While I believe there should be a challenge to Hillary Clinton based upon her hawkish foreign policy views, it is questionable whether this will happen. [icopyright one button toolbar] Once again, I’ll take the unusual step of quoting from The American Conservative:

As yet, amazingly, Hillary has no real opponent to the nomination. Centrist inside politics watchers have concluded her Goldberg interview means that she carefully calculated that she can run to the right and face no consequences. It’s probably true that most of the names floating about, Brian Schweitzer and Elizabeth Warren pose little threat to a Clinton coronation. But someone who could talk coherently about foreign policy—James Webb, for instance—might be a different matter, though no one besides Webb himself knows if he has the discipline and energy to take on what would a grueling, and probably losing campaign. The absence of the genuine challenger to a hawkish Hillary leaves one depressed about the state of American democracy.

If Hillary Clinton is denied the Democratic nomination, it might come about due to her poor political instincts–the same factor which led her to lose to an inexperienced Barack Obama in 2008. I’ve been watching to see what happens this fall. Often major party candidates receive a boost by the manner in which they help other candidates in the prior election, and I have been wondering whether Clinton plans to stay on the sidelines or get actively involved in helping Democratic candidates. Brent Budowsky, an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House, questions Clinton’s actions this year in The Hill:

Democrats face potentially catastrophic midterm elections that could leave Republicans and conservatives in control of the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Yet while Democrats face a political state of emergency, Hillary Clinton this week launched an aggressive preemptive attack — not against Republicans but against Barack Obama, the Democratic president she served as secretary of State, employing lines of attack eerily reminiscent of attacks against Democrats from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Clinton has been running for president for almost a decade. What is striking today is how little she appears to have thought through WHY she would run and HOW she would campaign. Throughout 2014 she has been dogged by self-created controversies about her paid speeches to banks and universities, whether she needed the money because she was “dirt poor,” whether she is out of touch with working people, and now her ill-timed and disastrously executed criticisms of Obama in her Atlantic interview.

Politically, Clinton’s prime directive for 2014 should have been to use her considerable intellect to devise substantial policies for income equality in the spirit of the most profound and popular public figure of our age, Pope Francis, and to go all out to save the Democratic Senate in the midterm elections…

Clinton should have spent all of 2014 working hard to support Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky and Michelle Nunn in Georgia. She has not. For the first eight months of 2014, Hillary Clinton has done virtually nothing to save the Democratic Senate. Now, her piling on criticism of Obama, whose unpopularity in red states is already a grave danger for Democrats, only helps the GOP cause.

Even more damaging to Democrats, and self-destructive for Clinton, is that her line of attack against Obama in the Atlantic interview wields national security arguments against Obama usually aimed against Democrats by Dick Cheney, neoconservatives and hyperpartisan Republicans.

Clinton’s talking points against Obama gives Republicans ammunition against Democrats, drives Obama’s negatives higher, divides Democrats against one another, alienates many liberals from Clinton, and further depresses Democrats when the party desperately needs dramatically increased enthusiasm, not new Democratic divisions and deeper Democratic depression that will keep more Democratic voters home in November.

Republicans rejoice and Democrats are appalled when Clinton is praised by Newt Gingrich for attacking Obama for policies devised when Democrat Clinton was Democrat Obama’s secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton should distinguish herself from President Obama. I would not recommend her using neoconservative-sounding arguments, which remind a vast and unenthusiastic Democratic base of her six years of support for Bush 43’s Iraq war and her penchant for political calculation, to promote her candidacy for president. But whatever case she makes should be made AFTER this year’s midterm elections, not before.

Clinton should stop all criticism of Obama and any Democrat, concentrate aggressively on saving the Democratic Senate, ask Ready for Hillary to spend ALL its cash on hand to support Senate and House Democrats, and develop inspiring programs for income equality and other issues vital to voters.

I support Hillary Clinton and hope she becomes the next Democratic FDR or JFK. But make no mistake: this week she hurt Democrats by firing her cannons in the wrong direction at the worst possible time.

Clinton is not doing herself any favors with a poorly handled book tour and by attacking Obama with neoconservative arguments. It is not too late in 2014 for Clinton to earn some goodwill by campaigning for Senate Democrats. If she fails to do so, or continues to do a bumbling job should she do so, there very well could be more Democrats questioning the inevitability of her nomination. Her fall in support in recent polls might also lead some Democrats to question her nomination.

Originally posted at Liberal Values