Six weeks ago, the Huffington Post’s lead article was “Why Hillary Can’t Lose.” But the S.S. Clinton campaign that steams into southern California on Friday increasingly looks like the arrogant crew of the Titanic that continued to run full-throttle after hitting an iceberg, because their ship was “Practically Unsinkable.”
Hillary Clinton will arrive in Los Angeles following President Obama’s arrival the day before for high-visibility speeches at a pair of Democratic National Committee fundraisers:a roundtable discussion hosted by producer Chuck Lorre in Pacific Palisades, and a dinner at the Beverly Hills home of filmmaker Tyler Perry.
Two months ago, with 70 percent of the public already following the election closely, Clinton’s poll numbers were over 50 percent and up at least 10 points against every Republican challenger, according to a survey by Rasmussen Reports. Hillary also commanded a 52-point lead over every conceivable Democrat contender.
But as Clinton launched her campaign on June 13, the media were already questioning her inevitability. Lead stories included the Washington Post‘s “Clinton the Inauthentic,” and the Washington Times’ “Unhappy with Hillary.” New York Times columnist Frank Bruni attacked Clinton on Twitter for being “chronically unethical” like Richard Nixon, and described her as “psychological torture” for the Democrat Party–“Hillary the Tormentor.”
This turmoil is burning brightest in the Democrats’ first primary state of New Hampshire. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist, has quadrupled his support in state polls from just single digits two months ago to 31 percent, while Hillary Clinton plummeted by 20 points to only 41 percent. Clinton is still up in the Quinnipiac national poll by 57-15. But that is only because Sanders’s name ID is a fraction of Clinton’s. As this “bad news” goes viral, Sanders persona will explode onto the national scene.
The New York Observer just published, “Berniemania! Why Is Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders So Popular?“. The cover page illustration has Sanders in rolled-up sleeves with a bullhorn shouting down a thunderstruck Hillary Clinton in her signature pants suit. Wall Street’s bull, and little bankers in pin-striped-suits, are groaning desperately, trying to hold Hillary up. But an army of supporters are marching to Sanders, carrying signs saying, “Run Bernie Run!”; “Robin Hood was Right”; “Out with the Oligarchs”; and “Beat Wall Street.”
The Observer reports that Senator Sanders packed a recreation hall on Saturday in Keene, New Hampshire with 700 supporters, a big number in such a small state. His fans, wearing “homemade T-shirts Magic Markered” with “Bernie 2016,” listened attentively as Sanders lamented the plight of a young local teacher, whose “only crime” was to want a master’s degree: “She is now $200,000 in debt and paying interest rates between 6 and 9 percent….All of this stuff is crazy stuff.”
Sanders thundered about the need to reform environmental policies or suffer: “more drought, more famine, more rising sea levels, more floods, more ocean acidification, more extreme weather disturbances, more disease and more human suffering.”
When Clinton gets into trouble she seems to clam up and hope the misfortune will go away. David Martosko, US Political Editor for the Daily Mail–with the largest online audience of any English-language newspaper in the world–was dumped Tuesday as the Clinton camp’s “traveling pool” reporter, who serves as all the print reporters’ “eyes and ears at events where a room is too small to fit a crush of questions from a larger group.” The Internet exploded with viral rage that Martosko was being punished by Clinton goons for actually reporting about the competitive race in New Hampshire, rather than just regurgitating the Clintons’ talking points.
Hillary Clinton will try to stay below the radar in Los Angeles as she mines Hollywood cash on Friday. She will attend a $2,700-per-person event at the home of Spider-Man actor Toby Maguire and his wife, Jennifer Meyer. She then will head over to another $2,700-per-person event at the home of HBO programming president Michael Lombardo and his husband, Sonny Ward.
The S.S. Hillary Clinton campaign is not commenting about the underwater damage they have suffered. The Huffington Post claimed: “People who like Hillary will vote for her no matter what, and people who strongly dislike her will vote against her no matter what. And because more people now tend to like her than hate her, that small slice of people still wavering in the middle won’t decide this thing.”
Six weeks later and Clinton’s support wavering, the 2016 Presidential election is beginning to look wide open.