The Ugly
Obama's famous 2008 slight that Hillary was "likeable enough" turns out not to be so true. On the campaign trail and on TV, Hillary is charmless. Which is why, the more Americans get to know her, the more of her supporters migrate to other candidates. She can't up her personality game.
With the liberal/progressive base of Hillary's party agitated at 1960s levels, she can't explain away her conservative record. She's never met a free trade deal or a war she didn't like (See Diana Johnstone's Queen of Chaos for the goods on HRC's foreign policy blunders); millions of jobs and people are dead as a result.
She says she's been fighting for progressive causes for years, but when? Where? Even on the micro-bore social "wedge" issues that her husband relied upon as president, she's in trouble. Gays won't forget her support of the Defense of Marriage Act. Straights think she's a reed in the political wind.
But Hillary's biggest flaw as a candidate isn't policy. It's her failure to internalize two truisms of politics.
Number one: Candidates win by projecting an optimistic vision of the future. When she criticizes Bernie Sanders for advocating changes that would be hard to get through Congress and expensive to pay for -- free college tuition, Medicare for everybody -- she projects a radical pessimism that makes many ask, why not? Why can't the country that invades everyone, that sent a man to the moon, provide the same social benefits as most other nations?
And number two: Elections aren't about the candidate. They're about the people. This goes back to when tribes elected chiefs. Vote for me, and buffalo will rain from the sky! We'll be fat! Water everywhere! That's a winning campaign -- not, hey, as the first elder from the Whatever Clan to become chief, I'd make tribal history and wouldn't that be cool.
Obama didn't win in 2008 by running as Future First Black President. He projected a sunny, winning disposition and a sense of the future we could buy into. Hope! Change! Yes We Can! Hillary's campaign is all about her, not us.
That's political suicide.
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