{"id":5481,"date":"2015-06-19T09:30:10","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T14:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5481"},"modified":"2015-06-20T10:39:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-20T15:39:56","slug":"hrc-2016-tweet-like-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5481","title":{"rendered":"HRC 2016: Tweet-like update"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not a “Tweeter”, but nonetheless I have a short thought about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run for the White House (following my two very long thoughts published a few days ago). My thought is actually a bit of a question. And the question it this: is Hillary in 2016 akin somewhat to McCain 2008? Certainly not in terms of campaign issues, but more in terms of historical trends. When McCain ran in 2008, it seemed like his time had past. In 2000, when he ran in the GOP primaries against George W. Bush, McCain had obtained a reputation with the press for being<\/a> something of a “maverick”. I.e., he had the guts (or appeared to have the guts) to take positions that did not hew to “GOP establishment” doctrine regarding health care reform, tax cuts, campaign finance reform, immigration, climate change, gays in the military, etc. <\/p>\n

McCain finally got his chance to be the standard-bearer in 2008, and quickly got in line with the establishment. The maverick was gone; McCain became a generic Republican. And that was no match for the wave of excitement that Barack Obama was building. Edward McClelland in Salon called McCain the “right man at the wrong time”. <\/p>\n

Is Hillary’s “right time” also behind her? I can’t help but wonder. In 2007, she at first seemed to be exactly what the doctor ordered to fix what GW Bush had broken. But as the snows of winter 2008 melted away, Hillary fumbled the proverbial political football and Obama recovered, taking it all the way to the White House goal line. In 2015, Secretary \/ Senator Clinton just doesn’t seem like the same person that she was in ’08 (although she still fumbles the issues, perhaps more than before). Her tacking to the left has eviscerated the “maverick of the Democrats” reputation that her husband had built up. She seems to be morphing into the standard Ted Kennedy-like, party-line liberal. After the routing that the Democrats took in the 2014 Congressional elections, I really wonder if that is what the country currently wants. <\/p>\n

Perhaps Hillary will still win, perhaps she will garner enough turnout amongst women, people of color, and the young to overcome the seeming disadvantage of a doctrinaire leftist position in a national election. Perhaps her populist rhetoric about the martyrdom of the middle class will catch fire (although if the economy continues to slowly improve, it may not prove to be all that effective). The betting odds are still in her favor right now. But it’s not impossible that Hillary Clinton will be to the Democrats in 2016 as John McCain was to the Republicans in 2008. Stay tuned, as the 2016 campaign is definitely underway now. <\/p>\n

Interestingly, I’m not the first person to wonder about this, see this 2004 article<\/a> in the NY Times.<\/p>\n

And of course, what then to say about Jeb Bush? Well, I’ll save that for another “quasi-Tweet”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not a “Tweeter”, but nonetheless I have a short thought about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 run for the White House (following my two very long thoughts published a few days ago). My thought is actually a bit of a question. And the question it this: is Hillary in 2016 akin somewhat to McCain 2008? Certainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5481"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5494,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5481\/revisions\/5494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}