Though it has been widely assumed that Hillary Clinton would not seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, a few recent news items have challenged the assumption.
First, Clinton herself revived talk by saying recently “I’d like to be president” and that she would consider the idea of running again after the midterm elections. Then, former Clinton adviser Mark Penn wrote an op-ed appearing in the Monday print edition of the Wall Street Journal saying that she would run again.
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Though any Clinton candidacy would attract a certain level of seriousness given her level of experience as a candidate, there are many reasons to believe that she wouldn’t even make it past the primaries were she to seek the presidency for a third time. Here are some of them:
1) Clinton is even less popular now than when she lost to President Trump. When Clinton lost the presidency, she was the least popular Democratic nominee – winner or loser – as far back as polling exists. She has since become even less popular. A Gallup survey taken at the end of September shows her favorable rating at 36 percent – remaining at the lowest level since the organization began polling about her in 1992. Among Democrats, her favorability has gone down 10 points since the 2016 election, to 77 percent. Among independents, who vote in some primaries, her favorable rating is a pitiful 30 percent.
2) She has universal name recognition, and is behind in 2020 primary polls. Normally, early polls of presidential nominations are heavily weighted toward name recognition. Not with Clinton. Though her name has been left off most polls for the 2020 Democratic nomination given the assumption that she wouldn’t run, one Harvard CAPS/Harris survey taken earlier this year found her in a third-place tie with Oprah at 13 percent – behind both former Vice President Joe Biden and her 2016 rival Sen. Bernie Sanders.
3) She’s the only Democratic candidate who lost to Trump. The 2020 Democratic primary will be about a lot of things, but one thing will be first and foremost in the minds of Democratic voters: who can stop Trump? All the candidates can make various claims about their abilities to beat Trump, but she’ll be the only one who voters know lost to him.
4) She won’t be the only woman in the field. In 2016, Clinton benefited in the primary from the fact that as the only woman, she argue that if elected, she’d be the first female president. That would not be the case in 2020, as a number of women are expected to run: Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
5) She won’t have a lock on black voters. In 2016, when you add up all of their contests, Sanders actually beat Clinton by a hair among white voters. But Clinton won because she clobbered him among African-Americans by over 50 points – and they made up four in 10 voters. She won’t enjoy that lopsided advantage in 2020, a race in which there will be several people of color seeking the Democratic nomination and others competing for the loyalties of this crucial voting bloc.
6) Clinton fatigue. Her rivals will be in strong position to argue: She had her chance, she lost, now somebody else deserves a shot. A lot of voters will be sick of hearing about her again, and the media will likely view her candidacy more negatively, as they’ll get more excited about covering all of the new candidates jumping into the fold.
7) The Bill factor would be more troublesome in the “me too” era. When Clinton ran in 2016, it was before the “me too” era had changed the way we view discussions about workplace harassment, treatment of women, and male abuse of power. As part of the movement, there has been a rethinking on the Left about Bill’s behavior. Though Hillary Clinton deserves to be treated as a different person than her husband to an extent, it’s also harder when he’s an active campaigner for her and she played a key role in efforts to discredit accusers. It’s especially more difficult to reconcile “believe all women” rhetoric with her behavior toward Bill’s accusers, including those who have accused him of rape. Bill has not proven adept at handling questions on this topic in the new era, having come under fire earlier this year for badly bungling questions about Monica Lewinsky.
8) She already squandered two leads in Democratic primaries. In 2008, Clinton was seen as inevitable, and yet lost the primary to Barack Obama, whose national political experience amounted to about two years in the Senate when he launched his campaign. At this point in the 2016 cycle, Clinton was over 60 points ahead of Bernie Sanders and yet it took her months, and an assist from the DNC, to knock him off. What happens when she starts out behind?
9) She’ll be four years older. This may not be the biggest issue facing her candidacy – after all, though she’ll be 73 on the next Election Day, Trump will be 74. She’d also be younger than Sanders or Biden, should they run. That said, the matter of her health, originally confined to conspiratorial quarters of the Internet, emerged as an issue when she collapsed at a 9/11 commemoration ceremony less than two months before the election and her team didn’t handle the issue transparently, raising more questions. The additional four years will amplify any questions about her health as well as the add fuel to the campaigns of younger candidates pushing the idea of needing a fresh face for the party.
