Hillary Relaunch?

There she goes again.

Hillary Clinton "officially began" (read started anew) her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Roosevelt Island in New York, and, with her slide in the polls undoubtedly on her mind - Scott WalKKKer, who is expected to run for Führer, has polled even with her - gave a speech that paid tribute to her mother and how she struggled to make it, along with promises to fight for working America and endorsements of every policy espoused by progressives from pay equity to climate change.  It was all very inspiring.

I'm ready to vote for her mother.

It's becoming more apparent by the day that Hillary Clinton feels entitled to the Democratic presidential nomination and that she isn't let anyone going to take it from her - not Bernie Sanders, whose early success has scared the Shinola out of her, and definitely not Martin O'Malley, who only gets one percent in the polls.  (Former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee polls even lower than that, and it astounds me why he's trying to make Mrs. Clinton's 2002 vote for to authorize going to war in Iraq an issue when it's ancient history.)  Indeed, she acted as if it's her destiny to become the first female President of the United States (so why didn't it happen in 2008?), because . . . why?  Damned if I know.   

Everything I've heard about the reaction to her speech - which was pretty long - leads me to believe that she inspired few people and defined herself for even fewer people.  PBS reporter Lisa Desjardins said she asked several people at the Roosevelt Island rally what they believed Hillary's basic theme was, and they couldn't summarize it.  On top of that, Mrs. Clinton said earlier today that she is prepared to negotiate the best possible trade deal with other Pacific Rim nations to expand American jobs . . . without saying much if anything about her views of the current Trans-Pacific Partnership, fast-track legislation for which was thankfully defeated in the House on Friday.  She talks about using trade and economic policy as instruments for advancing prosperity for all Americans as opposed to advancing Americans For Prosperity, but it seems that her only consistent theme revolves around her sex.  "We need a country where a father can tell his daughter, you can be anything you want," she recently said. "Even President of the United States."      

And Hillary is the woman who's going to make that happen?

I can see 2016 playing out now.  Hillary gets the nomination but loses to the eventual Republican nominee.  Given her record of secrecy and evasiveness, all the Republicans have to do is exploit her various gaffes over her e-mail servers and the Clinton Global Initiative.  Indeed, that's already happening - why do you think she's falling in the polls?  But then there's the woman herself.  She comes across as the worldly, white neo-liberal Westchester County elitist she is.  Rank-and-file voters hate that.  She can talk all she wants about making America work for all of us, but in the end she's a bourgeois Democrat who's so far removed from reality that she's lived in a reality of her own.

In other words, she's still the same Hillary from 2008.

Yes, it's time for a woman to be President.  Her name is Elizabeth Warren.  I'd support her over Martin O'Malley is she were running.  But Hillary's faux-populist posturing and self-important aura are a recipe for Democratic disaster.  If no one can stop her in the primaries, I assure you the Republicans will stop her in the general election.

And she won't be remembered as the Democratic Party's first female presidential candidate.  She will be remembered as the party's last presidential candidate.