Could Hillary Clinton yet emerge as this year’s Democratic nominee for president? Some of us can’t get the nightmare out of our minds.
The nightmare itself is a recurring one, except that it always takes slightly different forms and, worse, it happens in real life rather than in dreams. The back-from-the-dead proclivities of Bill and Hillary Clinton are too well-established to be ignored.
And there is indeed a scenario — highly unlikely but, with the Clintons, not impossible — where it could manifest itself again in these next 10 days.
To understand why Clintonophobes are spooked, consider all the times when the Clintons were assumed to be politically dead. Kaput. Embalmed. Six feet under.
The Clintons were dead in 1980 when the Boy Governor was defeated for re-election after just a single two-year term.
They were dead in the mid-1980s as Arkansas buzzed with wild tales of Bill’s social life. They also were dead in 1988 when Bill delivered perhaps the worst “keynote” speech in national convention history, literally drawing boos from the assembled delegates.
They were dead in early 1992 when the Gennifer Flowers story broke. They were dead in the summer of 1992 when Bill ran a very weak third in the polls behind both George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot.
The Clintons were dead in the first two years of their presidency when scandal upon scandal (Travelgate, Whitewater, Filegate, the cattle-futures mess …) was followed by the collapse of Hillarycare. Dead again when Republicans won both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years in 1994.
Three years later, dead again when the Lewinsky story broke — and even Hillary, along with other leading Democrats, hinted that if it were true, it might force a resignation.
And certainly dead when the blue dress materialized to prove that the president didn’t know what “is” meant.
With the Clintons still walking more than a year later, Hillary’s Senate hopes seemed dead because her opponent, Rudy Giuliani, could be counted on to keep the usual Republican margins in upstate New York, while adding better-than-average results in the Big Apple and its suburbs.
And both Clintons were absolutely dead, with coffin sealed shut, when they left the White House in a miasma of stinking pardons, vandalized offices, and pilfered furniture.
Seven years later, surely Hillary was a political goner when she lost Iowa. And when the Kennedys endorsed Barack Obama. And then when she lost 10 straight state contests.
But then she won the majority of the delegates in the last two months of the primaries … and now the Clintons have managed to arrange featured convention speaking slots on back-to-back nights, and also for her name to be officially put in nomination and voted on by the delegates.
Hmmmmm…..
If it’s going to happen — if Hillary is to play Freddie Krueger (and Denver does indeed have an Elm Street) — here’s how:
The script says it will start this week, on Wednesday or Thursday, with some new, terrible story about Obama’s past. Only the Shadow knows what the story is, but rest assured that the Shadow does know.
The story will feature no visible Clinton fingerprints. Instead, it will be pushed most prominently by somebody identified as a Republican operative. The media will denounce the “Republican attack machine,” and John McCain’s negatives will go up — but so will Obama’s negatives, because the story will have legs.
Later in the week, Obama’s running mate announcement surprisingly will be panned rather than praised.
By next Monday, when the convention starts, Obama will trail McCain in the polls. Meanwhile, the terrible story will keep sprouting offshoots.
Now-panicked Democratic delegates listen to Hillary give a rousing call to arms on Tuesday night. A few “superdelegates” pledged to Obama immediately announce they’ll vote for Hillary instead.
As Wednesday unfolds, more and more superdelegates do the same.
Then Bill Clinton speaks Wednesday night, as only he can do, and pure pandemonium ensues.
An hour or so later, Obama announces that, for the good of the party, he will pull his name from nomination and endorse Hillary’s candidacy.
And Freddie Krueger, Jason, Michael Myers, and even Dracula, whose undead routines all now look boring in comparison with the Clintons’, all slink away to look for new lines of work.
Quin Hillyer is associate editorial page editor of the Examiner.
