The number of challengers to Hillary Clinton has fallen even further. After Jim Webb left the race earlier this week, and Joe Biden announced he is not running, Lincoln Chafee has also dropped out. While he never had a chance, it is a shame that he was not able to do more with his campaign themes of prosperity through peace and support for ethics in government, considering how they respond to two of Hillary Clinton’s biggest faults. (Chafee’s support for conversion to the metric system never had a chance in presidential politics.)
The rapid decrease in the number of candidates running has led to calls for Lawrence Lessig to be included in the debates. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has acted to freeze him out, apparently not happy with his reform message, which runs counter to the politics of Schultz and her preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton. (Should I have said three in the title of the post?)
Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley remain in the race against front runner Hillary Clinton. Clinton has had a good week politically. She did great at the Benghazi hearings. However, being more sane than a bunch of idiot Republican Congressmen is not sufficient to make someone a good choice to be president. Nor does being a polished debater, while wrong on the issues.
While the attacks re Benghazi are nonsense, Clinton’s hawkish positions on Libya, Syria and Iraq, along with her conservative views on economics and social/cultural issues, continue to make her an unacceptable choice. Hopefully the Benghazi witch hunt comes to an end so we can concentrate on the real reasons Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president, both ethically and on the issues.
It is going to be difficult to keep the Democrats from nominating a Republican-lite candidate such as Hillary Clinton, but upsets have happened many times in past nomination battles, including to Hillary Clinton eight years ago. As I have noted multiple times, the national polls are not at all predictive in a nomination battle. A news report from December 2007 described how Clinton had a huge lead over Obama. In December 2003, Howard Dean was pulling away in the polls. Eventual winner John Kerry was in sixth place with only 4 percent, even trailing Al Sharpton.
The title and premise is wrong! Bernie is not a "Liberal", aka Centrist; he is a Progressive, aka Left-wing (which is similar to the Green Party, and why he has been an Independent until recently). Hillary, a Right-wing leaning Centrist, is a "Liberal". Now that you're informed of the truth, please correct. Thanks!
In what way is she the front runner? Bernie is clearly winning in every measure. This article should be about how Hillary still refuses to admit she's losing.
In the context of this post, I will continue to classify Sanders as part of the liberal opposition to Clinton. I wanted to emphasize Clinton being more conservative, and not being a liberal. While further left, Sanders does support the liberal positions which opponents of Clinton’s conservatism share. It is not worth worrying about all the nuances of labels, which are used differently from different people, for the limited space in a blog post title.
Clinton is the front runner. While hopefully it can be changed, at this point Clinton does have a better chance of receiving the nomination, and does lead in the national polls.
I have also noted in the post how being a front runner is no guarantee of winning the nomination, with the front runner losing the last two times there was a contested Democratic nomination race (along with some prior years).