Things can always change, but for now we might have to admit that the process currently underway to pick the Democratic nominee for president is deadly dull, and not just in comparison to whatever one wants to call the Republican contest.
This point was brought home to me as I read The Economist’s description of the most recent Democratic debate:
Neither Mr. O’Malley’s frantic interjections, nor Mr. Sanders’s passion, are likely to avail them much in their seemingly forlorn contest with Mrs. Clinton (even if Mr. Sanders is actually leading in New Hampshire itself). Their campaigns have complained that the Democratic party connived in her frictionless capture of the nomination by staging [the debate] on a Saturday evening in December, when many Americans were otherwise engaged or watching the Dallas Cowboys. As in their previous encounters, Mrs. Clinton herself sometimes seemed already to be speaking to a general-election audience. She was relaxed enough to crack a joke or two. “May the force be with you”, she quipped, topically, as a sign-off.
But whether Mrs. Clinton should be considered so prohibitive a favourite as to suggest we almost stop paying attention for now, the lack of a compelling narrative seems to be forcing the issue of what to say about the whole thing from the perspective of political analysis.
Thus at the end of the piece quoted above entitled “Civility from Democrats may leave Hillary Clinton ill-prepared for the fights to come,” The Economist concludes with this gem:
Yet the lack of pyrotechnics in the Democratic contest will bequeath a deficit in public excitement when the real fight begins; and, congenial as her current opponents’ relative civility may feel, it is imperfect preparation for the business of persuading just over half of everybody to make her president.
Could it be that after running unsuccessfully in 2008, after getting elected to the U.S. Senate, after being part of one of the most scrutinized administrations in American history, after being vilified by Republicans in Congress for every imaginable and imagined transgression, Hillary Clinton is already prepared for the general election even if everyone continues to play nice through the primaries?
I suspect so.
As for the extent to which Mrs. Clinton’s path to the nomination will be relatively unimpeded, the fact that Sen. Sanders refuses to make too much of the DNC’s heavy handed response to the data issue and their clear favouritism on behalf of Mrs. Clinton strongly indicates that he will continue to take the high ground, which is a laudable approach, but not one that wins elections when 30 points behind a frontrunner.
The primaries will, however, provide an important opportunity for polite discussion through the coming months on a range of key issues. And then Hillary Clinton will emerge as her party’s nominee, quite prepared to take on the Republican candidate, even if it is someone as crude as Donald Trump or as ruthless as Ted Cruz.
She’s got this.
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