As if it wasn’t bad enough that she had to stick by Bill’s side all through, uh, everything, now she’s needlessly subjecting herself this kind of trashy parody. It kinds of reminds me of what happens happens to the Prom Queen after a year away at college in a co-ed dorm.
You know, I really can’t help but wonder what Hillary’s true reasons are for running. There just has to be an element of vindictive vindication (I don’t even think that that makes sense) behind it all. I know that Bill hurt and humiliated her, and I know she has a need to show him, but does she really need to do it by putting herself through the publicity meat grinder all over again.
I also can’t help but wonder if she’ll end up taking the Democratic party with her. I mean, let’s say she takes the primary, then let’s say that she manages to get a “majority” of Americans to vote for a woman, well then her biggest challenge is then going to be to escape Bill’s shadow.
Now, normally getting elected as the first woman president would suffice to eclipse your husband’s legacy, but being the first First Lady to transcend being a titular appendage (sorry, couldn’t help it) to Bill Clinton of all people means that the shadow she has to escape is something a lot larger than just that cast by his height.
Breaking with every last part of his politics, then, is only a part of what she’s going to have to do. This means that she’ll have to go either far to the left or far to the right, and judging by where she stands right now, it doesn’t bode well for Democrat platform-politics. Besides, being a woman head of the largest military and economic power in the world means that she would’ve had enough to prove as it is.
Of course, this is something that I think the electorate is aware of, at least on some subconscious level, so I doubt that she’d get elected to the White House if she took the Democratic Party nomination. Don’t get me wrong, if there’s any woman in America today who has a chance at the White House, it’s Hillary. The problem is that what makes her such a likely hopeful is also what’s going to put off voters once their alone in the booth with God, Allah, or Hashem as their witness.
What this all means in the grand scheme of things I’m not so sure, but it bears on the electorate and the tragic reality of this once promising egalitarian democracy. There’s a still a lot of work to do, and as much progress as we’ve made toward eventually getting a woman into the White House, I doubt that we’re there yet.
Of course, this brings us back to the Democratic primary, and who then is the most likely candidate, and if numbers are any indication, it looks like it’s Barry. But bear in mind that, number wise, Barry is still second to Hillary, and that tells us something about looking at it from the Numbers Game: that the popular support and fundraising dollars that both Barrack and Hillary have enjoyed has more to do with their cult of celebrity than it does with their chances of making it to the White House.
Mind you, it’s not like this country doesn’t already have a history of putting celebrities into office, or even the White House at that, but those idols were idols first and politicians later. Hillary and Barrack are celebrities because they were into politics first, and if there’s anything that the American Public isn’t so quick to forgive, it’s those who are so foolish to think that just because in American you can leverage fame for power, that it might work the other way around.
After all, fame is it’s own kind of power, a democratically bestowed one that supercedes all of its counterparts, and to try to use other kinds of power to leverage fame in America is an affront to what precious little is left of the democratic spirit in this country. That kind of smack doesn’t ever fly ’round here, no matter how bad the shit stinks.
Besides, Americans need a President that kind of embodies the Washington Monument, and Hillary might have trouble doing that. In fact, the reason why Bill was able to get away with as much as he did was because he explicitly personified the American phallus. This is why some women manage to find even the most despotic of politicians sexy.
I don’t know, if I was personal friends with Hillary, I would’ve advised her against running. She’s setting herself up to be either humiliated by the dark depths of Bill’s shadow, or (by necessity) one of the greatest Democratic despots our generation will ever see — which very likely ruin the party. More to the point, though, is that if she secures the nomination, we might be in for another four years of the stampeding element taking a massive dump on our trampled remains.
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