Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton reportedly has the walking pneumonia, and has exhibited symptoms of the boogie-woogie flu, which is leading to all sorts of speculation that she might be replaced at that top of her party’s ticket. The speculating isn’t just occurring in the comments sections of the more conspiracy-minded corners of the new media that have been gleefully predicting Clinton’s imminent demise for months now, but also at the old school over-the-air television networks and in the most respectable of the ancien regime ink-on-paper outlets.
We’ll not indulge any guesses about Clinton’s physical condition, as our medical expertise is pretty much limited to our Pop’s all-purpose prescription to put some merthiolate on it, but we’ve been studying both politics and the press long enough to surmise that her campaign might well be in critical condition. Her walking pneumonia was reportedly diagnosed last Friday, the same day the latest round of polls that showed her tenuous lead over the widely reviled Republican nominee slipping further into the margin of error, on Saturday she regaled a homosexual rights group’s fundraiser with her now-infamous remarks about the racist and sexist and homophobic and Islamophobic and “you name it” being a “basket of deplorables” who comprised a full half of Trump’s support, while on Sunday the polite press was still reluctantly reporting the fallout from that gaffe when she had another videotaped moment of weakness that was blamed on her walking pneumonia, which even the most polite press had to admit her walking pneumonia should have been to revealed the public last Friday. By Monday there was chatter about who might replace her, from one end of the media to the other, and it didn’t seem at all far-fetched.
We’ve also been studying politics and the press long enough to allow for the possibility that Clinton will survive these headlines, just as she and her philandering “Comeback Kid” of a husband have survived so many others, and even in this crazy election year we’d guess it’s still a probability that candidate nominated at the convention will be the nominee on election. The “deplorables” comments will likely be treated more like Democratic nominee’s “bitter clingers” remarks in ’08, which somehow didn’t derail his candidacy, than Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s asides about the government-dependent “47 percent,” which seems to have played a role in his demise. The public might yet decide they prefer a comatose Clinton to either a cognizant Trump or or a cognizant Clinton, too, in which case we could hardly blame it.
Still, one can’t resist the fun of speculating about who might be the nominee should the Democratic coaches decide to send a replacement in from the sidelines. The sports talk show-like chatter on all the political talk shows includes such predictable choices as the ticket’s vice-presidential nominee, former Virginia Senator and Gov. Tim Kaine, the longtime Delaware Senator and sitting Vice President Joe Biden, the self-described socialist and primary runner-up Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the far-left darling of the party back when the Democratic race began with such high hopes and someone who could still realize the Democrats’ long-awaited dream of a First Woman President.
Each of whom, of course, would have his or her own problems. Kaine has an impeccably leftist voting record and a glaring lack of charisma. Biden has been an inconsequential vice president with a noticeably creepy way around young girls for the past eight years or so, and still carries all the plagiarism and hair plug scandals that sank his previous attempts at the top job. Sanders is still a self-described socialist, and even in such crazy election year as this we’d prefer to think that won’t play well with a general electorate. Warren is also further left of center than Clinton, not to mention the obviously white woman’s easily ridiculed claims to an Indian. Pull any other name out of a Democratic hat, and they’ll almost certainly raise similar concerns.
Any name you might pull out of a Democratic hat, on the other hand, wouldn’t be weighed down by so much baggage as Clinton has brought along in her sputtering campaign. Clinton and her philandering “Comeback Kid” of a husband have been generating juicy scandals since their Arkansas days back in the ’80s, and with less than a couple of months left until election day it’s hard to imagine that the pro-Trump media, such as they are, could whip up the same level of indignation and distrust against anyone who has been at least conscientious enough to remain so little-known. More importantly, almost any of them could credibly claim that their political scandals and moral shortcomings can’t compare with those of a thrice-married-to-a-naked-model and four-times- bankrupt casino-and-strip joint-and-reality-show mogul who mocks the handicapped and disparages American prisoners of war and endlessly praises Vladimir Putin and contributes to Clinton’s campaigns and promises the potential students at his “university” that he “personally handpicks” all the professors, to name just a few of the political scandals and moral shortcomings that have caused the Republican nominee to be regarded with such indignation and distrust that he’s still slightly behind even Clinton in the average of the polls.
There’s still the matter of political philosophies and voting records, but the Republican nominee doesn’t seem to have any of either, and by now the general public seems to have also lost interest all that bosh in any case. If we ever somehow found ourselves running the Democratic party with the sole concern of winning an election we would be yank Clinton on whatever handy pretext presented itself and insert some dully scandal-free yet seemingly physically fit sort of more-or-less centrist, if the party still has any on hand, but we’ve followed politics long enough to bet that won’t happen. Given the chance to run the Republican Party we’d quickly yank Trump for almost any old name you might pull out of a hat, too, but at this glum point that’s also not worth speculating about.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 