Hillary's Delusional Dilemma

Hillary’s Delusional Dilemma
The View from the Middle

It’s not difficult to imagine Bill and Hillary Clinton’s aspirations as a young couple at Yale and then in Northwest Arkansas. They were both very smart and driven young people. I’m not sure if the Presidency for both was a goal when they first met, but I can easily imagine that they started thinking in those terms after Bill became Arkansas’ youngest Governor at age 33.

It was clear that Bill was a natural politician. I’ve heard testimony from people on both sides of the political aisle about Bill’s power to charm. He could enter a room of people divided on an issue and somehow leave with both sides believing he supported their positions. Many argue that this was a skill Bill picked up as he grew up in Arkansas. No matter where and how he developed this skill, many would argue that Bill (Slick Willie) was a natural born persuader and maybe even a master manipulator. Hillary, while intelligent and ambitious did not acquire those same skills.

The plan, I’m sure, was to ride Bill’s extraordinary talent to the Whitehouse and then, given a respectable mourning period, Hillary would ride Bill’s popularity to the highest office in the land also. She was smart, capable and even dynamic. Certainly, this plan couldn’t fail. But there was a flaw in the plan that Hillary could not grasp back then and still cannot accept even today. Hillary is just not likeable.

In 2008, the grieving period had expired, the economy was in a freefall and everyone knew that whoever won the Democratic nomination was going to win the Presidency. The plan was coming to fruition. It was Hillary’s turn to run the country and go down as the first female President and to cement the Clinton legacy into the very foundation of the Democrat Party. But then came the young, charming Barack Obama to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the Clinton machine.

Hillary had two choices. She could accept this set back as a learning experience and take notes from both Bill and Barack, or she could become angry and bitter. It is my opinion that this is where she took that dark turn and diminished her likeability to a new low level. If this defeat by Barack Obama wasn’t enough, can you imagine what her loss in 2016 did to her psyche.

This move to the dark side showed up big time in 2016. Hillary should have recognized that as much as many people disliked Trump, her approval ratings were equally low. In fact, the three most often used descriptors of Hillary Clinton were, “liar, dishonest and untrustworthy”. Instead of putting on the “charm offensive” as Bill would have surely done, she decided to insult those people who dared question her integrity and put them in her “basket of deplorables”. She called them homophobes, xenophobes, Islamophobes, misogynists, bigots and racists. Not exactly a tactic from Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.

Despite all of these tactical blunders, everyone, including Trump, believed that Hillary was going to win the 2016 Presidential general election. Every poll gave her huge leads and there was a 90%+ agreement that she would win, but she didn’t. She didn’t listen to her most astute political partner and husband and failed to shore up her “rust belt” wall to victory. Trump didn’t outspend Hillary, he simply out hustled her and she made huge tactical and even strategic mistakes, and this defeat seems to have pushed Hillary into a whole new state of delusion.

The woman who suggested that Trump would not accept the results of the election, has clearly not been able to accept them herself. Her book, What Happened, seemed to blame everyone (the Russians, James Comey, Wikileaks) but herself, but recently her delusion seems to have become even deeper. In an interview with PBS Hillary actually said that, “she could beat him (Trump) again” if she were the nominee in 2020. “Beat him again”? Really? That is the absolute definition of “delusional”.

And now she is attacking Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic candidate for President from Hawaii, saying that she is a Russian asset with zero evidence. This is a smear job that has no place in American politics. While I disagree with Tulsi Gabbard on many ideological positions, she did serve in our military in a combat zone in Iraq and was also deployed to Kuwait in 2008 and 2009. I thank her for her service, and so should Hillary.

It is time for Hillary to retire from politics. Her pipedream of becoming the Democrat Party’s nominee for President in 2020 is just that. It is a fantasy. It is a delusion, and the longer she stays in the political public eye, the more she hurts the Democrat Party, the American people and the Clinton legacy. Hillary, you don’t have to go home and bake cookies, although that might not be a bad idea right now, but you should embrace a cause, like the wellbeing of the children of the United States, and leave the political scene altogether.