Ken Berwitz
Today\’s quote comes to us not from last night\’s Republican debate, but from Carl Bernstein, of the Woodward/Bernstein axis, while being interviewed during Poppy Harlow\’s show on CNN.
Here is what Mr. Bernstein said about Hillary Clinton – her campaign, and how her fellow Democrats are reacting to it:
“…they are horrified that the whole business of thetranscripts, the accepting the money, that she could blow the Democrats\’ chancefor the White House. They want her to win. Obama wants her to win. But Sandershas shown how vulnerable she is. These ethical lapses have tied the White Houseup in knots. They don\’t know what to do. They\’re beside themselves. And nowyou\’ve got a situation with these transcripts a little bit like Richard Nixonand his tapes he stonewalled on and wouldn\’t release.
…what I\’m saying is, if she stonewalls on it and does notrelease them and enables Republicans to paint her again into a corner, this isnot just a vast right-wing conspiracy that is causing her problems. She hascaused herself these problems. The server is not the vast right-wingconspiracy. It\’s Hillary Clinton deciding she could put a server in her closet.The same with these transcripts. The same with accepting this money in apresidential year when she knew that she was probably going to be running forPresident.
To people in the White House that I talked to, it isunfathomable that she did this and has endangered President Obama\’s legacy. AsI say, they are terrified at this point, and they want Bernie Sanders to not dowell on Tuesday and Hillary to do well because if this keeps going like that,they see real problems ahead.
Carl Bernstein wins Quote Of The Day honors for articulating so well the conundrum Democrats are faced with.
Democrats want – actually, it\’s more than that…they need – a strong Hillary Clinton candidacy. Because, as things now stand, the alternative to Hillary Clinton is Bernie Sanders.
If Sanders continues to perform equally with – even more effectively than – Clinton, it is disastrous even if she wins the nomination. That is because it will show how weak her candidacy is, it will force her to spend time and money to defeat him in the primaries, and it will keep her to the left of center instead of veering back to the middle for a general election. And a Sanders candidacy would be disastrous altogether.
But even afterwards, as a the Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton – though clearly a far better alternative than Bernie Sanders – is a disaster in her own right…and, most importantly, a disaster of her own making. Someone with a history of self-created disasters not only is damaged by them, but is a good bet to provide additional self-created disasters during a presidential campaign against the eventual Republican challenger.
Put another way, do you have any doubt that more and more Democrats are not just hoping for Joe Biden to come back into this race, they are praying for him to do so?
