Since she lost the presidential election of 2016, many people have wondered if Hillary Clinton — and the Clintons generally — are washed up politically. To be sure, Clinton was outmaneuvered, and even many of the people who voted for her disliked her immensely and thought at the very least that she was more than a little dishonest and corrupt.
In the days immediately following the election, Clinton looked like she’d aged 20 years, and many believed the public days of the former First Lady and Secretary of State were all but finished.
But unfortunately, the Clintons are a resilient lot, and there are rumblings of many activities taking place on the Clinton front, not the least of which could be Hillary’s plans for a terrifying third run for the nation’s highest office in 2020.
But prior to that, it helps to understand the perspective that despite her shameful defeat to President Trump, all three Clintons are formidable fundraisers unto themselves and for the Democratic Party, which they still hold incredibly tight reins over.
The recent election of Tom Perez to the top spot of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) over the more progressive (and Bernie Sanders-endorsed) choice of Keith Ellison should leave no doubt as to who’s really running the show in the camp of the ostensibly Left.
In fact, so angry are some progressives over this selection that they’re talking about leaving the mainstream Democratic Party altogether for a new upstart faction called the Justice Democrats, led by The Young Turks (TYT) founder Cenk Uygur.
The Justice Democrats already claim more than 85,000 followers, despite being just a month old and are rapidly gaining credibility in political circles. But all of that is a distraction from what remains an undeniable fact: that Hillary Clinton and the Clintons generally still enjoy a great deal of influence in their party and will likely continue to hold sway over it as long as they’re still alive.
Recently, immediately following the resignation of Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as President Trump’s National Security Advisor, former Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines tweeted a message to Flynn and his son Mike Flynn, Jr., the latter of whom had been tweeting statements in regard to Clinton and the whole “Pizzagate” controversy, in an effort to discredit and smear the former Secretary of State. (Pizzagate refers to a scandal that alleges former Clinton fundraiser James Alefantis and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta may have engaged in child sexual abuse in the basement of Comet Pizza, a well-known Washington eatery that’s located on a block where numerous Clinton-affiliated businesses are located.)
Whether or not you believe Pizzagate is real, the fact of the matter is that Reines tweeted, “Dear Mike Flynn and Mike Flynn, Jr., What goes around COMETS around.” And if there was any doubt as to the significance of this communiqué, Hillary Clinton herself followed up with her own tweet that read, “Philippe’s got his own way of saying things, but he has a point about the real consequences of fake news.”
If you’ve been keeping tabs on the situation, Flynn was supposedly let go because he misled the VP and the President about communications between himself and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding U.S. sanctions on Russia. And surprise, surprise — on February 7, former Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook wrote an editorial in the Guardian newspaper that said, “I fear Russia is meddling with more than elections.”
Now, beyond mere tit-for-tat gossip, word going around Washington is that Hillary Clinton is eager to personally get back in the political game. To that end, she recently recorded a three-minute video, in which she promised her cohorts in the Democratic Party that she would “Keep fighting [the Trump administration]… I’ll be right there with you every step of the way.”
Further, Clinton stated that “Now more than ever, we need to stay engaged in the field and online… We as Democrats must move forward with courage, confidence and activism and stay focused on the elections we must win this year and next.”
Although it’s well-known that former President Obama is also bunkered down in a Washington, D.C. mansion where he’s attempting to erect roadblocks for the Trump administration via a network of some 30,000 paid activists nationwide, supposedly Clinton feels that the former president’s presence is too low-key and desires to be a more public figure in the battle against Trump.
According to Ed Klein, author of the Clinton tell-all Guilty as Sin, Clinton has been discussing the idea of creating her own daytime television show, complete with political guests, visiting world leaders and progressive thinkers. Imagine a cross between The Oprah Winfrey Show, Ellen DeGeneres and the discussions held on ABC’s Left-leaning “The View.”
Says Klein’s source, “It would have to be a show that she and her people completely controlled. She’s convinced she’d get fabulous ratings in a political climate where there’s so much anger in Democratic circles over Trump’s election. She’s utterly determined not to fade into the background. She intends to stay in the limelight and keep fighting the good fight. She knows Obama is going to be out there fighting too. But frankly, she doesn’t think he’s a great leader or a great fighter, which leaves an opening for her to be the acknowledged leader-in-exile of her party.”
But most horrifying of all, the source claims, “[Clinton] thinks being the host of a popular TV show would energize the Democratic Party base and her tens of millions of fans. It’s a way to make a comeback and position herself for another run at the White House starting in a year or so.”
Of course, the idea that Clinton has “tens of millions of fans” may be more in Clinton’s own mind than reality. There’s no word on whether Clinton’s health — which the public is still relatively uninformed about — would enable her to actually appear daily (or even weekly) on TV; perhaps if the format allows her to sit on a cushy sofa for the duration of the broadcast, it might be within Clinton’s powers to take on.
Still another worrying aspect to talk of the Clintons is that Hillary and Bill may be pushing daughter Chelsea to take a stab at entering the family business of politics by running for office. Specifically, according to the New York Post, they may encourage her to run for Congress from the 17th district of New York in Westchester County.
Anyone else without a shred of experience in government likely wouldn’t stand a chance in a Congressional election, but Chelsea Clinton would not be your average office-seeker. Her parents’ ability to raise funds for a continuation of their dynasty shouldn’t be underestimated, and depending on who her opponent was, she might have a shot based just on her background alone.
If all this sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s infamous quip from “The Terminator” movies of “I’ll be back” — those are apparently the very words that came out of Hillary Clinton’s mouth at her Whitehaven, D.C. home at a recent meeting she held with political friends.
And so, it might seem, the Clinton saga is destined for a new sequel or two, to add to the original three-part franchise. But unless you’re talking about the Godfather movies, one of the fabled unwritten rules of Tinseltown is that all sequels are inevitably worse than their associated original pictures.
Hopefully, in this case, the name “Clinton” will spell “box-office poison” for the Democrats.
