Hillary Clinton is worried about Bernie Sanders. And should be.
It\’s not that Sanders is going to beat her out for the presidential nomination. That is the longest of long shots.
But the fact, with little money and little publicity, he is increasingly competitive with Ms. Clinton in the first two primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, presents a huge problem:
-It suggests that, despite all the careful image-building and media love, Hillary Clinton is so weak that even a relative nobody from nowhere can compete with her among Democrats – which makes her look terrible;
-It encourages other, more viable, candidates, like Joe Biden for example, to consider jumping into the race;
-And since the guy giving her such stiff competition, Bernie Sanders, is to Ms. Clinton\’s left, many of the hardline purists of the Democrat Party – who are more likely to vote in primaries than the general run of voters – see her, comparatively speaking, as a right winger (the comparison made even more stark by her immense wealth and her ties to Wall Street – both of which are anathematic to the left).
Omigod. What is a political chameleon like Hillary Clinton to do?
Lurch left, of course.
So now, as Ken Thomas, writing for the Associated Press reports, she is suddenly out there insisting that no candidate can out-progressive her.
In that connection, she told an audience, last night, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, that “I take a backseat to no one when you look at my record of standing up and fighting for progressive values”.
What happened to that strategy of Hillary Clinton being (at least in relative terms) a moderate, who can attract both the leftward base of her party and the middle? The one she seemed to be presenting to us for the past 2 1/2 months?
Apparently that ended with the last few polls. Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist and he\’s gaining on her. So now Hillary is Ms. Progressive.
And what will she be tomorrow? Your guess is as good as mine.
But I can tell you one thing she won\’t be. Inevitable.
Believe me, she\’s evitable.
