Hillary Clinton Finally (and Without Much Emotion)I managed to do it“yesterday afternoon, when trusted super-lobbyist announced her presidential campaign in a leaked email:
Hillary Clinton’s statement was sent in emails from John Podesta to donors and others http://t.co/nQJAmzEsen photo: twitter.com/K5gwMx3Iie
— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) April 12, 2015
An inspiring introduction. He joins the race as the prohibitive favorite enter the nomination of his party and as overall favoriteas well. The former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State boasts a prosperous political CV, widespread name recognition, and the ability to raise “mad“amounts of money and a powerful gender card – to play routinely, especially in tough times. Because she’ll likely breeze through the Democratic primary, if there is one at all, Hillary has the luxury of being able to send messages, strategize and fundraise like a general election candidate while Republicans clash and burn money in a long, painful nomination competition. Hillary Clinton will be formidable, and Republicans underestimate her true strengths at their peril. Still, she is not an invincible force. She is far less politically gifted than her husband, has fewer reflexive media sycophants than the man who defeated her in 2008, and provides her opponents with plenty of targets for criticism. Apart from her extensive baggage and lack of actual accomplishments, she is currently embroiled in some solemn transparency/national security issues and foreign donation scandals that challenge her judgment and priorities. Saturday Night Live AND Onion telegraphed how satirists would blackmail Hillary over the weekend, portraying her as manic, entitled, and power-hungry — full of contempt for the voters from whom she expects to receive her birthright. Polls have vacillated, alternately showing her as a clear favorite or a complete defeat. She has credibility problem. She has a problem with polarization. She has intention problem. And she’s working on it Obama’s Problem:
For months, Mrs. Clinton and her team have been dissecting Mr. Obama’s ratings, policies and constituencies, trying to solve the central puzzle of the campaign she is about to launch: How can she run for president as a single person without criticizing the sitting president she served — while her Republican opponents work to demonize both of them? Identifying too much with Mr. Obama is fraught with danger for Mrs. Clinton. Asked to imagine her “ideal candidate,” nearly six in 10 Americans said they wanted someone who would reverse most of Mr. Obama’s policiesaccording to a CNN poll released last month… But Mrs. Clinton and her team have decided that, ultimately, the risk of aligning themselves with Mr. Obama is worth taking. Rather than running away from Mr. Obama, she intends to turn to him as one of her most essential allies and supporters — perhaps the second president, after her husband, whose record will outweigh her candidacy. In the general election, Mr. Obama is expected to facilitate Mrs. Clinton raise money and will be asked to campaign for her, including in counties with the highest African-American populations in states he won. in 2008 and 2012, according to multiple people briefed on the plans who discussed them on condition of anonymity. Mr. Obama would likely be a rarity at the march in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where Mrs. Clinton defeated him in the 2008 primaries by appealing to women and white working-class voters. But even in those states, Mrs. Clinton does not intend to distance herself from Mr. Obama’s achievementsthe advisers said.
So she will more or less embrace Obama’s domestic record, presenting it as a good start to a job she intends to finish. She will lean on the incumbent for his prolific fundraising skills and strategically deploy him to facilitate bolster support and turnout among black voters. How she will approach Obama’s disastrous foreign policy is a more arduous dilemma, given her central role in shaping it as secretary of state. One move she will almost certainly make will be to get set as ideally positioned to repair U.S.-Israel relations, a refrain that will appease many Jewish donors and Democratic voters. I’ll leave you with Team Clinton early maneuvers to work with judges and the work of mysterious street artists who hung anti-Hillary posters near her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn:
Some of the presenters who attended an unofficial cocktail party with Clinton campaign staffers on Friday… photo: twitter.com/yybUuhpyvg
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 12, 2015
Brooklyn wowed by anti-Hillary street art… http://t.co/JUifEPbRFR photo:twitter.com/0Dk9H8k412
— The Weekly Standard (@weeklystandard) April 12, 2015
I assume Hillary’s team didn’t post this outside of her BK headquarters this morning, @amychozick? photo:twitter.com/zYCwHW0xCR
— Nathaniel Popper (@nathanielpopper) April 12, 2015
For those who don’t understand the reference, it is a reference to a certain pro-Hillary scolding
preemptively trying to limit the vocabulary that could be used to acceptably describe Mrs. Clinton. This is going to be a long, lifeless, frustrating, demagogic drudgery — and it will start, as you might expect, with a banal, artificial “listening tour.” Only 19 months to go, America. Actually, two more things:
Is America ready for Hillary? http://t.co/d6N3iKeUT9 photo: twitter.com/piqvxKsi2v
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) April 12, 2015
