Joe Klein is correct. It’s easy to forget how steep of a climb Bill Clinton had to make to first win the Democratic nomination and then to win the presidency.
He had larger problems than an email server: he had recently been found out as a Vietnam draft dodger and a womanizer. People called him Slick Willie. Within weeks, he would be in a deeper, darker hole than Hillary has experienced this year-he would be running third, behind George H.W. Bush and the independent Ross Perot. By June, only 13% of the public thought him trustworthy. He was toast.
Of course, Joe Klein would go on to pseudonymously pen Primary Colors, a cynical portrayal of the way the Clintons weathered the storm and persevered. But that’s living history now and as relevant as ever because Hillary Clinton is about to run another general election campaign in which she will be savaged and in which her trustworthiness will be relentlessly questioned.
If you’re worried about how she (and he) will stand up to the scrutiny, you have the example of 1992 to reassure you, not to mention a long record since them, both in office and on the outside.
Whatever other misgivings you may have, it’s unlikely that they’re not ready for the storm.
Well if Trump keeps building walls around his “Hispanic” food while eating it off photos of Marla Maples, they may not need to dig that deep. https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/728309799667044352
I didn’t read the book. But it’s hard for me to imagine what “cynical” might mean in this context.
Does it mean that Bill’s election was a Triumph Of The Human Spirit® and sour old Joe didn’t have a warm enough heart to appreciate it?
I remember that campaign. Clinton emerged from nowhere. The Democratic candidate were called the 7 Dwarfs until Clinton began to cast a shadow. But he didn’t make a great impression. He challenged a number of assumptions about being electable, particularly after it emerged he had not been faithful to his wife. We all remember what he weathered once in office.
His campaign was tough, smart and cynical. Much more effective than Hillary’s 2008 lieutenants, who came across more like the 3 Stooges. I’m thinking Mark Penn, Terry McAuliffe (who seemed to enjoy playing the buffoon at times) and the smarmiest of monsters, Lanny Davis.
Booman, please comment on this.
“He had larger problems than an email server”
How do you characterize the seriousness of the e-mail issue legally, politically, and national security-wise?
I have been really curious why you don’t seem to figure it in your predictions.
Thank you.
My completely amateur opinion:
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/08/hillary-clintons-honest-and-trustworthy-nu
mbers-are-lower-than-ever-it-might-not-matter
Not an insignificant number of them are Democrats.
The email story plays straight into any Clinton-skeptic’s worst assumptions about her. And she now may have to testify in court about it just prior to the Democratic convention. The optics are terrible.
It’s a problem.
3. The government has a piss-poor record of cybersecurity. Hillary’s servers could easily have been more secure than the alternative. But they probably weren’t. Even so, I doubt they proved a treasure chest to rival governments.
This gets at the main reason I’ve been a Clinton supporter from the first. My expectation all along has been the same for any Democratic successor to Obama. He or she should expect obstruction and turmoil far beyond anything Obama has had to face, possibly even large-scale armed uprisings. Other than Hillary I can think of very few plausible candidates for the Presidency who might have a hope of steering the country through such struggles.
You have the perfect name.
Snort! Made me laugh. Thanks! (not snark)
You seem very sure of yourself.
This ain’t the kiddie pool,
It’s the frog pond.
Are our struggles their struggles or the other way ’round?
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
While I’m not saying she is going to do so poorly as to lose to Drumpf (if that is how it plays out), her recent performance in the primary has been awful.
If the playing field had not been massive stacked in her favor during the primary, I doubt she would be leading with all the missteps and unforced errors I’ve seen over the past few months.
Considering the possible competition, once again, the lowest of bars.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Particularly when only one variable that was part of the past performance and subsequent results.
The 1992 results seem to me to have had more to do with a latency effect or carry-forward of the mood of the electorate in 1988. Dukakis was riding high in the polls because the country had had enough of the so-called Reagan Revolution and was ready for a change. But once it got down to comparing him with GHWB, Dukakis ending up looking like the lamer of the two. So, “change” was deferred to 1992, and GHWB (insider/status quo) and Perot (specific but limited change) got to be lamest ones.
Voter ID laws are there for a purpose.
The state Board of Elections is field trialing their moves in the general election.
Provisional ballots mishandled in Durham
Note the rush to judgement. What happens is invalidation of provisional ballots. What are provisional ballots? Those that are available for challenge under the voter ID law?
We have never faced this kind of an electoral war in North Carolina. In the past, the validity of the vote could be trusted. It is no coincidence that Durham County is the most Democratic county in the state. Sort of like the Republicans taking the governor of Wisconsin.
The enemy of progressives in this year’s campaign is complacency. The style of the Clinton campaign is complacency.
I have bad feelings about this election year for a reason. Democrats, even Bernie Sanders, are not at the top of their game. The DOJ should have long ago taken down the discriminatory voter ID laws.
News articles like this one about throwing out provisional ballots will depress the vote unless these sort of shenanigans are dealt with harshly.
Spot on, especially when it comes to failure of the Democratic establishment to take voting rights seriously. After 2000 you would think it would be a priority. It’s shameful negligence destructive to our republic in too many ways to count.
Of course, now I am counting them.
Thanks for that!
You mean, so unserious that the justice department defended the VRA in the Supreme Court? So unserious that Obama’s now backed automatic voter registration? So unserious that Dems in Congress, and the President support bipartisan voting rights act legislation that the Republican leadership refuses to allow a vote on?
I don’t know what you mean. The Supreme Court gave states an opening, now there’s little Dems can do apart from winning those states and changing the laws.
rights. You can read about in the following article in “The Nation.” http://www.thenation.com/article/eric-holders-voting-rights-legacy/
I didn’t say Obama has been on the wrong side of the issue. I said it hasn’t been a priority. I understand it’s tough when you have to clean up Bush messes all the time.
But for me, it’s such a fundamental attack on the republic that it should lead every Presidential speech, interview and press conference, until the GOP is shamed into acting on the non-debatable issue.
Without fighting for that principle constantly and loudly, the President allows the entire system to lose it’s legitimacy, as it clearly has since 2000.
So, now you know what I meant.
note: this comment appears elsewhere by mistake
The DOJ’s ability to take down discriminatory voter laws was severely weakened by the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. That horrible SCOTUS ruling prevented the Justice Department from forcing States with discriminatory voting rights histories to gain preclearance from DOJ before implementing changes in voting laws. Most of the recent rash of voter ID laws would surely have been blocked by DOJ before Section 5 of the VRA was essentially stripped from the Law.
What is left from an enforcement POV is Section 2 of the Law, which essentially requires that elections need to be held and classes of voters need to be able to demonstrate harm that happened in an election. We will see if Federal Circuit courts will find that the shenanigans which have taken place at the primaries in GOP-controlled States should be outlawed. Unfortunately, the extensive North Carolina voter restriction law was upheld by a judge recently.
This direct claim that the DOJ has not been working to maintain voting rights is infuriating. It’s just not true; they’ve filed suits against a lot of States, and have won in some of them.
Joe Klein must have book 3 (Primary Colors had a sequel, The Running Mate, in 2000.) ready for publication.
This will be less of an issue in the general, since Trump now has a Goldman Sachser in a command position, but voters concerned about the Clintons being beholden to big money.
http://iwilllookintoit.com/
Well, at least he’s willing to throw us crumbs, unlike her.
Rhetorical crumbs. Based on his business record, they’re most likely to be as real as his yuuge wall.
A glimmer of hope is better than no hope. Backing a long shot is better than giving up.
Come on. The Clintons pal around with the Trumps. Both want the digs in DC. The GOP movers and shakers are in despair. Throw them an anvil not a life preserver. After that we take on the corruption of the Clinton-Dem party.
After that there is nothing but the corrupt Democratic Party. Why should they reform without competition?
So you advise me to join the cheering crowd at her coronation? Or to hope for some meaningless plank in the platform? Or to make a protest vote for Jill stein that won’t mean anything? Or just sit home and let the pundits say I didn’t care?
Voting for Trump is the only option left that might change things. That’s “might”.
Not at all. No cheering for the anointed one. As she’s now moving on to consolidate her power with Republicans, she doesn’t even need the votes of principled Democrats/liberals. Absent something unpredictable, Trump isn’t going to break 40% (and that might be a stretch) as the enthusiastic portion of the conservative electorate is currently in the 30% range.
Let’s wait and see how things shake out before considering the best of what are at this point bad options.
We should have this talk again after the Convention.
You two scamps…
So cheery!
My take is that a lot of the lessons that the Clintons learned over the years might not make her the best candidate for the moment.
Sure, they have been through a lot of crap… I get that. They are smart, tough, they don’t give up, and have a lot of friends in high places. That’s all good I guess.
To me, it looks like the biggest lesson they learned (and haven’t forgotten) in their political careers was when Bill Clinton lost his bid for re-election after his first term as governor in Arkansas. He had tried to govern as a progressive reformer (or what passed for that in Arkansas), but ended up alienating a lot of the wealthy interests in the state. So after he was defeated, they moved to the center politically and, more importantly, they made themselves the friends of the moneyed interests in the state. He won the next election, and like they say, the rest is history.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Hillary’s playbook has changed much over the years. Bill Clinton at least did a believable job of selling the idea that he was looking out for average Americans. Hillary, unfortunately, just doesn’t have the knack for that sort of stuff. Unfortunately, the allegations of corruption, of being too close to the moneyed elite and promoting their interests at our expense are probably the biggest thing that could sink her running against (ironically) the billionaire Donald Trump. Well, that and actually being indicted…
I didn’t say Obama has been on the wrong side of the issue. I said it hasn’t been a priority. Sorry is I wasn’t clear.