OPINION:
For Hillary Clinton, Halloween week was the perfect time to muse about maybe — just maybe — running for president again in 2020.
The two-time loser really is The Undead, the candidate who just won’t go away. America has twice driven a stake through her heart AND shot her with a silver bullet, and up she pops, ready to gorge on human flesh again. It’s “Hillaween, Part 47.”
When Hillary ran for president the first time, Americans decided they’d rather have a first-term senator and former “community organizer” in the White House. The second time she ran, Americans instead picked an egotistical narcissist who starred on a reality TV show and had no political experience at all.
But Hillary says she might just want to run again. Well, not so much run as simply be president. During an event over the weekend, Mrs. Clinton was asked, “Do you want to run again?”
“No, no,” Mrs. Clinton replied, prompting laughter. But, like a lot of things Hillary says, it wasn’t true. She added: “I’d like to be president.”
Mrs. Clinton then launched into what amounted to a campaign speech, saying “there’s going to be so much work to be done” if a Democrat can win in 2020. “The work would be work that I feel very well prepared for having been in the Senate for eight years, having been a diplomat in the State Department,” she said.
But like all politicians, she refused to say if she’s in. “I’m not even going to even think about it until we get through this Nov. 6 election about what’s going to happen after that,” Mrs. Clinton said.
This time around, though, her fellow Democrats are not too jazzed about Hillary Clinton on the ticket yet again.
Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton crony who wants to run for president himself in 2020, poo-pooed the idea. “Listen, I think it’s hard for Hillary. She got 3 million more votes than Donald Trump did in the last presidential election. But I feel confident in saying I think Hillary is never going to be on the ballot again, I think she is done running for elected office. She’s going to be out helping candidates. But I feel very confident in saying she’s not going to run for president.”
Former Howard Dean campaign guru Joe Trippi also doesn’t see it, telling The Washington Examiner, “I don’t think she is seriously thinking about it.”
An unnamed “top strategist” also told the paper: “Look, I am a great admirer of Hillary but I don’t think that would be a good idea. I think that Donald Trump was more successful in defining her than she was defining herself.”
And here’s the thing: Democrats have a history of rejecting their nominees who lose. Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry — none of them returned for another presidential bid, not even the latter two, who lost the Electoral College much less decisively than Hillary did.
She should be done for good. Still, people keep pushing her.
“It’s curious why Hillary Clinton’s name isn’t in the mix — either conversationally or in formal polling — as a 2020 candidate,” said Philippe Reines, one of her longtime aides. “She’s younger than Donald Trump by a year. She’s younger than Joe Biden by four years. Is it that she’s run before? This would be Bernie Sanders’s second time, and Biden’s third time. Is it lack of support? She had 65 million people vote for her.”
The sad truth is that Hillary, more than anything, just can’t contemplate a life in which the media isn’t clamoring for her opinion. But that day is coming, sooner rather than later. Her fellow Democrats are saying, “Look, you had your chance — twice — so off you go.”
Hillary won’t listen, of course, so there’s more humiliation in her future. Then again, by now, she must be used to it.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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