January 12, 2022 - 8:00pm
In a world of endless sequels and reboots, it was only a matter of time until the American nostalgia-industrial complex turned political, desperate to recapture the engagement-driving magic of The Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes. First came the question of whether Donald Trump still holds enough sway in the Republican party to re-run for president in 2024 — an interesting one, to be sure, and still unresolved. But now, some commentators are raising the spectre of a full-on 2016 rematch.
In the Wall Street Journal, writers Douglas E. Schoen and Andrew Stein have pointed to a “perfect storm” that might allow Hillary Clinton to emerge once again at the forefront of the candidate field. Just as in 2016, they say, it’s not a matter of her being the best; it’s just that she’s the least bad.
Needless to say, the Democratic leadership vacuum is real — and between Biden’s advancing age and his perceived failure to get either the Covid-19 pandemic or the more radical elements in his party under control, his 2024 electability is far from a sure thing. But the writers of this op-ed veer into delusion with the idea that Hillary Clinton is the “change candidate” to fill that void and get the party back on track.
For one thing, Clinton herself has hardly been blameless in fomenting the Left’s current identity crisis. Her campaign issued the opening salvos in our present culture war between the MAGA crowd and a liberal elite who they accuse (not entirely without cause) of viewing them with disgust and contempt; you could draw a straight line from “basket of deplorables” to “let’s go Brandon,” stopping at any number of inflection points along the way.
But more importantly, if Democrats are looking to breathe new life into the party for 2024, what are they doing digging around in the graveyard of Clinton’s presidential aspirations? When it comes to a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, we’ve been there, done that, and got the t-shirt (I still wear mine for gardening and home improvement projects, because it is still one of the most comfortable shirts I own, but it is also indelibly stained with paint, which definitely feels like a metaphor for something.)
The struggle to let go, to move on, is understandable. For those of us who once saw Clinton not only as a great hope for the Democrats but also as a chance to make history by electing our first female president, seeing her lose to Donald Trump was undeniably brutal: it represented not only a loss, but the death of a dream. But there are worse things than a dead dream — like, say, dragging its dessicated corpse into battle because you’re still hoping it might come back to life and you can’t think of a better solution.
And while nostalgia surely has its place in politics (see: “Make America Great Again”), in this case, the Democratic party needs to stop gazing back with longing at the Clinton presidency that might have been, but wasn’t, and start looking for a way forward.
Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.
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SubscribeThe one thing you have to admire about Hillary Clinton is that she’s a born loser. Trump had no right to win in 2016. Everything was stacked overwhelmingly in Clinton’s favour: from spending (double) to mass media support (well over 90%) to ground game personnel. Add Trump being such an obnoxious character and the covert Fusion-GPS smear campaign against him funded by the DNC and it ought to have been a shoo-in.
And looking back one has to admit, too, that Clinton has many other unusual qualities with which to supplement her talent for losing. Her arrogance was – and still is – nauseating to behold. Her insistence that we should all vote for her merely because she was a woman and turn a blind eye to her incompetence was incredibly novel. And her innovative campaign tactics – not visiting key swing states & labelling half the electorate as “deplorables” shortly before polling day – proved she was way ahead of her time.
We must remember, too, that as a leading member of a professional political family which has dragged American politics to a new low over the past 2 decades, Hillary has pedigree.I didn’t think things could get much worse than the braggart Trump, but senile, corrupt Biden proved me wrong. And perhaps the author is wrong too. Humiliated, bankrupt America, swamped with illegal immigrants and rapidly heading towards permanent decline under a paranoid Covid regime would probably thrive under Hillary Clinton. Even losers need leaders.
Brilliant!!
“Her insistence that we should all vote for her merely because she was a woman”
A woman who betrayed all women when she defended her husband (as a dog who escaped the porch) and attacked Lewinsky. That fact alone should destroy her feminist support.
Perfectly stated.
Oh, come on, where’s your sense of the direction today?
Hillary/Bernie, a match perfect for 2024. I know you think ‘too white’, but they can appoint every kind of unqualified minority to every office, like Biden, and show their ultra-Liberal credentials. Ibram Xolani Kendi, Nikole Jones, as Cabinet Secretaries – the USA can really get going as world leader in enlightenment – it will end our empire as surely as the Vandals did Rome’s, but will go down in a SJW blaze, so the voters may go for it.
Talk about scraping the barrel. She’s crooked as a Haitian Ponzi, though I don’t suppose that’s an issue with Democrats. She should have just faded after 2016. That was as near as she was going to get. Close, but no cigar.
Dear democrats, for the sake of entertainment value, please, please, PLEASE do this.
“like, say, dragging its dessicated corpse into battle because you’re still hoping it might come back to life and you can’t think of a better solution.”
Her presidential campaign rallying cry can be “ El CID, El CID, El CID”
Exactly the image that came to my mind -Charlton Heston lashed to his horse.
Would that be Hilary “yes, I believe the future is female” Clinton? Hilary “basket of deplorables” Clinton?
There’s a good argument to be made that Trump only narrowly won in 2016 because he faced the most unlikable candidate ever until then, and in turn Biden only narrowly won in 2020 because he faced a similarly historically disliked candidate. And both sides are considering bringing them back in 2024 – un frigging believable !
Given America’s state of sanity right now, I’d say this scenario is almost required, unless you can think of something even more insane.
The Democrats need new blood in their leadership ranks. Biden and Pelosi are ancient; O’bama is the past; HRC is the past (as the writer points out), and Harris is not exactly lighting the world on fire in the party.
I’m not against the elderly, I promise. (I’m in my mid-sixties) If the Dems want to win elections, they’re going to have to come up with a better product. It’s time for the next generation to step up.
O’bama – is this to emphasis his Irish ancestry? 🙂
The author has stated the obvious flaw in the strategy. The only potential reason for voting for her is that she is a she. HRC is rudderless ship, a dandelion seed blowing in the wind, a long-term grifter without a soul, no endearing characteristics and the likability of a pigeon sitting on wire directly above your dinner table.
Under Biden, it seems like I’ve been promoted from a deplorable (HRC) to the enemy!
And this demented, doddering dotard was going to unite the US?
Malarkey!
If the Americans really do decide that they enjoyed 2016 so much they want to repeat it in 2024, but with each side claiming that the other has already stolen one election and that any apparent future victory is by definition illegitimate (due to ‘voter fraud’ or ‘voter suppression’), all while inflation’s at historic highs, national infrastructure is collapsing and drug overdose is the leading cause of death among under-50s…
Then I’m going to need to buy more shares in popcorn manufacturers.
I’m disqualified from running for President because I wasn’t born in the USA.
Lucky me.
Boris Born in the USA could stand!
Should not a comedian step in? As in other countries of late?
NEWC (Not Entirely Without Cause). What crowd would one be in? The MAGA crowd? The Caveat crowd? And it’s “whom”, not “who”.
One could perhaps not have invented a worst candidate for 2016, a year when both parties’ rank and file were absolutely fed up with establishment politicians. She embodied everything the electorate was rejecting that year, from globalization to the permanent war state. She was so desperate to win that she even rigged the already fully Clintonized DNC to do her bidding against Sanders. Hillary just reeks of being the professional, lifelong politico she is.
That she lost to Donald Trump, of all people, just attests to how toxic she is to the electorate. I can only imagine the glee with which Trump would embrace a 2024 rematch.
So, the architect of the Russia Collusion Scam might still be President. We’re fcuked.
Hilary’s moldering cadaver will never suit today’s progressive left. She epitomizes all the hallmarks of the dreaded fiction called “white privilege.”
Here is a handy guide, from the esteemed Smithsonian Institution – the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, that elaborates the multiple reasons Mrs. Bill Clinton will never be nominated or elected president.
https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333#slideshow/1610610
Meanwhile, voter remorse is so severe that President Trump will waltz right back into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue w/ease.
One thing Americans love, Love, LOVE is the comeback! President Grover Clevland (22nd and 24th U.S. President) did it and so will President Trump (45th and 47th U.S. President).
(Aspiring prognosticators are welcome to take a screenshot.)
Surely the best candidate for the Democrats would be Megan, Duchess of Sussex. She ticks the right diversity boxes and, by marrying into the family of King George III, her election would put right the wrongs of the American Revolution.
Ahh… but normal sane and errr… intelligent people in the US know that she runs a paedo ring of Satanist from a pizza restaurant basement, that has no basement, and that a neo illiterate man child with the vocabulary of a 10 year old and a history of proveable and manifest dishonesty, called Donald, is actually God….
Well, from a pizza restaurant that DOES have a basement, if you want to be all paedantic about this.
It’s depressing isn’t it. And it gets worse. THE MOST intelligent people in the US (at least they think so), including our Hillary, also believe that said Donald with vocab of a 10 year old is a Vladimir Putin mole …