Your party just got bazooked in elections from coast to coast. Your philosophy has been rebuked and your highest-profile people are in disrepute. You need a new direction, a fresh start and a different way of appealing to the nation if you ever hope to return to power.
So! Every week you put out a video offering your party's message of the moment. Who do you choose to be the face of your party at this time when a need for everything to be new is so urgent? Who, oh who, shall it be?
Um, yeeeeaaaah . . .
I realize the Democrats had not yet chosen a chairman at the time this video aired, which means it's hard to say who had the final call on this. But the decision to put Hillary in front of the nation as the face of the party is . . . curious, to say the least.
Maybe they're clinging to the notion that she was the "real winner" because of the popular vote, but I don't think too many people buy that. Everyone knew the rules of the presidential race from the start, and Hillary of all people was supposed to be savvy and experienced candidate who would understand exactly how to approach the pursuit of 270 electoral votes. For her to run up the score in California at the expense of erstwhile blue Rust Belt states is no way to win, and Democrats can't be too happy that she fumbled away a race that was supposed to be hers with a strategic mistake like that.
Then again - and this is the other reason it's so curious they're putting her in front of us yet again - I'm not so sure strategy really explains her loss. Regardless of strategy, it ultimately comes down to this one, unassailable fact: Hillary is awful. The left-wing base can't stand her. Independents don't trust her. Republicans loathe her. Even Democrat party regulars mainly got behind her out of a sense of duty. It was her turn and she had the financial backers, so the whole thing seemed kind of pre-ordained, and good party soldiers fall in line when that's the case.
This might just be me projecting my own thinking onto the other side, but my presumption is that most Democrats are very much over the Clintons and want them to fade from the picture. Even if you thought Hillary would have made a good president, you have to recognize she is not well liked by the public and she is certainly not the party's future. You might even argue that a Democrat nominee without the ethical baggage and the tendency to repel people personally might have defeated Trump, which is all the more reason you're not really helping yourselves by reminding everyone else why the voters chose the guy you said was the orange Hitler.
And it's not as though she had anything of note to say. Resistance plus persistance? Really? Any third-rate party slug could have gone on camera and said that. Do you really think Hillary holds such star power than it's going to make a difference if you trot her out there to mouth such empty platitudes?
I think we all realize that Democrats' bench is pretty empty, and they've got some work to do raising up new stars - especially given the coast-to-coast electoral decimation they suffered under Obama. It's hard to cultivate rising stars when your candidates keep losing. But if they really think they're better off shoving Hillary back in our faces than, say, just about anyone else, then 2018 and 2020 might be a lot more fun than I would have thought.
