Is Hillary Finished?
Larry Kudlow thinks so:
Please allow me a dose of hardened market realism concerning Obama’s landslide victory in Wisconsin. The race is over. Hillary is finished. The Clinton Restoration is over. President Bill Clinton’s political invincibility is over. Hillary’s electability is over.
Obama got to the far Left faster than she did. He out organized her in the precincts. He out fundraised her. He out speechified her. He out-hustled her. He out-dressed her. He out-presidentialed her. He outdid her and he outbid her for votes, one promised government check at a time.
A 15-point margin in Wisconsin is incredible. Wisconsin is a lot like Ohio except for the wacko ultra-Left Madison college population, which is even worse that Columbus’s Ohio State. But there are so many campuses in Ohio that will go for Obama that it is no matter. Think faculty voters, grimly determined for a left-wing takeover of America ” from the bottom up” to use the former Saul Alinsky community organizer’s phrase. As goes Wisconsin, so goes Ohio.
Not even Hillary’s last-minute bashing of business and free-market capitalism, which is a complete repudiation of her husband’s presidency, could save her. Obama got there first, with a style and elegance that Hillary simply cannot match.
Bashing Obama for plagiarizing Deval Patrick? That negativism backfired. Go after Michelle Obama’s incredible anti-American speech? You must be kidding. The women are coming ’round to Obama. Going super-negative over the next two weeks? It’ll kill her. Obama will beat her by 35 points instead of twenty. Lift the sanctions on Michigan and Florida? It’s an Obama trump card. Bribe or rent the super-delegates? Make my day, Obama is thinking.
Hillary’s best bet to preserve her career as a professional politician? Pull back significantly in Texas and Ohio, as a prelude to withdrawal. Bill will say no, ’cause his career is even deader than hers. But Hillary has more class than he does. She still has some vague sense of reality, of the difference between right and wrong, even if he does not.
Strong words, and hard to argue with - but I’m not so sure that Hillary will back out. It is now or never for her, and while a wise person would start to back out and make plans for a lifetime in the Senate, eventually becoming a major power in that body, Hillary doesn’t entirely strike me as a wise person. Kudlow, I think, gives her too much credit - but, of course, I could be wrong. We’ll see over the next two weeks.
20 comments February 20th, 2008
