Bill and Hillary Clinton to the Rescue?
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on August 6, 2010 at 2:30 PM in Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Current Affairs, DNC idiocy, Hillary Clinton, Obama Administration, President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Joshua Green of The Atlantic asks Can Bill Clinton Save the Democrats? The question is, should he? It is amazing, but not unpredictable to anyone on this website, that two years after the derangement that swept the country to put an inexperienced academic into the White House at one of the most difficult times in our nation’s history, the Democratic Party – once so contemptuous of the Clintons – now wishes them in one way or another to save the very man who offered them such grievous insult. As Green notes:
The midterm elections are just three months away. All across the country, Democratic members of Congress are bracing for tough reelection campaigns, and doing so without a valuable asset. The sky-high approval ratings that carried Barack Obama into the White House in 2008 — and brought so many Democrats to Washington with him — have diminished, in some places greatly. Obama’s overall standing hovers around 45 percent and much lower in places like Arkansas and Missouri, where key Democrats are running in especially difficult races. That’s significant, because, as Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, has noted, ”When it comes to choosing candidates for Congress, it is opinions of the president’s performance that matter.” Today, many Democrats find themselves pondering a question that would have seemed unthinkable only a year ago: Does President Obama help them or hurt them?
Applied to President Clinton, that’s a much easier question to answer. He has emerged as the surrogate of choice for embattled Democrats.
Green goes on to describe Clinton’s successful efforts on behalf of Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Mark Critz in Pennsylvania and significantly, Andrew Romanoff in Colorado – although the White House had endorsed his Democratic rival Michael Bennet. That race is now neck and neck, thanks to Bill Clinton.
In July, according to Gallup, [Clinton’s] favorable rating exceeded Obama’s for the first time. This resurgence is all the more striking because Clinton’s image took a beating in 2008, when many Democrats, including Obama staffers and members of Congress, denounced his attacks on Obama as racist — charges that split the party and that Clinton himself bitterly denied. He appears to have overcome this, but without quite forgetting it, either. What all the candidates he has endorsed have in common is that they were early supporters of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidential nomination.
Clinton also seems to be quietly making a point about race. He stumped for Blanche Lincoln in the predominantly black regions of Arkansas, and endorsed Kendrick Meek, a rising African American star, in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary, even though (or maybe especially because) both had been snubbed by Obama. It’s worth noting, too, that Clinton has not campaigned for candidates like Robin Carnahan in Missouri, who could use his support, but didn’t lend theirs to his wife.
Payback. Green mentioned a party operative with ties to both Clinton and Obama who noted Clinton had reached “cruising altitude” with Obama is “still taxiing.” President Obama is box office poison at the moment and is staying away from campaigning in many local races since his presence may be doing more harm than good.
It’s hardly surprising that a president stands to play a commanding role in the fall campaign. But who would have guessed it might not be Barack Obama, but Bill Clinton?
Um. We did. Bill Clinton has his failings but he was never a flash in the pan. And he and his wife actually left the country better than they found it.
Speaking of his wife, Secretary Clinton’s name crosses pundits’ and politicians’ lips more and more of late. It seems they have a new job in mind for her – savior of Barack Obama’s presidency. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad that these boobs are bandying her name as a replacement for Joe Biden on the 2012 ticket. Their theory being that she has “proved” she can play nice and be a good soldier, as if she has earned her keep like a good little girl and now can be “used” be save the man who has no idea what to do in the office to which he was elected.
None of these boobs can admit that she should have, and should have had, the top job in the first place.
Good luck with that.
Hillary has worked her butt off to save him on foreign policy while remaining separate and apart from the President’s domestic economic blunders.
As to the media who so abused the Clintons in 2008, who are now aching and crying for mommy and daddy to ride to the rescue of their errant son, there is a wonderful line from The Color Purple…
“Until you do right by me everything you think about is gonna crumble! …Until you do right by me, everything you even think about is gonna fail!”
So, to the pundit class, when you are ready to deliver your apologies, the line forms to the left.
(
)