I’m starting to think that a combination of voter expectations and newly agitated Clinton fatigue might end up denying Hillary Clinton her party’s presidential nomination next year.
I have no idea who can beat her, but it’s a long time between now and primary-election season. Other Democratic candidates are likely to include former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia; former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley; and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Clinton, of course, is the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, but I think she has slipped badly with many voters as a result of the scandal over her decision to use only a personal email account — forgoing a State Department account — when she was secretary of state…How do we know she is turning over all government-related emails? We don’t know, and I think it’s safe to say she probably won’t turn them all over.
I don’t see the email scandal going away quickly. For one thing, it has provided the U.S. House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, with fresh meat. Using the private email account exclusively is like handing the Republican-dominated Benghazi committee a hammer and saying, “Hit me and don’t stop hitting me.”
But there’s another factor that could easily eat away at Clinton’s status as presumptive Democratic nominee.
A recent NBC-Wall Street Journal survey of 1,000 people showed that a significantly larger percentage of respondents was much more interested in a candidate who would bring about greater policy changes than a candidate who was steeped in experience.
The pollsters read two key statements to respondents and asked them if they agreed or disagreed.
The first statement was:
“This is a time when it is important to look for a more experienced and tested person even if he or she brings fewer changes to the current policies.”
Thirty-eight percent of respondents said they agreed with that statement.
The second statement was:
“This is a time when it is important to look for a person who will bring greater changes to the current policies even if he or she is less experienced and tested.”
Fifty-nine percent of respondents said they agreed with that statement.
Hillary, of course, is the epitome of “experienced and tested,” but she seems to offer virtually no hope for “greater changes.”
Doesn’t the story with Hillary boil down to “same old same old”? How could it be anything else? I wonder how she plans to convince a majority of voters in the states whose electoral votes will determine the outcome that she is a change agent. That’s exactly how President Obama beat her last time, stealing the “agent-of-change” mantle right off her shoulders.
I bet many Republicans are feeling pretty hopeful these days. And they should be, in my opinion.
On the other hand, some Democrats — maybe a lot by now — are feeling queasy about having a candidate who appears destined to be the 2016 nominee.
One such Democrat, Deval Patrick, a former Massachusetts governor and an Obama supporter in 2008, told The New York Times that Democrats might be better off if at least one other Democratic challenger emerged.
The Times quoted Patrick as saying:
“My view of the electorate is, we react badly to inevitability, because we experience it as entitlement, and that is risky, it seems to me, here in America.”
**
…A wise uncle who died a few years ago once told me, “Expect the unexpected.”
I will.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Once again, Queen Hillary has investigated herself and proudly announced that she is innocent of any wrong doing. This is like the 13th Century.
That reminds me of a line in a recent Maureen Dowd column about the Clintons. Dowd wrote:
“The Clintons don’t sparkle with honesty and openness. Between his lordly appetites and her queenly prerogatives, you always feel as if there’s something afoot.”
Bernie is an independent, not a Democrat. That said, the Democrats have a very shallow bench, but are fortunately blessed with an undiscerning base that primarily wants free stuff, the country be damned.
As for the emails, one suspects that they were lost in one of the fires that destroyed Al Sharpton’s tax records.
Maybe MSNBC should field Al as their favorite for the Democratic nomination…Oops, there I go again sounding like a conservative blogger.
That’s what you get for being open-minded.