Wow, I agree with CNN.
It all started over the weekend when two former H-Clinton advisors announced that she’d be running again and, this time, she’d be the perfect fit for voters. In case there was any doubt, the headline was “Hillary Will Run Again.” The opening paragraph tries to sell us on a new Hillary, and it’s so awkward to read.
Get ready for Hillary Clinton 4.0. More than 30 years in the making, this new version of Mrs. Clinton, when she runs for president in 2020, will come full circle—back to the universal-health-care-promoting progressive firebrand of 1994. True to her name, Mrs. Clinton will fight this out until the last dog dies. She won’t let a little thing like two stunning defeats stand in the way of her claim to the White House.
The last dog is dead, ok? Please accept it. Even CNN agrees with me. Editor-at-large Chris Cillizza responded with “Here’s why Hillary Clinton 4.0 is a terrible idea.” Well, then.
Here’s the crux of Cillizza’s argument:
The 2016 race was still a VERY winnable one for Clinton — and one that most experts, polls and people expected her to win, and win easily.
And then she lost.The roots of that defeat are pretty obvious in retrospect. People didn’t like Trump. But they didn’t like Clinton any better. People didn’t trust Trump or think he was honest. But they felt the exact same way about Clinton.In the end, people voted for Trump — and, yes, Clinton won the popular vote by almost 3 million — because they wanted RADICAL change. And he was that change. Clinton was, well, more of the same.Here’s a number that tells the story of that election: Almost 4 in 10 voters said that the most important thing about a candidate for them was that he or she could bring about needed change in the country. Trump got 82% of the vote among that group. Clinton got 14%.Now, ask yourself this: What’s changed? I’ll answer that one for you: Not a hell of a lot.
In fact, Cillizza says, she is polling worse. He concludes:
The third time is rarely the charm in presidential politics. Especially when you’re talking about a candidate as divisive as Hillary Clinton.
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