Ready or Not for Hillary

So it turns out that Hillary Clinton will be running for president, after all. It was all over the news on Sunday after she “tweeted” her announcement, which is apparently the high-tech way that hats are flung into rings these days, otherwise we might not have noticed.

Our annual involvement in an amateur theatrical production has lately brought us in daily contact with Democrats, our frequent meetings to discuss foreign policy with a gray pony-tailed neo-con pal at a local hipster joint provide plenty of opportunities for eavesdropping on Democratic discussions, we always peruse the “alternative” publications on offer there, our occasional appearances on the peripheries of the local art and music scenes routinely expose us to the latest in Democratic opinions, and of course of our infrequent visits to our Facebook are chockfull of Democratic venting, yet we rarely hear any mention of Clinton. Perhaps it’s because Kansas Democrats are too preoccupied with their red-hot hatred of our robustly Republican Governor and Secretary of State and Legislature to bother with their party’s presidential prospects, but the local Democrats’ lack of enthusiasm about Clinton is glaringly conspicuous. After the state’s mid-term elections last November one of our Facebook friends who long ago re-located to Maine, where even the Republicans are Democrats, tried to console her shell-schocked Democrat friends back home that the Republicans’ sweep would only make Clinton’s win in ’16 all the more satisfying, but that’s the only time we can recall any Democrat of our acquaintance even bringing up the name.

The press still regards Clinton as news, and is obliged to write countless column inches about her candidacy, but even there we can’t help noticing a distinct weariness with the topic. There’s lately been more buzz about that Martin O’Malley fellow, who was governor of Maryland or some other small eastern state that was reliably Democrat until he left office, but that buzz is the only reason we’ve heard of him, and we’d wager that at this early point in the campaign not one in ten of our Democrat friends and acquaintances have the slightest idea who he is, and except for some hopeful speculation about Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Vermont’s openly socialist Rep. Bernie Sanders getting in the race, which no Democrats we know are talking about, that seems to be the desultory state of the Democrat nominating process. Given such limited options, it’s no wonder our Democrat friends and acquaintances prefer to talk about that damned Governor and Secretary of State and Legislature we’ve got here in Kansas.

All of them will eventually line up behind whatever candidate the Democrats choose, and will couch their arguments mostly in opposition to the extremist right-wing conservatism of whatever the candidate Republicans choose, but at this point it’s hard to imagine they’ll have any of the religious fervor that informed their support of their messianic candidate of ’08  or even the self-righteous indignation toward the other side that dragged their all-too-human candidate across the finish line in ’12. They’ll be up against a Republican party which is talking a great deal about Clinton and even O’Malley and the other rumored possibilities, and with an increasingly red-hot hatred of their own, and the enthusiasm gap favors the GOP. Everyone in a wide and deep Republican field has such enthusiastic supporters that the intra-party sniping has already begun, much to the delight of the Democratic press, but we can readily imagine them all lining up behind the eventual nominee once the Democrats’ choice has been made.

Being temperamentally Republican we are inclined to gloominess, but at this point the race seems seems tantalizingly winnable despite the press and the seemingly permanent blueness of some populous states and the ever-present gullibility of the American public. Whatever candidate winds up winning the Republican nomination could still blow it, but even the Democrats don’t seem excited about that possibility, and we suspect they’d prefer four years of hating the incumbent to the difficult task of defending her..

— Bud Norman