{"id":3804,"date":"2015-05-03T21:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T18:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/?p=3804"},"modified":"2017-11-14T21:27:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:27:50","slug":"hills-bills-and-spills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/hills-bills-and-spills\/","title":{"rendered":"Hills, Bills and spills"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last Sunday, Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. The affair was low key relying on Twitter, Facebook and social media where a video was posted.\u00a0 The slogan \u201cReady for Hillary\u201d is the current mantra along with \u201cpeace, progress and prosperity.\u201d\u00a0 In \u201908 it was \u201cin for the win,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cready for change, ready to lead\u201d and then a batch of other lesser slogans.<\/p>\n

But slogans will not win the next presidential election.\u00a0 The profoundly crucial question is what will it take to become the next president?\u00a0 Cynics, realists and professional politicians have a simple answer:\u00a0 270 electoral votes.\u00a0 As most people may not know, the U.S. still elect presidents in the Electoral College not by popular vote, a constitutional fact that cost Al Gore the presidency in 2000.<\/p>\n

Hillary therefore must have a two-pronged strategic approach.\u00a0 First, she must win the nomination.\u00a0 Second, she must win the Electoral College.\u00a0 For the moment, the Democratic field is rather empty.\u00a0 It was too in 2007 until a junior senator from Illinois emerged and Barack Obama surprised and outwitted his much-favored opponent Hillary.\u00a0 No Barack Obama is in view.\u00a0 Still, Hillary must have the ability to run a competent campaign, something she did not do in 2008.<\/p>\n

Regarding the general election, historically Democrats can rely on about 242 electoral votes.\u00a0 Twenty-eight more votes are needed\u2014 far less than for Republicans.\u00a0 As minorities grow in number and women outnumber men, Hillary has electoral base advantages.<\/p>\n

Yet, the vital issues for Hillary are not strategic.\u00a0 Political, personal and policy issues will dominate her success or failure.\u00a0 Each is interconnected.<\/p>\n

Republicans (and Democratic contenders) will attack Hillary on all three.\u00a0 Politically, Hillary will be savaged over a lack of accomplishments.\u00a0 The opposition will claim that as First Lady in 1993, she led the train wreck over reforming health care that later turned into Obama care.\u00a0 They will ask what she did of note in the Senate and challenge her to name one significant bill with her name on it.<\/p>\n

As Secretary of State, her famous \u201creset policy\u201d with Russia including the mistranslation of the phrase and the long list of alleged failures of the Obama administration will provide ample grounds for attack.\u00a0 If Republicans raise Benghazi to prove her culpability in contributing to the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and his bodyguards, that could easily backfire as the evidence and facts contradict that allegation.\u00a0 However the missing private e-mails will be tempting targets.<\/p>\n

Personally, the allegations surrounding Bill Clinton\u2019s administration from Whitewater to Monica Lewinski will be fair game especially Hillary\u2019s penchant for secrecy.\u00a0 The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) with charges of taking money from unsavory foreign sources and countries will be raised even though the accounting rules may be the culprit.\u00a0 Several foreign states contributed money on a shared basis to a third party not technically to CGI, not that that matters. And how Bill will behave in the campaign is the wildest card of all.<\/p>\n

The one place where Republicans can hit hardest is legitimate if common sense and pragmatism override emotion and dislike of the Clintons.\u00a0 Policy is her weakest suit.\u00a0 Here Hillary faces an exquisite paradox.\u00a0 She was part of the Obama administration.\u00a0 Yet, she must distance herself without rejecting the policies of this administration.<\/p>\n

But what are her economic, social, domestic, foreign, defense and national security policies?\u00a0 How do they differ from Obama\u2019s and, if they do, why did she not raise them when in office?\u00a0 Policy is where Hillary is most vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Of course, the question of dynastic rule comes into play.\u00a0 Twelve or sixteen years of Clintons may not be tolerable to many Americans.\u00a0 And if Jeb Bush wins the Republican nomination, one can bet on an embarrassingly low voter turnout.\u00a0 The effects on the election are imponderables.<\/p>\n

History isn\u2019t helpful either.\u00a0 After Ronald Reagan\u2019s two terms in office, George H. W. Bush won giving Republicans three consecutive terms.\u00a0 Were it not for Ross Perot, Bush would have been re-elected and Bill and Hillary might have been history after 1992. In 2008, Senator John McCain lost to Barrack Obama in largest part because of the economic meltdown and George W. Bush\u2019s failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during his two terms as president.<\/p>\n

About 2016, if Hillary wins the nomination, this could be the nastiest election in a very long time.\u00a0 Republicans will savage the nominee. And, success and failure will be measured in terms of \u201cHills, Bills and spills,\u201d meaning stay tuned for the fireworks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Sunday, Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. The affair was low key relying on Twitter, Facebook and social media where a video was posted.\u00a0 The slogan \u201cReady for Hillary\u201d is the current mantra along with \u201cpeace, progress and prosperity.\u201d\u00a0 In \u201908 it was \u201cin for the win,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cready for change, ready to lead\u201d and then a batch of other lesser slogans. But slogans will not win the next presidential election.\u00a0 The profoundly crucial question is what will it take to become the next president?\u00a0 Cynics, realists and professional politicians have a simple answer:\u00a0 270 electoral votes.\u00a0 As most people may not know, the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,65,76,102,62,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas","category-blog-en","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-issues","category-regions","category-studies-and-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3813,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions\/3813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}