Call me an optimist? Sure.  It’s a fair cop.  Still, here comes the war: “Minutes after [Martin] O’Malley’s appearance on “This Week,” former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, a top adviser to the Ready for Hillary PAC, said on the same program, “Martin O’Malley, he’s a very nice guy, and I was thinking he might make a nice member of a President Clinton administration, so he better watch it.””  Jennifer Granholm, for those of you who don’t remember, was the person that liberals used to get wistful about: she’s a naturalized citizen – and thus ineligible to become President.  Well, to be honest about it Granholm would have been ineligible to become President anyway, given that she drove the state of Michigan into the ground so hard that it left an impact crater; but that is perhaps incidental to my point.

Moving along: streiff  takes O’Malley seriously as both a challenger to Hillary, and as a candidate for President.  I share his opinion on the first, but not the second; the pathway for a Democratic victory in 2016 is through the difficult trick of simultaneously embracing Clintonism and rejecting Obamaism while at the same time being publicly seen to embrace Obamaism and reject Clintonism. It’s a devil of a problem, really. Democratic primary voters will be made up of bitter progressives who want to be told pretty lies about how they’re not the ones who are fringe, really, and African-American voters who want proper deference shown to Barack Obama.  That’s enough of a combined voting bloc to get the nomination.  Alas for the Democrats, swing voters have already had eight years of Barack Obama and progressives; and those voters are showing little sign of being interested in twelve.

Put another way: no, really, regular voters don’t care about the same things that the Democratic base cares about. Martin O’Malley’s record might endear him to base voters, but yelling about Glass-Steagall will not get him far in a general election.  But since it will endear him to base voters… expect a war to break out.  And the funny part about that is that the war won’t be directed by Hillary Clinton herself. Hillary may not even realize what’s happening until something spectacular goes down.  Her staff will be the ones fueling this feud: there are a lot of people that have planned out their near future on the assumption that they’d be part of another Clinton administration.  They will be prepared to strike out at anybody who dares threaten their plans.

Via @lachlan.

Moe Lane (crosspost)