Here’s a question. I’m trying to restrain myself from writing any more posts hostile to Hillary Clinton. I’ve looked at the polls and the internals of the delegates in Ohio and Texas, and regardless of the popular vote, Hillary is definitely going to come out Tuesday even farther behind in the race than she is today. Her candidacy is what Monty Python called a dead parrot.
I don’t feel the need to beat a dead parrot. But I do want to speculate about where Clinton goes from here. Some have suggested that she might be a good Majority Leader in the Senate. She might well be good in that role and it is something she might aspire to, but Harry Reid is about to enjoy an election that will bring him 4-13 new Democratic senators. He’s not going to get replaced anytime soon. Clinton’s most prominent post in the Senate in on the Armed Services committee but, as you can see, she has little seniority.
Chairman- Carl Levin (Michigan)
Edward M. Kennedy (Massachusetts)
Robert C. Byrd (West Virginia)
Joseph I. Lieberman (Connecticut)
Jack Reed (Rhode Island)
Daniel K. Akaka (Hawaii)
Bill Nelson (Florida)
E. Benjamin Nelson (Nebraska)
Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York)
Mark L. Pryor (Arkansas)
Jim Webb (Virginia)
Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
She ranks no higher than third on any of the subcommittees. In other words, she isn’t going to chair anything related to our Armed Services any time soon. So, what other posts does she have? Well…she has a middling rank on the Select Committee on Aging, chaired by Wisconsin chair Herb Kohl, for what it’s worth. She also serves on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Teddy Kennedy, and the Environment & Public Works Committee, chaired by Barbara Boxer. She has little seniority on either committee, but she is chairwoman on the E&PW Superfund and Environmental Health Subcommittee.
Unfortunately, she has no short-term prospects to exercise any significant power within the Senate caucus. She does have a minor position in the Senate leadership as Democratic Committee Outreach Vice-Chair. Sen. Jeff Bingaman serves as the Chair…and this is a very minor position.
Simply put, Clinton is a backbench senator who has few prospects of moving up in the short to medium term. She sure as hell isn’t going to run for Governor of New York anytime soon. Eliot Spitzer is just getting warmed up in his first term. There doesn’t seem anywhere for her to go. President Obama is not going to appoint her to anything, and she probably wouldn’t accept anything less than Secretary of State, if that.
It has to be excruciating for the Clintons to contemplate this level of irrelevancy. Believe me, John Kerry and Al Gore have and had far better prospects.
I don’t write this to be mean, but it is for informational purposes. It does, perhaps, explain the unusual (and slightly irrational) tenacity with which the Clinton campaign fights on…damn the torpedoes.
