HILLARY TALK SHOWS DEMOCRATIC DILEMMA. Millions of words have been devoted, online, on television, on podcasts, and everywhere else, to debating the effect former President Donald Trump will have on Republican presidential politics between now and the 2024 election. Indeed, it’s true there is a lot of uncertainty in the GOP’s current situation. But far fewer words have been expended on the very different but equal amount of uncertainty on the Democratic side.
How uncertain is it? All you have to do is look at speculation that Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, New York senator, defeated 2008 Democratic presidential primary candidate, secretary of state, and defeated 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, might run for the White House again. Clinton is scheduled to speak next week at the New York State Democratic Party convention, and her appearance has set off lots of anticipatory speculation.
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“The development comes as Clinton … works to maintain relevance in a party that could be headed for defeat in this year’s midterm elections,” reports CNBC. “It may also stoke speculation about a potential new Clinton bid for elected office.” The story cited an op-ed written last month by two Clinton supporters, Democratic pollster Doug Schoen and longtime New York Democratic figure Andrew Stein.
“[Clinton] is already in an advantageous position to become the 2024 Democratic nominee,” Schoen and Stein wrote. “She is an experienced national figure who is younger than Mr. Biden and can offer a different approach from the disorganized and unpopular one the party is currently taking.”
The “younger than Mr. Biden” part was amusing. President Joe Biden will be 82-years-old in January 2025, when he finishes his first term, while Hillary Clinton will be a sprightly 77. That means if Clinton were to be elected in 2024 and serve one term, she would finish at 81 years of age — virtually the same as Biden. That’s a veritable Democratic Party youth movement.
In addition, Clinton herself vowed back in 2017 that she would not run again. And a significant number of Democrats think the idea is nuts. “Utterly ridiculous,” said Richard Fowler, a Democratic activist who often appears on Fox News.
He’s right. It is ridiculous. But the important thing about the Clinton speculation is not whether it reflects her intentions. The important thing is that the speculation illustrates the current state of uncertainty in the Democratic Party.
The Democratic president, just starting his second year in office, is a de facto lame duck. Because of his age, many Democrats do not expect Biden to run again. If he did, he would be asking the public to let him serve as president until he is 86-years-old. That is entirely without precedent in American history. Plus, anyone watching has seen how Biden, who will turn 80 later this year, has slowed down from his earlier time both in the Senate and as vice president. There’s no doubt he at times appears feeble and slow-moving, and sometimes slow-thinking. The idea of him serving a second term seems far-fetched at best.
But the political system is not calibrated for a new, first-term president who is a lame duck. A president’s early months in office should not be shadowed by conversation about his successor. And yet that is what is happening to Biden and the Democratic Party.
The big problem is not that Biden is unpopular now, although he is. Other presidents have fallen in popularity in their first and second years and gone on to win reelection. The problem is that Biden might not be up to the task of running for reelection.
And, for Democrats, the problem is who will run in his place. The obvious choice is Vice President Kamala Harris. But she is, if anything, more unpopular than Biden. And does anyone believe she has done a good job in office so far?
Harris’s weakness has been the cause of speculation about what other Democrats might run for the party’s nomination should Biden step aside. All one has to do is look at the big 2020 field — there were more than 20 candidates — to find a lot of people who will be interested in running. Pete Buttigieg. Amy Klobuchar. Cory Booker. Elizabeth Warren. Or one could look at a line of Democratic governors, such as Phil Murphy, Roy Cooper, and Gavin Newsom. Or others.
The first thing to remember: Under normal circumstances, such speculation would be crazy, just as speculation about Clinton is crazy. But these are not normal circumstances, and the talk is the natural result of the Democratic Party’s dilemma: An old president who is unlikely to serve two terms.
One last note about Clinton. She is apparently still seething with anger about the email scandal that dogged her during her 2016 presidential run. The latest indication is this. There is a growing brouhaha about reports Trump destroyed some documents in the White House — he had a many-years-long habit of tearing pieces of paper into tiny bits — and even flushed some down the toilet. Now, there have been reports that some of the documents might have been classified. And that has gotten Clinton, who unilaterally destroyed thousands of the emails she kept on a private system as secretary of state, quite agitated.
When the New York Times did a story about the Trump controversy, reporters asked for a comment from Clinton. Her office provided one, and then the New York Times did not use it. That led Nick Merrill, the former Clinton campaign spokesman, to post the statement himself on Twitter. Here it is: “The 2-year frenzy over emails was a political Rorschach test, where everyone saw something different in what was ultimately nothing. Call it sexism, Republican depravity, ratings-hungry media, it’s time we acknowledge it was bulls***, and write that into the history books.”
So no, Hillary Clinton will not run for president. But she’s mad enough to make noise for years to come.
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