Hillary Clinton is not running for President. I am sure of that. Those of you who are reading this are probably wondering why it is that I even have to state such an obvious fact. Well, it is because there are still a few fringe wackos out there who believe that she is running, or at least that she is still considering it. Of course, one group is the Draft Hillary movement, which has very little support and has politely been ignored by Senator Clinton. Then there are the real wackos in the Hillary for President equation: the conservatives.
The conservative will not give up on the delusion that she still intends to run. They will not let it die. Last night on CNN's Capital Gang, Robert Novak asked the L.A. Times' Ron Brownstein, who was reporting from a dinner in Iowa, "If Hillary delighted the media and surprised everybody by announcing for president tonight, you don't believe that that would really shake up everything in Iowa, as it would all over the country?" Brownstein responded like any rational person would have, "If there was an earthquake and the -- you know, the U.S. fell off west of the Rockies, it would shake up the race, too. But I think that, no, I think -- of course it would shake up the race. She's enormously popular, but it's not going to happen. I mean, they're more likely to, you know, Bob, turn to you frankly I mean at this point. I mean Hillary has said that she is not going to run in 2004." Like me, Brownstein was almost shocked that Novak asked such a stupid question, but the problem is that these wacko conservatives have been chomping at the bit for Hillary to run since this Summer.
Even when Wesley Clark was coming into the race, William Safire (pumpkin head that he is), wrote a whole editorial in the New York Times about how Clark was just a stalking-horse for Hillary. I watched Safire talk about this on both Meet the Press and Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and on both occasions he got so excited I thought he might actually have an orgasm. I wonder if it is possible for a group of people to hate someone so much that they begin to love them, just because they miss having them around to hate. I think that is what has happened with the conservative in this country when it comes to the Clintons.
However, I an not the first person to make this observation, Timothy Noah fromSlate has written a three-part series(Read Part I, II, III) on the subject called "Republicans for Hillary". Here's a piece from part III: "Hillary Clinton's under-the-radar presidential candidacy—which, as Chatterbox observed previously, was invented by conservative commentators to fulfill various practical and psychological imperatives and has no reality outside their imaginations—has ended. That's a relief! With the passage of time, the real Hillary Clinton's repeated denials that she was running for president in 2004 grew more and more plausible, putting the right in a real quandary."
Maybe, Noah didn't see Bob Novak this weekend. I think Noah spoke too soon. The conservatives still think she will run. They must still be having delusions about the good 'ol days under President Clinton.