Hillary Cannot Win in 2016

After watching about 14 minutes of Hillary Clinton's email apologia the only thing that was apparent to me was that she has next to no chance of winning a presidential election.

Whatever the precise details of whether the State Department reviewed Hillary's email account while she was Secretary of State or why she was allowed to use her personal email instead of a .gov email pales in comparison to the obviously unappealing nature of the woman.

Hillary reminds me of Bette Davis in her Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962) renaissance period: an imperious postmenopausal woman who terrifies males and offends females.

Nate Cohn had a piece, "Hillary Clinton Is More Vulnerable in 2016 Than You Think," in yesterday's paper that provides the big picture polling numbers to back up my gut reaction to Hillary's UN press conference. Hillary has never been very popular:

Her ratings started out high as first lady in 1993, as is often the case with that role, but dropped to the mid-40s when she pursued health reform. Her ratings surged during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but returned to the mid-40s once she ran for Senate, and remained there through her 2008 presidential campaign. Her ratings recovered again after she withdrew from the 2008 race and was no longer active in day-to-day politics. 

There is little about Mrs. Clinton’s electoral history that suggests she’s a stronger candidate than these ratings. As a Senate candidate in New York in 2000, she ran well behind Al Gore’s presidential election numbers in New York that year. Few defend her performance in the 2008 presidential primaries. If anything, the extent to which she was criticized by the left has largely been forgotten. As Slate’s Alec MacGillis put it, there is “a sort of collective amnesia among Obama supporters when it comes to their former estimation of Clinton — a reluctance to reckon fully with their aversion to her then and what has come of it since.”

The New York Times is critical of  Hillary's showing before the media yesterday. Michael Schmidt's "Questions Regarding Hillary Clinton's Personal Email Use"; "Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email" by Amy Chozick and Michael Schmidt; and Scott Shane's "No Classified Emails by Clinton? Some Experts Are Skeptical" all blow holes in Clinton's defense.

After watching Hillary I was mollified by her argument that she was following the precedent established by former Secretaries of State in using a personal email account. Apparently John Kerry is the first Secretary of State to exclusively use a .gov email. And while I am in general agreement with MoveOn.org's position that saturation coverage on Hillary's email is a sideshow, reading The Times' coverage this morning does re-frame the email issue in its larger political context, which is a tendency of the 1% to feel as if they don't have to abide by the laws that govern the 99%. Hillary, or staff who works for her, is the one who is determining which emails are personal and which are private and what can be released for public consumption. Her statement that her emails never dealt in classified information is risible.

One of the questions that Hillary dodged had to do with why, if she is such a champion of women's rights (which ostensibly was why she was appearing at the United Nations to begin with), the Clinton Foundation takes money from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations -- states who adhere to a primitive view of gender roles.

In any event, my takeaway was clear: Hillary cannot win, and Democrats are experiencing some sort of dementia, some sort of pre-death fever in thinking she can. Hillary needs to be dumped pronto. Jim Webb or Martin O'Malley seem to me at this point to be a much better standard bearer for the Democrats. I'm not endorsing their candidacies. I'm just saying if the Democrats want to win and try to prevent a WWIII from happening (as the GOP continues its soft coup in Congress) they would be wise to dump Hillary, ditch the "Draft Warren" campaign (it would tough for her to win) and get real.