OPINION:
You don’t need to be in New York City to notice the Hillary Clown Car is rolling along at full speed. It would, however, be dangerous to underestimate Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ likely nominee for the 2016 presidential contest, but as I’ve noted several times on Fox News, we are reminded time and again how this woman lost to an unknown, inexperienced lawyer from Chicago in 2008.
Her loss wasn’t because Barack Obama was a genius campaigner. It wasn’t because he outshined her on the issues. It certainly wasn’t because he had more experience. Mrs. Clinton lost the 2008 nomination because she’s her own worst enemy.
Her remarkable decision to set up her own email server is well known. And there’s also the refusal to talk with the press like a normal person. It does seem clear Mrs. Clinton is running as the incumbent, which makes sense when you’re also able to imagine yourself enduring a corkscrew landing in Bosnia.
The piles of cash from foreign governments that weren’t reported properly to the Internal Revenue Service. Her husband’s piles of cash for speaking engagements. Her campaign re-launch on Roosevelt Island, where the media weren’t allowed to speak with the crowd, and where her staff instituted what they called “airport-style security.” At first I wondered if that meant Bill Clinton would be in charge of patting everyone down. But no, they were forbidding, among other things, posters, signs, animals and bullhorns.
The crowd, while well managed, looked more like an event happening in Palm Springs. It was obvious Mrs. Clinton isn’t re-creating the Obama coalition.
Even more recently, speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco, Hillary blasted “white privilege” and racism in the United States. Shifra, a writer at my blog TammyBruce.com, noted about the event, “Hillary told the audience that “for a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear,” writes Shifra. “She also pointed a finger at white Americans ’who don’t want those people’ in their neighborhoods. It looks like Hillary knows what she is talking about. Since her neighborhood, Chappaqua, N.Y., is only 1.9 percent black.”
Soon after those remarks about white privilege, and in the wake of the Charleston church massacre, Mrs. Clinton then flew to St. Louis in a private jet, for a $2,700 per-person fundraiser at the home of an Anheuser-Busch heiress.
But first, in nearby Ferguson, Hillary spoke to a largely black audience. The locals were not impressed. The Daily Mail reports, “In the neighborhood where [Michael] Brown died in August 2014, his longtime friend Robert Nettles told DailyMail.com that Clinton’s brief visit to the scarred town is ’just a little late… . Where you been, Hillary?’ Nettles asked Tuesday afternoon. ’It’s been ten months, girl!’
“Christopher, a 24-year-old man who asked DailyMail.com not to print his last name, said, ’It just ain’t enough for someone to drop into the community when it’s time to collect money and votes.’ LaKeisha Jones, a thirty-something single mother, agreed. ’That goes for all of them. If you ain’t been with us when it matters, don’t think we gonna be with you when it’s important to you,’ ” reported the Daily Mail.
Perhaps the Democrats should stop taking some people for granted.
These and so many more unforced errors, and illustrations of the Clintons’ selfish, calculated and cynical view of the world are costing her dearly in the polls.
In a CNN/WMUR poll last Thursday, Mrs. Clinton is now tied in New Hampshire with self-described Socialist Bernie Sanders. This would explain her sharp left turn at a point when she should be free to woo independent voters. Instead, she’s alienating them as she scrambles to shore up her increasingly unimpressed base.
While most analysts keep insisting Mrs. Clinton will be the Democrats’ 2016 nominee, she’s behaving as though she’s not so sure. A representative recently stated on CNN that people shouldn’t be surprised Mr. Sanders is doing well in New Hampshire. She also went on the say it’s possible Hillary won’t win New Hampshire or Iowa. Really?
When I’m debating a liberal on television about Mrs. Clinton and the scandal du jour, the sycophant usually explains with a certain smug assurance, that it’s not a scandal, will be gone in a few days and no one will remember. The dismissal is usually a version of the “It’s all a right-wing conspiracy” nonsense. The problem for Democrats and both the Clintons is that there is always a new scandal, controversy or screw-up right around the corner.
And true to form, just as the sun sets and rises, the latest problem for Mrs. Clinton is the State Department revealing that it “cannot locate 15 work-related emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server released this week by the committee probing the 2012 Benghazi attacks — indicating she never turned them over, in a revelation the committee chairman described as ’significant and troubling,’ ” according to Fox News.
This, of course, reminds people of the personal email server, and Mrs. Clinton’s assurances to everyone she had turned everything over to the State Department, which now appears to be untrue.
At this point, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is more like a Keystone Kops re-enactment. She, in fact, may not be afraid so much of Bernie Sanders. She may be concerned about someone like Secretary of State John Kerry jumping into the race. And she should be.
• Tammy Bruce is a radio talk show host.
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