Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton watched as Barack Obama crushed her dreams, then used her body as a stepping stone to the presidency. Now, she has determined that she will become Obama.
Hillary rightfully should have won the 2008 primaries – she had all the advantages on her side. She didn’t, because Barack Obama seized it from her arthritic hands thanks to three distinct phenomena: wildly disproportionate support from the minority community, a friendly media unwilling to ask tough questions, and voter fraud.
Hillary has learned her lesson.
Minority Support. In 2008, Hillary won a heavy majority of the white vote in the primaries, but lost because the black vote went almost universally for Obama. According to The Washington Post, this phenomenon was clear as early as mid-February:
Obama has swamped Clinton among black voters in each of the 20 contests that had exit polls and large enough samples of African Americans to be meaningful. Just to put that kind of shutout in perspective, black voters represent the only demographic group that the New York senator has not carried at least once during the Democratic primary campaign. Obama now has such a lock on the loyalties of African Americans — 84 percent of the black vote in Alabama, 87 percent in Georgia, 84 percent in Maryland, and on and on — that the black vote is no longer contestable.
Obama’s campaign played up the racial gap, sending out surrogates to imply that Hillary’s campaign was replete with racism.
This time, Hillary’s got heavy black support; she figured she’d maintain her white support base from 2008 and cruise to the nomination.
Not so fast.
Sanders is now leading among white voters in the Democratic primaries, but he’s losing heavily among minority voters – she has a 40 point lead there. To reinforce that she’s the candidate of minorities, Hillary has unleashed surrogates to attack Sanders as a racist for insufficient support of slavery reparations (Hillary also opposes slavery reparations, but no matter). Her campaign spokesman, Brian Fallon, told CNN, “When it comes to something like reparations, he dismisses it as completely unfeasible.” There’s Something About Mary-haired Clinton hit man David Brock emerged from the forest to call Sanders an out-and-out racist: “It seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders.”
Media Manipulation. In 2008, Hillary expected a media cakewalk. Instead, the media began panting over the godlike unifier Obama and turned on Hillary, who suddenly became an old retread instead of a historic step forward for women. Hillary will tolerate no such mistakes this time around. This time, she’s carefully choosing her interviews, avoiding tough questions, and insisting on Democratic town hall events rather than head-to-head debates.
And it’s working.
The media have spoonfed Hillary questions about how historic she is, whether she can take on the Sanders Revolution, and how it feels being a grandmother. Here, for example, was the opening question Hillary got during her January 26 town hall event with Democratic scion Chris Cuomo of CNN:
Interesting weekend for you. Boston Globe endorsement. Des Moines Register endorsement. Maybe the best accolade, President Obama gave an interview; talked about this race. Seemed to get more into it than he has in the past. He said you’re, quote ‘Wicked smart. Knows every policy inside and out.’ Sounds like an endorsement.
How can she handle the high heat?
No one has done a prolonged interview with her about her violation of law with her email server, or her corrupt Clinton Foundation. And they won’t. She’s the Golden Girl – just so long as Sanders remains behind in the polls.
Voter Fraud. After Obama won a surprise victory in the Iowa caucuses in 2008, Hillary supporters immediately cried foul. “It was fraud,” said Lynette Long, a Hillary supporter from Maryland. “After studying the procedures and results from all 14 caucus states, interviewing dozens of witnesses, and reviewing hundreds of personal stories, my conclusion is that the Obama campaign willfully and intentionally defrauded the American public by systematically undermining the caucus process.” In fact, in virtually every caucus state, Hillary supporters complained of flushed Clinton ballots, over-voting, and busing in of supporters from out of state. In states with both normal voting and caucuses, Obama repeatedly won caucuses while losing the vote.
Hillary learned from the best. After Hillary narrowly edged out Sanders in Iowa, the Des Moines Register suggested fraud as a possible explanation:
What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy. The Iowa Democratic Party must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But there will be no audit. There will be no release of raw vote totals. That may have something to do with the fact that the Democratic Party official in charge of such procedure is a massive Hillary fan who drives a Buick carrying this license plate: “HRC2016.”
Watch for more fraud down the road, Bernie Bros.
Hillary learned her lessons from 2008. But she’s not Barack Obama in the way that counts most: she’s simply not a magnetic politician in any way. Which means she’s still vulnerable, even to a 73-year-old insane old man who screams at the moon.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News, Editor-in-Chief of DailyWire.com, and The New York Times bestselling author, most recently, of the book, The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.
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