Editorial

Clinton front and centre

There was a distinct lack of surprise that Hillary Clinton is to be a Democratic Party's presidential candidate

Editorial April 15, 2015

Hillary Clinton will be contesting in the US presidential elections

The announcement that Hillary Clinton was to run for the US presidency in 2016 was — for an American political event — remarkably low key. It also came to the wider world via social media and Hillary Clinton did not make an appearance in the video clip until it was almost half-over. There was a distinct lack of surprise anywhere, be it in America or anywhere else that Hillary Clinton is to be a Democratic Party candidate, and there are few in that party who could match her for name recognition or the ability to polarise a nation. She is loved or loathed in America and there seems to be little in the spectrum between the two extremes. She is ‘old’ for a presidential candidate, has questions about her health in the background and she would bring to the White House vast experience and not only as secretary of state, but also a mass of very untidy baggage all of which is going to be picked over in coming months. A report aired by the BBC shortly after the announcement was made said that the cost of her campaign was likely to be around $3 billion.

Hillary Clinton lost out to Barack Obama the last time she had a shot at the top job. For all her experience and clout, her campaign then was lacklustre and failed to ‘catch a fire’, particularly failing to gain support among the working class, the poor and the minorities. She is not going to make the same mistake again, and the patrician Hillary Clinton is going to have to mix-and-mingle considerably more in 2016 if she is to win the all-important ‘swing votes’ — and one analyst has already said that people with disabilities may be a significant vote bank, which is already emergent. Her announcement was a policy-free area, an arid zone if one was looking for where Hillary Clinton stood on such matters as equal pay or the minimum wage or climate change, all hot-button issues. The detail can come later, will argue her advisers, and the stage is beginning to be set for a titanic struggle — and may end with a woman in the White House.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 16^th, 2015.

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COMMENTS (1)

Toticalling | 9 years ago | Reply If anything Hillary will be the first female President of USA, if she wins. She is liberal and anybody who can put up with a husband like hers who had so many affairs, she can endure the worst. Mrs Clinton first entered the governor’s mansion in Arkansas in 1979, and has been in the public eye ever since. This makes connecting with ordinary folk a challenge. In a speech last year to a convention of car dealers, she confided that: “The last time I actually drove a car myself was 1996.” The fact that she typically received six-figure sums for such speeches does not help either. USA is not keen to talk about Middle east, but about job opportunities and bridging the gap between the poor and the very rich. Blacks want to see better police laws. The list is long. In spite of all that, i will wish her success.

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