The politician whose name is synonymous with the term “unlikable,” stepped back onto the national stage to complain about loneliness.
Sort of makes sense, you might say. Except Hillary Clinton didn’t write about her own loneliness. She wrote about the nation’s loneliness and tossed around references to 2024 while she was at it.
The politician so unelectable that she managed to elevate two political neophytes–Barack Obama and Donald Trump–to the presidency is declaring she warned us all along about the coming plague of loneliness in America.
She wrote a piece for The Atlantic, headlined, “The Weaponization of Loneliness,” that said her 1996 book “It Takes a Village,” warned about this apparent epidemic. By the way, folks who say, “I told you so,” a lot tend to be unlikable and lonely.
She also wrote, wait for it, that the right-wingers are exploiting loneliness to destroy democracy. Of course she did.
“The question that preoccupied me and many others over much of the past eight years is how our democracy became so susceptible to a would-be strongman and demagogue,” Hillary wrote of the second guy who defeated her for the presidency. “The question that keeps me up at night now—with increasing urgency as 2024 approaches—is whether we have done enough to rebuild our defenses or whether our democracy is still highly vulnerable to attack and subversion.”
Hillary has long been mentioned as part of the “if Joe Biden dies or drops out” Democratic primary. But she seems to be planting her feet in that shadow contest. Really, who better to “rebuild our defenses” than the person who warned us about the problem way back in 1996.
Will Hillary Clinton Run One More Time?
Hillary Clinton has never gotten over not being president–after twice being billed as inevitable. It seems likely she would want to take one last gasp for the presidency. If things fall in place and Biden doesn’t seek re-election, she’s in.
She must be savoring the chance to run against Trump in a rematch that in her mind she would win.
She will cast herself as the person who could have prevented all the Trumpian problems, the threats to democracy, the violation of norms and the other things that people at the cocktail parties she so wished she were still attending talk about.
Such lack of self-awareness, in the article, Hillary at times seemed an SNL parody of herself.
“The ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ has been of compelling interest to me for many years,” she wrote. “But I’ve long thought something important was missing from our national conversation about threats to our democracy. Now recent findings from a perhaps unexpected source—America’s top doctor—offer a new perspective on our problems and valuable insights into how we can begin healing our ailing nation.”
She referenced the surgeon general report about loneliness in America. Then she warned that the dreaded Steve Bannon was building this into an army to war on our democracy.
“It’s not just the surgeon general who recognizes that social isolation saps the lifeblood of democracy. So do the ultra-right-wing billionaires, propagandists, and provocateurs who see authoritarianism as a source of power and profit,” Hillary wrote. “There have always been angry young men alienated from mainstream society and susceptible to the appeal of demagogues and hate-mongers. But modern technology has taken the danger to another level. This was Steve Bannon’s key insight.”
Some of the problems she notes aren’t entirely wrong. Too many young people today would rather text friends or share memes on social media than have a conversation. But she turned a widely recognized problem into a political screed. She also invoked this imaginary war on democracy–which she knew would resonate with the party base and get her talked about on MSNBC programs.
Hillary is looking at the numbers.
Polls show Americans don’t want to see another Biden-Trump matchup in 2024, even though it seems inevitable. Polls consistently show a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run.
What Hillary likely hasn’t figured out, or can’t bring herself to figure out, is that Americans would almost assuredly prefer Biden or Trump over her. But the best way to escape the loneliness and move on with her life is to face reality.
