “predator” (Bill) and “enabler” (Hillary) that put some of Bill’s past behavior outside the boundaries of “private” matters.
The polls and the gamblers now say such concerns are misplaced; that the broad American electorate will simply not put so manifestly unqualified and unfit a candidate as Donald Trump in charge of our nuclear codes. But as I wrote here seven months ago, every once in a while, voters discover they have the power to do something they have never done before; and that discovery itself becomes a significant political force. Should that happen, Democrats will need a candidate well-positioned to resist that power.
It’s far from clear that Hillary Clinton is that candidate.
The GOP is fretting about Trump, but the Democrats’ likely standard-bearer could do just as much damage to her own party.
By Jeff Greenfield
March 14, 2016
As the notion of a Trump nomination has morphed from ludicrous to probable, analysts left and right have come to something of a consensus. Whether it’s Charles Murray in the Wall Street Journal, speaking for conservatives, or Thomas Frank in the Guardian, opining for liberals, the analysis focuses on the large cohort of Americans who have been effectively shut out of the economy for two decades or more. Trump’s feral insight has been to play on these grievances with a message that defines the cause—and the villains—in unmistakable terms.
Trump:
We’ve been played for suckers by foreign countries, by our incompetent leaders, by politicians who serve the elite, and who do the bidding of the insiders. We’re letting our worst enemies gain footholds across the Middle East. I don’t need their money; I can’t be bought. And the very crudeness of my language, the threats, even the bullying, tells you I have the stones to take these people on. And if the “experts” think I don't know what I’m talking about—how have the “experts” done in Iraq, in Libya, in protecting the jobs and incomes of regular Americans?
It’s not hard to think of potential Democratic candidates who would be well-equipped to respond to that argument: senators like Elizabeth Warren or Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, a younger Governor Jerry Brown, a Vice President Biden not weighed down by the death of his son. Indeed, Bernie Sanders could claim substantial exemption from Trump’s argument. And it’s certainly possible, maybe more than possible, to see Hillary Clinton winning a comfortable victory by simply gathering votes from those who see Trump as utterly unfit for the office.
But … if the discontent with the economy persists in the fall, or even deepens should the woes of China and Europe reach our shores, there is no Democrat more in the cross-hairs of an angry electorate than Clinton. Everything from her Wall Street financial links to her work as secretary of state become targets of opportunity. Those targets, further, are independent of the more obvious vulnerabilities: the possibility (remote as of now) of an FBI criminal referral; the eagerness of Trump to rebut any charge of misogyny by revisiting the most serious charges of “predator” (Bill) and “enabler” (Hillary) that put some of Bill’s past behavior outside the boundaries of “private” matters.
The polls and the gamblers now say such concerns are misplaced; that the broad American electorate will simply not put so manifestly unqualified and unfit a candidate as Donald Trump in charge of our nuclear codes. But as I wrote here seven months ago, every once in a while, voters discover they have the power to do something they have never done before; and that discovery itself becomes a significant political force. Should that happen, Democrats will need a candidate well-positioned to resist that power.
It’s far from clear that Hillary Clinton is that candidate.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/hillary-clinton-2016-whats-wrong-with-hillary-213722
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