Small number to decide Hillary's fate

 ME AND MY SERVE-HER

Small number to decide Hillary's fate 

By LeROY GOLDMAN
Guest columnist

BlueRidgeNow.com Times-News Online

Published: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 at 4:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Monday, March 16, 2015 at 3:16 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is going to run for president. When she announces, millions will be ecstatic, and millions will fulminate at the mouth. She will win the Democratic nomination. But will she win the general election? I doubt it.

For the past two decades, America has become increasingly polarized. That polarization has hamstrung the federal government. The event that lit the fuse was aversion to Hillarycare in 1993-94, the health care reform plan that she, as first lady, devised. Opposition to her health care plan was so intense that it enabled the Republicans to win the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years (the Gingrich Revolution).

Bill and Hillary Clinton responded by declaring war against their enemies, who the first lady called the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” And the GOP became obsessed with its effort to drive Clinton from office.

George W. Bush accelerated the descent into the partisan abyss with his pre-emptive war in Iraq and profligate spending. The Bush administration sputtered out as the national economy imploded.

In 2007, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton launched her bid for the White House. She was the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party and the odds-on favorite to win the general election. But because of her vote for the Iraq War, her imperiousness and a horribly badly run campaign, Barack Obama won it all.

President Obama took office in 2009 having promised the nation he would end partisan gridlock, a promise he did not know how to keep, and didn’t. Opposition to his stimulus and health care reform proposals in 2009 enabled the GOP to take back the House in 2010. But more than that, Obama’s unforced errors gave the nascent tea party the issues it needed at exactly the right time.

The GOP steamroller went way beyond the 63 House seats it gained in 2010. Data from the Pew Research Center show the carnage inflicted on the Democrats in the 2010 and 2014 elections. In 2009, the GOP controlled both legislative chambers in only 14 states. Today it controls 30 states, having gained more than 900 state legislative seats. That has enabled the Republicans to gerrymander so many House districts that it will take a miracle for the Democrats to recapture the House before 2022 at the earliest. And that’s beyond the first term of the next president!

The ensuing polarization has brought the government to its knees. And while most Americans say they want an end to it, they themselves give it life. Conservatives have disappeared from the Democratic Party, and there are hardly any moderates left in the GOP. These two homogenous political mastodons hate each other. Their cause celebre is to destroy one another. Failing that, their real objective is to ensure their re-election by feeding their constituents the red meat they unthinkingly relish and devour.

Into this maw now comes Hillary Clinton. Her campaign will attempt to reach women just as Obama’s campaigns reached African-Americans. It will be about shattering glass, especially in the White House.

Most Americans believe their vote for president matters. Except for voters in only eight states, it doesn’t. North Carolina is one of the eight. The other seven are Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada.

When you couple polarization with the winner-take-all workings of the Electoral College, it’s clear right now that Clinton will win 19 states, the District of Columbia and 247 of the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory. It’s just as clear that the Republican nominee will win 23 states and 191 electoral votes. The next president will be the candidate who can push his or her electoral vote total to at least 270 in the remaining eight swing states.

In 2012, those eight states cast only 27.5 million votes of the 122 million votes nationwide. And in those decisive states, it’s reasonable to assume that about 80 percent of the voters were partisan Democrats or Republicans. Thus, the winner was really determined by the roughly 5.5 million swing voters in those eight states. In 2012, most of them voted for President Obama.

But those 5.5 million swing voters are the voters who really are disgusted with the deleterious effects of gridlock and polarization. And in 2016 most of them will vote to end it.

In 2008, they were willing to take Obama at his word that he would end gridlock. They got burned, and now they’re the wiser for it. A similar campaign promise from Hillary with the baggage she carries will fall on deaf ears. And that’s why she likely will come up short.

There is, however, an important caveat to this scenario. There are more than 20 Republicans considering a run in 2016. Some of them are mainstream conservatives. Others are ideologues of the far right. If one of the far right doctrinal purists were to win the GOP nomination, Hillary’s lifelong quest will be realized.

It’s ironic, but Hillary Clinton’s best chance of becoming president rests in the hands of her enemies, not her own.

If she does prevail, here’s the complete text of her inaugural address in January 2017: “My Fellow Americans, I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.”

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Please contact me at:

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