With just one month until the US midterm elections, Hillary Clinton will be campaigning to prevent Democratic wipeout at the polls. But as she rallies Democrat support, perhaps she might glance to another election, a couple of years down the road. Renegade has never swallowed the line that Hillary Clinton has put her presidential dreams behind her. It is hard to exaggerate the degree of nostalgia in the party for those halcyon Clinton days when the economy was booming and unemployment was below 5 per cent and the federal budget was in surplus. A Democratic meltdown in November would not just raise the question of whether Obama can be re-elected, but whether he can even be sure of winning re-nomination.
Just to remind everybody that there is a seasoned alternative with positive approval ratings, Clinton’s first public remarks after the election season started on Labour Day contained this intriguing riff: “I think that our rising debt level poses a national security threat… it undermines our capacity to act in our own interests and it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable. And it also sends a message of weakness, internationally.” Normally it’s the Republicans who charge Obama with being weak on national security; with friends like the Clintons…
