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Don’t look now, but Hillary Clinton is headed to New Hampshire. The Granite State’s Democratic Party just announced that the former secretary of state and two-time presidential aspirant will give the keynote address at the McIntyre-Shaheen Dinner in Nashua on April 25.
Could it just be a harmless speech? Sure. But the McIntyre-Shaheen Dinner keynote slot is usually reserved for Democrats plotting a White House run — in fact, it was founded in 1959 by supporters of John F. Kennedy with the explicit purpose of boosting his campaign. And in every presidential election cycle since, the eventual Democratic president and vice president have stood at that podium — and nearly every keynote speaker who wasn’t already in the White House was angling to get there.
At first glance, the idea of another Clinton run sounds crazy. The former first lady will be 81 in 2028, and the Democratic Party is still smarting over its fatal decision to clear the field for an 81-year-old in 2024. And her designation as the first Democrat to lose a general election to Donald Trump would seem to disqualify her outright — especially at a time when the party is determined to find a fresh face.
But not all 81-year-olds are cognitively equal. Former President Joe Biden’s decline was so extreme that it required around-the-clock vigilance on the part of his staff to keep him on script and out of public view whenever possible. It got so bad that staffers dressed in disguise to remain by his side — here’s Megan Hayes, White House director of message planning, dressed as the Easter Bunny, guiding him away from reporters.
Clinton, by contrast, has been spoiling for debates in the public eye of late. In mid-February, she appeared at the Munich Security Conference, where she sparred on a panel with Hungarian intellectual Gladden Pappin and others over the Ukraine war. Her remarks were sharp, forceful, and substantive, and she often appeared to get the better of her younger co-panelists.
And then in late February, she testified before the House oversight committee for a Jeffrey Epstein deposition, tangling with Republican members and pushing back forcefully against conspiratorial questioning. After seven hours of heated questioning, no one walked out of that room calling Clinton frail — just the opposite. Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tried to rattle her with insinuating questions about her husband’s relationship with Epstein. Clinton swatted them away like flies.
A somewhat chastened Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the committee chairman and no friend of the Clintons, called the session “productive” and said he thought members “learned a lot.”
In terms of mental acuity and readiness for battle, there is no comparison between Biden of last cycle and Clinton of this cycle. Biden couldn’t give a simple press conference as president. Clinton is brawling in the street with ideological adversaries and is more than holding her own.
After nearly four decades in the public eye, no one would mistake Clinton for a fresh face. But her sharpness, and her apparent hunger for combat, would make her more plausible than many realize.
But Clinton wouldn’t run to prove her own plausibility — only to win. Would there be a path to a second nomination for Clinton if she decided to run?
That question depends on what you think of the emerging Democratic field. Clinton herself recently said that the Democrats have a “good bench” for 2028. Whether Clinton has a path depends on two factors.
The first is simple arithmetic. Clinton herself said she expects the field to have 10-15 candidates. In such a fragmented primary, a plurality of votes — say, 25% — is all it would take to win an early state such as New Hampshire when most candidates would remain in the race. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) won New Hampshire in 2020 with 25%. For a candidate with sky-high name recognition and deep ties to party infrastructure, winning a quarter of the New Hampshire vote doesn’t seem too crazy a proposition.
Early wins in states like New Hampshire or South Carolina, where Clinton’s deep loyalty among black voters could carry the day, could catapult Clinton into a two- or three-way race for the nomination. And from there, anything is possible.
The second factor is the lay of the land. The Democratic field is already sorting itself into lanes, and the one Clinton would most likely take, the establishment lane, appears to be the most vulnerable. Kamala Harris is polling well early, but her 2020 campaign collapsed before a single vote was cast, and the more voters saw of her in 2024, the less they liked her. There’s little reason to think 2028 would be different. It’s difficult to imagine Clinton being intimidated by the former vice president.
Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) is probably the most talented candidate in this lane, but his unflinching support of Israel is a millstone around his neck in today’s Democratic Party. Clinton, too, supports Israel but has spent decades threading the needle on this issue — and unlike Shapiro, she’s unlikely to be asked whether she’s ever been an Israeli agent.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would present her stiffest competition for a win in New Hampshire, where he has a strong base of support. But his total lack of support among black voters — an Emerson poll last summer found that he had literally zero support among black voters — would sink him in the South.
It isn’t crazy to think Clinton could ride the establishment lane into a final face-off against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and whoever emerges from the progressive lane, possibly Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who exposed herself as an amateur on the world stage at Munich, or Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA).
Newsom, whom betting markets favor for the nomination — his early national polling trails Harris, but he leads her decisively in California, which is probably a truer measure of their relative strength — appears to be the rare candidate in a lane of his own. His national profile, aided by fawning media coverage and natural political talents allow him to chart his own path toward the nomination.
But he is anything but inevitable. His performance at Davos earned him knocks from even fellow Democrats — party elder David Axelrod accused him of excess grandstanding, saying, “Haven’t we seen enough self-puffery in our leaders? This, ‘Why can’t people just be as courageous as me?’ routine is tedious.” His governing record in California, where he oversaw a mass exodus of residents from the state, has yet to come under sustained scrutiny.
Newsom is a formidable presence, but he isn’t clearing the field. If you’re a Democratic name-brand such as Clinton, you have to ask yourself: Could I piece together a big enough chunk of establishment vote to make it into the final round? Could I play Newsom and a progressive off one another and slip past them both?
At this stage, it isn’t likely. But it isn’t crazy, either. Come April, Clinton will be in Nashua. You can bet her allies will be watching closely to see how she is received.
