“Two months into George W. Bush’s second term as president, a cadre of Hillary Clinton supporters is trying to lock up the Democratic presidential nomination for New York’s junior senator,” writes Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe. “One supporter is her husband, former president Bill Clinton, who declares that his wife would make an excellent president. Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware also predicts “she is likely to be the nominee.”
Powerline points out that Vennochi’s real question is not whether Hillary will get the nomination but whether she should get it. Can she win the presidency?
“And it’s here that [Vennochi’s] column turns incoherent because,” says Powerline, “like so many pro-Democratic analysts, the author tries to answer the question in a vacuum, as if no intelligent and reasonably informed electorate exists. Thus, Vennochi warns that while Clinton is moving towards the center, this is no guarantee of success. After all, John Kerry is a centrist war hero, but the nasty Republicans successfully convinced the public that he is a flip-flopping Vietnam war protester. (Vennochi says that the Republicans had some help from the ’candidate’ himself, as if Kerry had never been a dovish liberal until he started blundering as a candidate).”
Powerline argues that the real question isn’t whether Hillary’s record will be distorted by her opponents. It is whether her party’s left wing will allow her to espouse positions inimical to their beliefs.
Inkwell has a disheartening theory that the left will allow her to say or do just about anything. They know her well enough to know she’s really on their side.