As good a battle as Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) could give, her candidacy was handicapped from the outset. Despite her overwhelming lead in the polls in 2007, it has been obvious all along that many Democrats and independents were looking for someone, anyone but HRC as a nominee. Why? Clinton fatigue.
You could look at this in two ways. First, there is the fact that Hillary and Bill Clinton have been in the national spotlight without fail for 16 years. With Hillary joining the Senate on Jan. 4, 2001, right before her husband’s term in office came to an end, they have been in power in Washington for 16 years. That’s a very long time to hold the spotlight without suffering. And suffered they have, especially regarding the scandals during Bill’s administration. From my perspective, it is those scandal-ridden days that has doomed her presidential aspirations.
Second, an HRC presidency would mean 24 or 28 years of Bush-Clinton wars. Although the nomination has focused more on race, class and sex, the truth is it has a lot to do with a generational shift in politics, just as 1992 did. Many younger voters are sick of hearing Bush-Clinton, Clinton-Bush and want to move on. The Editor-in-Chief, Joe Gandelman over at the blog, the Moderate Voice, says it well:
Why couldn’t she clinch it earlier, since she had been the front-runner? Why haven’t the many arguments used by the Clinton campaign in recent weeks gotten much traction?
In the last part of his post today Polman hits the nail on the head and says what many other journalists have hinted at in recent weeks:
One feature of the slow-motion Clinton funeral ceremony is the ongoing procession of euologists, all of them offering reasons for the demise of the Clinton candidacy. Clinton herself, naturally, doesn’t believe it’s her fault; she blames it on sexism (”people who are nothing but misogynists”). Her husband doesn’t think it’s her fault; he blames it – naturally – on the press (he said in Kentucky, “this has been the most slanted press coverage in American history”). And her in-house loyalists – quoted not for attribution in perhaps the best article of all – pin the blame on various top aides for alleged messaging, tactical, and strategic deficiencies.
And yet, all these eulogies seem to overlook the biggest factor of all: Clinton fatigue. The inescapable truth is that a huge Democratic constituency was hungering for an alternative to the Clintons. I heard this repeatedly, as far back as 2002. While interviewing Washington-based Democrats, I was struck by how often they would trash the party’s golden duo. (I knew it was coming when they would preface their remarks by asking, “Can I go off the record for a moment?”) As one prominent party woman – this is someone who appears regularly on national TV, in a neutral mode – remarked to me in 2003, “We need to put the Clintons in a cage somewhere, with a blanket thrown over it.”The point is, millions of Democrats were poised to support a strong not-Hillary candidate. Obama filled the bill, and the Clintons, convinced of their entitlement, were way too slow in taking him seriously – and in recognizing that his early support was, in some important ways, a referendum on them.
All of which leaves Hillary with basically one argument, and I suspect we’ll hear it again tonight: the notion that, in the wake of a Kentucky win, she is actually ahead in the national popular vote…as long as one ignores the party rules and counts Florida and Michigan. Right. And if she only had wings, she could win the Boston Marathon.
If there was latent Clinton fatigue out there (as I also believe there has been) Bill Clinton’s red-faced campaign appearances and controversies which helped Clinton with some groups could have sandbagged her in the long-run.
Of course, it isn’t over until THIS LADY sings, and she’s not singing yet.
But she’s starting to hum.
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