Sometimes people sabotage themselves. They try so hard to succeed, but are unable to see that their best efforts are undermining their own efforts. Lately, it is the Democrats who are showing many signs of self-defeating behavior.
The latest example of Democrat self-sabotage is the party’s welcome to Bill and Hillary Clinton to get involved in the 2018 elections. The Clintons, of course, are the Democrat power couple whose incompetence at running the last election led to what can surely be called the most unexpected and humiliating defeat in the history of the Democratic Party.
When asked whether the party would welcome support from Ms. Clinton and former President Obama, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, answered, “We welcome support from everybody who wants to help, including Secretary Clinton and President Obama.”
When pressed as to whether Democrats would welcome former President Bill Clinton, Van Hollen answered, “Yes. As the head of the DSCC, we welcome those individuals and everybody that wants to help.”
Van Hollen added that the final decision on assistance from the Clintons and Obama would be up to the individual candidates. “Those are not decisions the DSCC gets involved in,” he said. “Those are decisions that are left to every campaign and they can talk to anybody who wants to help and decide who should come to the state and when.”
Republicans should hope that Democratic campaigns embrace the Clintons. Even though Donald Trump’s approval rating is underwater with an average of 41 percent approval according to the FiveThirtyEight index, Hillary Clinton’s popularity is worse. A Gallup poll showed Ms. Clinton at 36 percent approval in December 2017. A Wall Street Journal poll from April 2018 found that she had sunk even lower to 27 percent.
Bill Clinton, who was always more popular and better campaigner than his wife, is a liability in the #MeToo era. Even the left has finally started criticizing his treatment of women, albeit 20 years too late. The former president found himself in hot water again this week after trying to claim victim status because he left the White House with $16 million in legal fees after fighting impeachment.
Think about what the Democrats would be getting if they embrace the Clintons again. As with Hillary in 2016, the party would get a couple under investigation. The FBI launched an investigation into corruption at the Clinton Foundation in January 2018. After the 2016 debacle, it should be evident that people being investigated by the FBI should be held at arms length.
Democrats would get a couple that was so arrogant and incompetent that they flouted the law with a private email server instead of using secure government email systems. The only logical explanation for this decision was to shield illicit emails from preservation in the national archives. It was this decision that led to Hillary’s downfall as it contributed directly to James Comey’s October 2016 memo that swung the election in Donald Trump’s favor.
The Democrats would be welcoming back the people who undermined their own primary system. Donna Brazile, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, admitted that the Hillary campaign had stacked the DNC with its own people even before the 2016 primary. Brazile also admitted to leaking debate questions to Hillary’s campaign to give her an unfair advantage.
The Clinton infestation of the DNC eventually led to the election of Donald Trump. Without Hillary’s stacked deck, it is possible that Bernie Sanders would have been the eventual nominee. No one knows for sure what would have happened in a Sanders-Trump matchup, but Sanders consistently polled better than both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. It is possible, even likely, that America would have a socialist president, something that would thrill most Democrats, were it not for the Clinton’s underhanded dealings with the DNC.
Finally, what Democrats get if they decide to welcome Hillary back into their camp is the one candidate in the country who was so bad that she could not defeat the most unpopular major party candidate in history. The vaunted Clinton machine fell to a man in his first political campaign ever. Hillary was just an awful, uninspiring candidate who was toxic on the campaign trail.
On the other hand, President Obama would be a better surrogate. The 44th president has so far not been inclined to re-enter the political arena, but Gallup found in February 2018 that 63 percent approve of the way that Obama handled his job as president. Considering that President Trump has spent much of his time erasing Obama’s legacy of executive actions, the former president could be a powerful voice for Democratic candidates.
In the wake of the 2016 election, Democrats seemed poised to put the Clinton era behind them for good. Two years later, the Clintons are trying to creep back in, but they really have nothing to offer Democratic candidates. If Democrats are smart, they will quash the Clinton resurgence now in order to avoid a repeat of 2016.
Originally published on The Resurgent
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