Hillary's Debut Was Terrible . . . but It Doesn't Matter
Let's get the bad news out of the way first. If Hillary Clinton did nothing between now and Election Day . . . no interviews, no public appearances, refused to show up to any debates, taped no commercials or videos, and just sat in her house in Chappaqua for the next 20 months . . . she would still do pretty well. In fact, she might avoid some big mistakes! That's the more extreme version of her (small-c) conservative, risk-averse, ball-control-offense strategy to come. For perspective, in 2014, Republicans demolished Democrats in the House races. (This is a nice measurement because every district in America holds a House race, while only some states were holding Senate or gubernatorial races.) The Republicans won, 52 percent to 45 percent. So in a year where just about everything possible went wrong for Democrats, they finished with 45 percent. Mitt Romney's 47 percent comment had a kernel of truth about the fairly high floor for a Democratic candidate. What, you think a Hillary no-show campaign would get derailed by Martin O'Malley? Jim Webb? Lincoln Chafee, who insisted yesterday her foreign policy is too "Bush-like"? Come on. These guys aspire to "Seven Dwarf" status. At this point, they're not even speed bumps. Absent-Hillary would probably still carry California, New York, Illinois, most of the West Coast, and New England. That's about 183 electoral votes right there. Credit the Democrats; they've built a political machine where the quality of the candidate isn't really a factor. Their base is going to show up and vote, no matter what. The vast majority of the disappointed Hillary voters of 2008 turned out to vote for Barack Obama. Thus, yesterday's belly flop of a campaign announcement doesn't really matter that much for her. She didn't need a huge rally with thunderous applause. She didn't need the dramatic live television coverage. A Tweet and video sufficed. (You know what was good about the video? Sure, it was a little heavy-handed, but it was about the voters, not her. "When families are strong, America is strong," is not a bad tagline.) Here's the good news: Hillary Clinton is going to be a pretty bad candidate. The notion that she, with her $400,000 speeches to Goldman Sachs, is going to be the "champion" for "everyday Americans" (as opposed to part-time Americans?) against the people at the top is ludicrous. She won't be able to hide from the press, and she tends to answer questions terribly, as we saw in her press conference about the e-mails. She is indeed a congenital liar, and a bad one. She'll have at least one more big "sniper fire in the Balkans" style blowup in the next six months, count on it. But by the end of the year, the Democratic base and the press -- and perhaps I repeat myself -- will have persuaded themselves that she is whatever the moment requires. They'll convince themselves that she's "lunch-pail Hillary" as a writer for The New Yorker insisted. If Russia and Ukraine are blowing up, they'll convince themselves that Madam Reset Button will be the right choice to face down Putin. If the Middle East is blowing up, they'll convince themselves that the architect of our intervention in Libya can secure our interests and bring peace to the region. If there's another VA- or Healthcare.gov-level failure of the federal government, they'll convince themselves that Mrs. "What difference, at this point, does it make?" is the one to restore accountably. If it's a cyber-attack, they'll believe that the right choice to handle future threats like this is the woman who thinks Secret Service agents standing next to a server stop intrusions. The good news is that she's not going to be a good candidate. The bad news is it's not clear she needs to be one in order to win. The 2015 NRA Convention, in Review In case you missed any of Friday and this weekend's coverage of the NRA weekend, here's Charlie Cooke's assessment of Marco Rubio (he's a fan), Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker. Then there's my coverage of the speeches from Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. The event, always fun to attend, is a good indicator of the giant chasm that separates the culture of the New York-Washington press corps from the culture of Red America: If you're a particular kind of snot-nosed urban progressive, the NRA Convention — this year held in the country-music capital of the world, Nashville — is the perfect opportunity for smug eye-rolling, relished disdain, and incredulous scoffing that people actually live and think like this in the year 2015. The event offers a buffet table of everything the progressive Left scorns and abhors. Start with kids and teens picking up inoperative pistols and rifles in the "nine acres of guns and gear" in the exhibit hall. They're surrounded by more than 70,000 attendees, many clad in American-flag gear, Harley Davidson T-shirts, cowboy boots, cowboy hats, and bolo ties. They browse the wares and move on to conference seminars like "Survival Mindset: Are You Prepared?" and "Sheepdogs! The Bulletproof Mind for the Armed Citizen." The Leadership Forum began with the national anthem, an invocation from Ollie North that mentioned Jesus Christ, and the Pledge of Allegiance. Before the event, Toby Keith's "American Soldier" and the Charlie Daniels Band's "Let Freedom Ring" blared from the loudspeakers above enormous banners declaring, "If they can ban one, they can ban them all." It's a gathering for saints and sinners, with the prayer breakfast inside and a street preacher and two convention attendees arguing about the King James Bible outside. But the convention's sights also include booth babes and women in tight gold dresses, and at night the attendees move on to the bars, where the wait-staff necklines are low, the shorts are short, and the cowgirl boots are high. Everyone dines on gobs of barbecued pork piled high on plates and washes it down with large sodas and hard whiskey. It's everything Michael Bloomberg, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and hardline feminists hold in contempt in one place. In the GOP primary, Republican candidates are attempting to win votes from an American subculture that the press corps either misunderstands or completely disdains. What Can We Ask of 'Able-Bodied Adults Without Minor Dependents'? The New York Times suits up for another "heartless, cruel Republican governors slash food stamps" story, but once again when you read to the end of the story, the picture painted in those opening paragraphs doesn't seem so dire. Last year, the administration of Gov. Paul R. LePage, a Republican, decided to reimpose a three-month limit (out of every three-year period) on food stamps for a group often known as Abawds — able-bodied adults without minor dependents — unless they work 20 hours per week, take state job-training courses or volunteer for about six hours per week. Maine, like other states, makes some exceptions. The number of Abawds receiving food stamps in Maine has dropped nearly 80 percent since the rule kicked in, to 2,530 from about 12,000. This time limit is an old one, written into the 1996 federal welfare law. But, during the recession, most states took advantage of a provision that allows them to waive it when unemployment is persistently high, which meant poor adults could stay on the program regardless of their work status. Maine is one of eight states that qualified for waivers in 2015 but decided to use them only in parts of the state or not at all. And, as the economy improves, more states will cease to qualify for the waivers, even if they want them. The Agriculture Department estimates that 23 states will cease to qualify for statewide waivers in the 2016 fiscal year. "It means life gets tougher for those childless adults who face barriers already getting back into work," said Ed Bolen, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. See that last little bit at the bottom? Volunteer for about six hours a week. Six hours! That's less than an hour a day! And remember, the people we're talking about don't have kids and don't have jobs. And remember, this is after the first three months on the program. So the state of Maine is saying, "If you sign up for food stamps, we will give them for you for three months with no requirements; after that, you have to work 20 hours per week, take state job-training courses, or volunteer for about six hours per week." How is that a draconian, unfair, or insufficiently sympathetic rule? Don't Let Tax Season Kill You! Our complicated, burdensome tax code is killing us. Taxes don't just tempt many Americans to cheat. They may also kill us. A 2012 study by Donald Redelmeier and Christopher Yarnell of the University of Toronto's Sunnybrook Research Institute, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that over the past 30 years, fatal road crashes increased by about 6 % on April 15 compared with other days. The authors chalk this up to stress. They also show that this increase doesn't hold for people at retirement age (who, presumably, aren't that stressed about taxes), has increased over time (suggesting we've been under more stress as U.S. taxes have grown more complex) and is particularly large for those on the West Coast (where state taxes are particularly high). ADDENDA: Oh, come on. Come on! Although he's promised to decide on a White House run in just a few weeks, Dr. Ben Carson will be picking up paychecks for speaking gigs well into next fall. A spokesman for Carson's presidential exploratory committee confirmed to National Review that the possible Republican candidate's schedule includes paid speaking engagements running into the autumn of 2015 — many months after he's expected to declare his official candidacy. By maintaining these commitments, the famous-neurosurgeon-turned-GOP-hopeful would break with long-standing practice discouraging presidential candidates from collecting cash at the podium. Any gigs with Mannatech during that time? | 
Comments
Post a Comment