By Sal Bommarito
Game on. The battle for the control of the Democratic Party is in full throttle. How delicious, the Clintons vs. the Obamas for all the marbles. Which wife will become the first female president?
Most astute Americans know that the two families have been at each other since the 2008 election. A nobody, named Barack Obama stole the presidential election from Hillary (and Bill). The country was so enamored with political correctness that it chose a person with no experience over the wife of a former president.
It was great political intrigue until the guy we picked started to make a whole slew of mistakes. And now, the electorate has buyer’s remorse. I often hear “I wish I voted for Hillary in the 2008 primaries.” Yet, the president believes that he has put America on a more righteous path, and he wants someone to replace him in 2016 that will carry his torch and support his ideology. Is Hillary that person? No way. The differences between Barack and Hillary are stark and make one query why the president chose Hillary as Secretary of State in the first place. It was not a great decision based upon Hillary’s achievements (minimal) and her support of Barack after her retirement.
Before the election that Hillary was supposed to run away with, the Obamas won the hearts of many people who were supposed to be loyal to the Clintons, among the most famous were Teddy and Caroline Kennedy. Bill Clinton must have been apoplectic when the Kennedy’s spurned his wife; he thought there was an understanding. Many others also jumped on the Obama bandwagon; Edward Klein’s new book titled Blood Feud should be consulted for a complete list of the turncoats that abandoned the Clintons. This time around, Bill is not going to sit by idly. He will do everything he can to ensure his wife will be the next president (and he will be her co-president).
The fact is that every candidate must openly disparage Barack’s legacy in 2016 to have any chance of winning. Voters, for the most part (based upon current polls), think Barack is not doing a good job and they want him gone. So, if any Democrat says otherwise to solicit Barack’s endorsement, he or she will be ridiculed and cast aside.
Hillary knows that Barack is radioactive, so she needed to start to bad-mouth the president sooner or later. She began her campaign to distance herself from Barack over the past couple of weeks because her new book campaign has been disappointing, and she has not performed well in interviews, even with supporters like Steven Colbert. The first volley was an interview with The Atlantic in which Hillary dealt with Obama’s decision not to be more supportive of the Syrian rebels; doing so might have “prevent[ed] the fighting from spreading to Iraq.” And also, in the same interview, Hillary criticized Barack’s comment about not doing “stupid stuff,” not a particularly sophisticated foreign policy perspective.
In classic Clintonesque style, Hillary later called Barack to say that her comments were not intended “to attack him, his policies or his leadership.” Yeah, right! The Clintons like to bash people, send a message and then they say they are sorry. Of course, Barack is aware of this ploy, and no matter what he said in response to Hillary, I am sure he does not believe her and resents her even more today than yesterday.
This incident is not a good sign for American politics going into the 2014 elections and the general election two years later. Gamesmanship, deceit, untrue advertisement in the media and by word of mouth will overwhelm the electorate. And, I have not even mentioned the Republican campaign machine.