Hillary Clinton Should Stay in the Woods
In the wake of an election loss, it was once fairly common to see the losing party pause for a bit of self-reflection. With nothing left to gain by glossing over the flaws of any particular nominee, the healthy thing to do is to honestly examine why his or her problems were bigger than the party realized.
A hard look in the mirror is the right response to being told you aren’t as good as the opposition. It’s the right move for policy, and it is the right move for candidates. Whatever lessons a party is ultimately able to take from getting a “thanks, but no thanks” from the electorate, number one on the list should be a given – you lost for a reason.
In the wake of Trump’s election, this has been disconcertingly hard to do for Democrats. Their utter lack of respect for the motivations of Trump voters has manifested itself in accusations of racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia…..read a few of the handmade signs at any of the innumerable Trump-related protests, and the sentiment is clear.
While this inability to comprehend why a sane person would vote for Donald Trump is likely making the search for reconciliation between the parties more difficult , it has also had the bizarre and self-defeating effect of lionizing Hillary Clinton. This was made all the more troubling by Clinton’s statement last month when she announced she was “ready to come out of the woods”, and not particularly helped by her recent claim that she wouldn’t seek office again.
Speaking to The New York Times in her first exclusive interview since the election, Clinton said all the things you would expect from a once and future political candidate. She accused Trump of targeting women. Derided the botched travel ban. Sniped about the Merkel handshake flap. In fairly on-the-nose fashion, she quipped “I don’t understand the commitment to hurt so many people that this administration, that this White House, seems to be pursuing.”
When asked about the reasons for her loss, she put the blame on Russia, WikiLeaks, FBI Director James Comey, and misogyny. Everywhere, apparently, but on herself.
External factors may have played some role in the outcome. But it is unlikely that any other candidate, running against Trump, would have been operating on margins so narrow that issues like these could have an impact. And as for her supposed pledge to not seek public office, which has made headlines recently, she simply stated the following when asked about her future ambition: “I don’t think that will include ever running for office again.” She isn’t likely to need a lawyer to get out of that one.
Democrats, directing the full force of their seething rage at anyone in a Make America Great Again hat, have let Clinton’s flaws as a candidate go largely undiscussed in the election post-mortem. In fact, as evidenced by the widely-reported series of standing ovations she received while attending a theater performance in January (Mike Pence was not extended the same courtesy), she has somehow come to be seen as a kind of martyr.
This is exceedingly dangerous if Democrats want a serious shot at unseating Donald Trump in 2020. The 2016 election was a clash between two of the most unpopular Presidential candidates in US history, and Clinton lost. She is not a martyr. She is not a saint. She came out on the losing end of one of the vilest races to the bottom living memory. She is, put simply, a bad politician.
This has proven to be a difficult reality for Democrats to accept, and so Clinton supporters have tended to fall back on claims that misogyny or low levels of literacy among Trump voters (which would seem to be a stereotype all by itself) played a decisive role in her defeat. This is misguided, and they are doing themselves and the party a disservice with this type of reaction. The list of her failings as a candidate is so extensive that they explain the result in a straightforward Occam’s razor fashion, without recourse to bigotry.
Even Obama couldn’t help but criticize the way Clinton’s campaign was run. Stylistic differences aside, her utter neglect of crucial rustbelt states like Michigan and Wisconsin, along with sending Pennsylvania to the Republicans for the first time since 1988, were apparently too much for him to let go without comment. The then-President, speaking after the loss, stated “We have to compete everywhere. We have to show up everywhere.” He then compared his approach to hers directly, adding “I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa. It was because I spent 87 days going to every small town and fair and fish fry and VFW Hall”. So it appears that there is at least one Democrat who doesn’t believe that Clinton’s loss was based purely on prejudice.
It isn’t enough to say that she learned her lesson here, or that she won’t repeat the same mistakes the next time around. Apart from being a clear indication of her judgment, it should be obvious that the people who voted against Clinton have made up their minds about her. She had an exhaustingly protracted campaign and a decades-long career in public life to swing the electorate over to her side; a resurgence now would be transparently self-serving and devastating for the Democratic Party. It is too late for a few message tweaks and a bit of mea culpa. She needs to stay away.
There are any number of reasons why Clinton’s return to the spotlight would be a bad thing for opponents of the current Administration. For starters, she is a lightning rod for right-wing antagonism. Her campaign’s inability to move past the email server scandal left many Trump voters with the belief that she ought to be in jail; no one is likely to soon forget the infamous “Lock Her Up” chants. Trump’s rantings were always easier to dismiss when he was able to point to an opponent that he could paint as a criminal. Unopposed, he has no such recourse and his approval ratings reflect this. If Clinton comes back, the common enemy of the Republicans comes back with her.
Apart from reigniting the acrimony of the Right, Clinton’s profile will also act as a focal point of attention on the Left at a time when Democrats badly need to promote the next generation of leadership. Their current bench is remarkably shallow, and any fresh talent that does emerge over the next few years will need all the sunlight it can get. Allowing the future of the party to be overshadowed by the echoes of an old dynasty is not a strategy for success.
Of course, none of this has sunken in yet with the majority of the Left, because Democrats are comporting themselves now the same way they were during the campaign. They remain wedded to the assumption that Trump will be a disaster, that he’ll inevitably self-destruct, and that whoever they put forward will look like a godsend by comparison. That’s a refrain that sound hauntingly familiar.
Whatever Trump himself may do, planning your route to success by assuming your opponent will fail is just bad politics. Democrats ought to be scouring the country for a candidate who can beat the President while he’s at his most popular. Not hope that he flounders badly enough that they can run anybody they want. This was the mistake they made during the 2016 campaign. If they make it again in 2020, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
