Bill Clinton, I am told, does not readily forgive slights. Perennial political gadfly Jerry Brown failed to endorse the Arkansas Democrat when the latter won the party’s 1992 presidential nomination and remained critical of his fellow partisan during the latter’s two terms as the nation’s chief executive.
So, why then did the spouse of the Secretary of State endorse Jerry Brown at a time when his campaign for California’s chief executive was flagging? Clinton wouldn’t have helped out a man who didn’t help him unless he had a good reason.
Ever the savvy politician, the former president was keeping his eye on the big picture. By helping Brown, he was helping Hillary. Now, the incoming governor of the (once-)Golden State, the nation’s largest and now “bluest”, is beholden to the Clintons. Should Hillary challenge Obama for their party’s nomination in 2012, Brown won’t be endorsing the incumbent president for reelection when the candidates are competing for California.
Bill Clinton wouldn’t have gone out of his way to help Jerry Brown if Hillary wasn’t planning on challenging Obama.
How is Jerry Brown any more indebted to Clinton than he would be to Obama? Clinton did not save Brown and Brown didn’t need to save by how the election finished. Brown’s campaign may have been flagging but Whitman was the one who truly let the campaign get out of hand. The idea that Brown would endorse Hillary over Obama seems really far fetched, when Obama is still popular in the state of California.
Hillary isn’t going to run in 2012 because exactly where would her base be? She isn’t going to beat him among blacks, young people and it seems unlikely woman will be enough to get her through. If anything the Republican primaries will be the focus and most people, who may or not have been Democrats, will be voting then.
I have heard more rumblings about Dean running because he is actually to the left of Obama. He could galvanize dispirited liberals who are unhappy with the health care law, unhappy with continued presence in Afghanistan, and possibly the economy. He was their first love in 2004 and you never forget your first love.
Interesting thoughts. I wondered why Hillary stayed away from these elections. Is it because she wanted BHO to be solely identified as a “loser”. BHO is certainly radioactive.
darkeyedresolve writes, “She isn’t going to beat him among blacks, young people and it seems unlikely woman will be enough to get her through.”
Those are the ones that were abandoning BHO in droves in this election. The are the most disheartened.
This is assuming that Jerry Brown will still be governor in 2012. If he burdens the already over burdened state he might go the way of Grey Davis. Maybe Meg will get a second chance.
Maybe Jerry will run for president himself. Heh.
In spite of my mixed feelings about Hilary, it would be wonderful poetic justice for Obama to become the first sitting president to actually lose the nomination of his own party. In 1980, if it had been anyone other than Ted Kennedy as a challenger, that fate could have easily befallen Jimmy Carter.
Hillary Clinton will be too in touch with Barry’s corruption to fully function as an independent candidate for the Democrat Party; however, I believe Evan Bayh, ever the opportunist, will put his hat in he ring & run against a severely weakened President Obama in a heated primary.
Hillary’s base is me and people like me–non-liberal loon Democrats who want a common sense party who backs workers and middle-class people and which doesn’t focus on left-wing socialist policies. Hillary’s base is all the states she won when running against Obama–like West Virginia, where they have my current favorite Democrat, Jim Manchin. My dream ticket is Clinton/Manchin 2012.
There are several potential Dem candidates lurking in the bushes, waiting to see how weakened Obama really is. But if HRC is going to challenge, she needs to disassociate herself from BHO soon…she has to quit the cabinet before the end of the year and begin to use her creds (whatever they are) to her own ends. I personally don’t see her successfully challenging BHO, but then I didn’t think The Enlightened One was going to win the 2008 nomination when he first declared either.
I’m sure HRC was ecstatic to be away.
I can’t find anyplace to confirm it but I thought I read that the Secretary of State is by law forbidden to campaign. Even if that’s not the case I’m sure she would have gotten the hell out of Dodge anyway.
Does anyone know if that Secretary of State thing is true or not?
Thanks
SOS traditionally stays out of elections, not sure if it’s the law, but all have kept their noses out.
I just can’t see Hillary running against Obama. The black vote is not going to sit quietly by while their man is attacked from within the party. If Obama was to lose the nomination, I dare say we would see riots and at best, blacks would sit out the 2012 election to punish Hillary. I think she knows this too and without the black vote, she can’t win.
I find Hillary as huge a “yuck,” at this point, as Obama. Her grand scheme for socialized medical care in the Nineties was as big a mess as what we’re stuck with now. She is a smart lady, and knows how to play both sides against the middle, but it seems to me she stands for whatever she thinks will bring her power.
If she declines to challenge Obama in the primary in 2012, I have great difficulty believing it will be because she’s just too principled.
“Black voters are racist. Not only will they stick with Obama no matter what he does, but they will punish anyone they think harmed him in any way. Part of why HRC took the Secretary of State job was so she could appear to now be friendly with Obama…that, and so she did not have to be in the Senate when all Hell broke loose and Democrats started voting on crazy things.
“Notice: you don’t hear many, if any, blacks calling HRC a racist or using the 2008 campaign against her. She nullified all that…because she knows she will need blacks to support her 2016 bid. [snip] All those bitter, clinging, white working class people are gone and won’t magically come back by 2012. Not even for Hillary, which is why she is too smart to get into a 2012 race. Her eye is on 2016.” – Kevin DuJan, founder of Free Republic’s favorite homocon site, Hillbuzz. JMG
I always figured Madame Clinton for a racist. How dare she challenge His Excellency Barack Obama for the presidency?
“She is a smart lady, and knows how to play both sides against the middle, but it seems to me she stands for whatever she thinks will bring her power.”
As compared to Carly Fiorina? Meg Whitman? Sarah Palin? You comment is so sexist, it’s ridiculous.
My comment is “sexist,” Ash? Pray explain how. Because I used the word lady?
Your lack of logical clarity frequently astonishes.
If Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman and Sarah Palin were men, it would make sense. Your implication being — evidently — that I excuse in these three what I condemn in Hillary Clinton.
I do excuse it in them. I don’t think any of the three have yet shown whether they are insanely ambitious. But since they are women, too, where exactly is the sexism?
Your flights into absurdity are becoming stranger all the time.
If Hillary does not run for president again, it will be because she’s decided, for whatever reason, she won’t win. And there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. I don’t like her politics, so I wouldn’t vote for her anyway.
I wouldn’t vote for her if she were a man, either. I voted for her husband in ’92, but by ’96 had concluded he was a bastard and voted for Dole instead. I’ve never had one moment of remorse over it.
You appear to be afflicted with some sort of liberal Tourette’s — barking out accusations of bigotry every time someone says something you don’t like. Just as anyone who opposes Emperor O must automatically, to his minions, be a racist, no one could possibly fail to see Hillary’s charms unless she or he were sexist.
Shame on anybody who offends the fan club.
I am not a liberal. I am a Democrat. There is a loony liberal wing of the Democratic party, but I am not part of that. I want it to go away.
Your comment is sexist because if a woman is as ambitious as a man, she is condemned. There is nothing wrong with Hillary doing whatever it takes to become President. Any of the women I mentioned would do the same thing, and more power to them. Each of the women has more balls than Obama. But there is no reason to assume that conservative women are more pure in their ambitions than centrists like Hillary. And please catch up–no one thinks Hillary is liberal anymore.
“Hillary’s base” at work? Clearly, she’ll never be President.
… in Ash’s Wacky, Wonderful World of One. (Keeping up the alliteration theme from another post)
“Your comment is sexist because if a woman is as ambitious as a man, she is condemned.”
Ash, how very wrong you are. I would certainly condemn a man for being as grasping and amoral as she has been. As I did her husband when he behaved that way.
“There is nothing wrong with Hillary doing whatever it takes to become President.”
Yes, there is.
Comment posted before I was finished.
Yes, Ash, there is everything wrong with doing whatever one can do get elected, regardless of what it is. The electorate’s willingness to accept such a low standard has led to the rash of sociopaths we have had, of late, in public office. It is always the reason bad people get ahold of power.
As to whether the conservative women you mentioned would have done the same, obviously the ones who lost their elections didn’t — which has a lot to do with why they didn’t get elected. It is too early to tell about Sarah Palin yet, but nothing she has done thus far gives me any reason to believe she is in any sense lacking in principle.
And as far as your assertion that having “balls” is a positive attribute in a female candidate, that is about as sexist as it gets. One might just as well assert that a courageous male office-seeker has “ovaries.”
Well, honestly, as a Democrat, I feel that if we see Hillary run in 2012 it will be quite a scene and will tear the whole party apart the way the Obama-Clinton battle nearly did. But also, we might see Sarah Palin run in 2012. I would love to see a Clinton-Palin showdown that November. Then that way nobody can claim gender was a factor as was claimed in the 2008 primaries, and also a little between the Vice-Presidential candidates that year. But one thing I’d love to see is Hillary wiping the floor with Palin in debates. I mean, she cleaned Obama’s clock regularly in 2008 when she debated him. And if somehow the world went bat-sh*t crazy and somehow elected Palin to the presidency, I also feel it would be a very good thing…. but ONLY because after her, nobody would elect another Republican president for about 100 years lol
I admit, in a choice between Palin and Clinton, I would choose Clinton. I dunno though. I’ve had this fantasy of Clinton being President instead of Obama for months, mostly because Obama has done such a horrific job it’s made her look really good in comparison.
But if there’s a chance of a center-right (but fiscally conservative) Republican winning, I’m all for it. Keep in mind Reagan was a center-right Republican.