The Challenge Facing Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton’s official announcement that she is running for President comes almost ten months to the day that she set out on a book tour to promote “Hard Choices,” a memoir of her four years as Secretary of State. Much has happened since that day, when supporters lined up for hours to get into the Barnes and Noble in Manhattan’s Union Square, where Clinton was signing copies, and some of it will work to her advantage.

With Elizabeth Warren’s refusal to jump into the Democratic primary, Clinton still lacks effective competition, whereas early indications that the Republican contest would turn into a slugfest have been confirmed, with at least half a dozen serious candidates entering, or preparing to enter, the race. In the past year or so, the U.S. economic situation has improved—job growth has picked up (with the exception of last month), and the number of people without health insurance has continued to fall as the effects of the Affordable Care Act have taken hold. Assuming Clinton wins the nomination, both of these things will make it easier for her to defend President Obama’s legacy, and to point to the potential folly, with things improving, of the economy coming under the tutelage of extremist Republicans.

Doubtless, the Republican candidates will subject Clinton to virulent attacks on all manner of subjects, but that could well help her to unite the Democratic Party behind her, and to rally the activists whose support she will need to get out the vote in places such as Florida and Ohio. Moreover, the electoral map remains favorable to the Democrats. If Clinton can carry all of the eighteen states, plus the District of Columbia, that have gone blue in every election since her husband’s first victory, in 1992, she will have two hundred and forty-two electoral votes, leaving her within striking distance of victory. As always, the contest is likely to come down a few battleground states, including Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. If Clinton can hold together the “Obama coalition” of young voters, women, and minorities, she has a very good chance of winning. (On the online-betting sites, she is the firm favorite.)

While the external circumstances favor Clinton, the preparations for her campaign have been anything but smooth. Her book tour was marred by a series of mini-gaffes—or that’s what the media perceived them to be, anyway. Earlier this year, it emerged that the Clintons’ charitable foundation, which was recently renamed the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, had taken donations from foreign governments, including repressive ones such as the monarchies that rule Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Then came the news that, during her time at the State Department, Clinton set up and operated a private e-mail system, whose server was subsequently wiped clean at her request. Clinton insisted that she had preserved all of the work-related e-mails on her server, about thirty thousand of them, and forwarded copies of them to Congress, but Republicans on Capitol Hill (and on the campaign trail) are unlikely to let the matter drop.

Much more at:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/the-challenge-facing-hillary-clinton