when obama is nominated, hillary goes on to what?
by Tom Carey
Published: April 26, 2008
Despite Hillary Clinton’s belief that she has a real chance to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, most watchers of politics still hold that Obama is the frontrunner and it’s only a matter of time before Candidate Barack Obama becomes Nominee Barack Obama. Of course, after Pennsylvania the quest for the nomination goes on but we all know that eventually it will end; one person will win and one will lose. One will go on to battle John McCain in the general election and one will not. With all indications that it will be Barack Obama advancing and not his opponent, what is Hillary Clinton’s future after this Democratic civil war?
When Clinton entered this race, she was a respected senator from New York who had her hands in many of the great senatorial battles between the Democrats in the upper chamber and the Bush White House. Her future in the Senate was bright, but after a bruising nomination battle is this still true?
Before beginning her campaign for president, Clinton was already one of the most polarizing figures on the national stage and despite the high esteem in which many Americans held her husband, she garnered fairly high levels of disapproval. Presently, Clinton is seen as holding up the nominating process and barely hanging on; in many ways she is blocking the ascendance of the Obama movement, not the best way to improve your political future as a loser in the marathon race for the nomination.
When Hillary Clinton finally sees that she in fact cannot be the party’s nominee, what will she do with herself? Return to the Senate of course, but to what effect? Prior to running for president, there’s no doubt that she would have been probably leading anyone’s short list to become the next Senate majority leader. It would be a first for a female senator and clearly would have put her name in the books.
Yet, after all the bruised egos of this campaign, it seems implausible that Clinton would touch any position like this. Once Obama is nominated, the party will have made a conscious decision to shift its attitudes and plans away from the 90s and, much to Bill and Hillary’s chagrin, away from the Clinton name. This may be one aspect of this battle that has gone widely unnoticed: when Obama is nominated, the name Clinton becomes a has-been in Democratic politics.
My best guess is that Hillary will return to the Senate, but with poor prospects to wield the real kind of power she wants. She will not be majority leader and most certainly the spotlight will shift away from her (as it does most of candidates who are unsuccessful in presidential politics). In some sense, Hillary’s failure to see that she could actually lose to Barack Obama and be left high and dry may end up being the most poorly calculated (yes, this is Hillary Clinton I’m talking about) decision of her career.
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(6)
April 27th, 2008 at 9:34 am
As a NY resident, I’d appreciate if HRC got back to working for the state in the Senate. Given that she repeatedly denied she was running for POTUS (though who could actually believe her) and used NYS — where she’d never lived before her run for the Sentate — as a launch pad for her own political ambitions, I don’t foresee her having as easy a time running for re-election next time around. If McCain pulls out a win in Nov., I foresee HRC running again in 2012 (and hopefully resigning from her Senate seat.) When Obama wins, I foresee her resigning or serving in his Cabinet. Though, if Bill’s repeated gaffes are just the first signs of Alzheimers or his heart’s health gets worse, I see HRC pulling a Sandra Day O’Connor and retiring to care for Bill before remerging in the political scene as a Democratic party senior leader with a single-issue focus (i.e., health care) a la Al Gore or Jimmy Carter. She needs to go away for a while before that can happen. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
April 29th, 2008 at 12:55 am
There’s no way HRC takes plays second fiddle to Barack. Thank goodness her pride won’t allow it. We’ll get a temporary reprieve from her ambition, but she’ll be back.