{"id":12528,"date":"2016-01-23T13:33:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T13:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12528"},"modified":"2016-01-23T13:34:31","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T13:34:31","slug":"clinton-inevitability-has-vanished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12528","title":{"rendered":"Clinton &#8216;inevitability&#8217; has vanished"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/hillary-clinton-womenjpeg-045d7.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12531\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12531\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/hillary-clinton-womenjpeg-045d7-300x218.jpg\" alt=\"Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reacts as she is introduced to speak at the Massachusetts Conference for Women in Boston, Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014. (AP Photo\/Elise Amendola)\" width=\"300\" height=\"218\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/hillary-clinton-womenjpeg-045d7-300x218.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/hillary-clinton-womenjpeg-045d7-768x557.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/hillary-clinton-womenjpeg-045d7-1024x743.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There once was a time when Hillary Rodham Clinton was considered a shoo-in to become the second consecutive history-making president in U.S. history.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll recall the narrative.<\/p>\n<p>She would succeed the first <em>African-American<\/em> president, Barack Obama, by becoming the first <em>female<\/em> president. She would win in a historic landslide. No one since, say, 1952, when\u00a0Republican Dwight Eisenhower &#8212; who commanded our troops to victory over Hitler during World War II &#8212;\u00a0was considered as <em>destined<\/em> to become president.<\/p>\n<p>Then a funny thing happened.<\/p>\n<p>Her critics began making points that stuck. They drew blood. The email\u00a0tempest. Benghazi. Her occasional waffling. Is she trustworthy?<\/p>\n<p>Then along came Bernie Sanders, the independent U.S. senator from Vermont running as a Democrat. He started drawing those huge crowds. He&#8217;s blasting the daylights out of big banks, Wall Street and demanding wage equality. He&#8217;s a socialist &#8212; and let&#8217;s cut the crap about &#8220;democratic socialist,&#8221; which is meant to soften the &#8220;s-word.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now the once-inevitable president is less so.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2016\/01\/18\/wendy-davis-not-worried-bernie-sanders-will-defeat\/?goal=0_141c96f7df-0db5bc44d9-99785833&amp;mc_cid=0db5bc44d9&amp;mc_eid=c01508274f\">Fellow Democrats <\/a>are now flocking to New Hampshire to say things like &#8220;a loss here won&#8217;t doom&#8221; the candidate. Former Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wendy Davis is among the latest to recite that mantra.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe it won&#8217;t. Then gain, maybe it&#8217;ll signal a dramatic replay of 2008, when the then-U.S. senator from New York, Clinton, was supposed to be the nominee &#8212; only she ran into that young upstart from Illinois, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, the self-proclaimed &#8220;skinny guy with the funny name.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Does history repeat itself? Are we witnessing a sort of 2.0 version of what occurred eight years ago?<\/p>\n<p>A lot of political analysts still believe Hillary Clinton is\u00a0the candidate to beat. She has the so-called &#8220;ground game&#8221; in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. She&#8217;s got the party machine lubed and ready to roll for her in other key primary states.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s remember, though, this truth about the 2016 campaign. All the &#8220;conventional wisdom&#8221; has been tossed into the Dumpster. I&#8217;m one of those who believed Clinton was marching straight to the Oval Office. I didn&#8217;t foresee what would transpire . . . any more than I foresaw would be happening on the Republican Party side of this contest.<\/p>\n<p>You want unpredictability in a presidential campaign?<\/p>\n<p>I believe we&#8217;ve gotten it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There once was a time when Hillary Rodham Clinton was considered a shoo-in to become the second consecutive history-making president in U.S. history. You&#8217;ll recall the narrative. She would succeed the first African-American president, Barack Obama, by becoming the first female president. She would win in a historic landslide. No one since, say, 1952, when\u00a0Republican &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12528\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Clinton &#8216;inevitability&#8217; has vanished<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[540,597,5889,5888,2139,2238,5347,5302],"class_list":["post-12528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-democratic-race","tag-gop-race","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-ike","tag-iowa-caucuses","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12528"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12533,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12528\/revisions\/12533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}