Democrat Leaders Say Hillary Is in Wall Street's Hip Pocket.
The Washington Post ran a story on a meeting of Leftist Democrats, some of whom are running for the Party's nomination for President.
The main thread: Hillary is just too moderate. She is way too far to the Right.
She is, some imply, a tool of Wall Street.
Her husband surely was. He appointed Goldman Sachs' ex-CEO, Robert Rubin, as his Secretary of the Treasury. But it's nice to see the Party's Left wing willing to attack Mrs. Clinton as "soft on Wall Street."
I find it amusing that the only candidates who are talking about an alternative to Hillary Clinton are to the left of Hillary Clinton. These are people who are so far out of touch with their own voter base that they think they can ride to victory in the party nomination process in 2016. They think they have a running shot at heading Hillary Clinton off at the pass. The only thing that is going to head off Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton. If she wants the nomination, she can have it. These people are hoping against hope that something is going to persuade Mrs. Clinton not to run. Whatever may persuade Mrs. Clinton not to run, it will not be any of these people. This really is Snow White and the seven dwarfs.
I mean, when Jerry Brown is being discussed as a candidate -- by Gary "Monkey Business" Hart -- and the media regard this as anything except high camp humor, the Democratic Party is in serious electoral trouble. This is the fruit fly governor. The entertainment value of politics has gone up at least one notch. If he ever announces, it will go up two notches more.
I think it is clear that the American establishment would very much like to see the 2016 campaign for president being a race between Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton. These are trustworthy people. These are people who have not rocked the boat. One of them is clearly more conservative than the other, but both of them operate towards the center of the political spectrum.
All the Republican potential candidates are to the right of Romney, and all of the potential Democrat candidates are to the left of Mrs. Clinton. So, electoral politics being what they are, if Romney decides to run, he is likely to get the nomination. We could get what I call an Adlai Stevenson opportunity. Or maybe we want to call it Tom Dewey opportunity. In other words, he will get back-to-back nominations, despite a defeat. This has not happened since 1956, when Stevenson got a second shot at Eisenhower. Why he thought he could be Eisenhower on the second round is anybody's guess.
Hillary Clinton reminds me a lot of Richard Nixon. Nixon was not very far to the right, but liberals really hated it. There was a visceral reaction against that could not be explained by his voting record. I think the same is true of Hillary Clinton. Conservatives have a visceral hatred however, and in terms or actual voting record, she is pretty much a run-of-the-mill Democrat Senator. She never did anything remarkable as Secretary of State, a fact which is reflected in the abysmal book sales of her memoir as Secretary of State.
Richard Nixon was hated, but there was hardly anybody who was really enthusiastic about his candidacy in 1968. Basically, he was the "not Hubert Humphrey" candidate. He did not attract true believers. Hillary Clinton does. I think her true believers probably outnumber her visceral haters. This does not mean that she can win the presidency. I think it does mean that you can get the nomination.
In a showdown between any of the left-wing candidates in the Democratic Party in any of the right-wing candidates in the Republican Party, I think the right-wing candidate would win. My sense of the electorate is that they have had enough of left-wing Democrats who promise them deliverance. The voting record of Mrs. Clinton in her years as Secretary of State indicate that, when push comes to shove, if she is facing a Republican House of Representatives and possibly a Republican Senate, she will moderate her rhetoric. She will guard her tongue. She certainly is guarding her tongue about whether she intends to run. Yet who really believes that she has not long lusted after the office that her husband held? I think she started running for President no later than 1983.
Given the field that has begun to line up against her, I find it difficult to believe that she will not get the nomination. If she wants it, she can have it. She may hesitate because of various skeletons in her closet, but if she's willing to put up with them, she can certainly defeat the menagerie of candidates who might run against her for the nomination.