In 2007-08, she was thought of as the presumptive candidate, until some guy called Barack Obama showed up. Obama brilliantly exploited her support for Iraq War and the general feeling of disgust with the establishment.
This time around are there any vulnerabilities like that that could be exploited by an Obama type candidate? She left the Administration before the bottom fell out of the tub wrt Foreign Policy vis a via Russia, Libya, Iraq etc. On the other hand, she was SoS when the genesis of many of these decisions were made.
She has to my (foreign eye) not really been involved in Domestic issues since 2007, so she is not tainted by the Financial Crises and Recession or the brusing budget battles that many of her challengers might have fought,
There have been lots of stories recently about how the Clinton Foundation has been taking money from foreign & other suspicous sources. It’s recently changed its rules about who it will accept donations from, but this is sure to raise questions about who the Clintons owe favors to.
She has a general problem with a lack of transparency. This has been noticable in the recent flaps about the Benghazi embassy attack (where she has refused to provide State Department e-mails relating to the incident), and about Hillary’s private e-mail account (where she had her staff go thru and delete large swaths of the records). Whether true or not, she comes across as someone who has something to hide.
One man’s bottom falling out of the tub is another man’s success story. Obama will be remembered as the guy who had the courage to begin to put an end to a 50 year failed embargo against Cuba, who negotiated with the Iranians to stop them from developing nukes, and who didn’t lie to start a war. I think she can run on the Obama foreign policy quite well, thank you.
I think her age and heath will be her biggest vulnerabilities. If elected, she’d be 69 on her inauguration day. And unlike most other issues, her age is not a rehash of something that happened years ago. It’s the best chance for the Republicans to work up a new narrative on her.
The downside of this strategy (which is probably why it hasn’t been raised yet) will be if her Republican opponent is in her age range. Looking at potential nominees, Pataki and King are both older than Clinton but they’re unlikely. Perry is less than two years younger than Clinton but that’s too close to make age an issue and after his last campaign I feel Perry’s also a long shot. Bush and Kasich are both five years younger than Clinton; they’re at the point where they might be able to use the age argument but it’ll be weak.
eta: I just noticed the OP was asking about the primary rather than the general election. But I think think my overall point applies.
I think Clinton is so far ahead that there is no realistic possibility of beating her in the primaries. So candidates will either be interested in the Vice Presidency or positioning themselves for the nomination in later years. For either of these possibilities I don’t think anyone would want to go for the vicious attacks on Clinton. So I think they will either be talking about policy differences or attacking Republicans.
The health questions aren’t just vaguely age-related. She did once have a "right transverse venous thrombosis’ between her brain and skull, requiring surgery, and that does take ongoing monitoring. She did not, as Karl Rove put it, have “traumatic brain injury”. A recurrence of the problem would create a sudden scramble to enter the race by every Democrat you ever heard of. But you wouldn’t see her age or health directly referred to in a primary; a younger and presumably more vigorous opponent would just try to look like one and let the voters draw their own inferences.
Probably her other biggest weaknesses that could be challenged, by someone determined to challenge her in a primary, would be her Iraq War vote and her uncomfortable closeness to Wall Street interests.
AK84, if you could be more specific about how you think the bottom has fallen out of US foreign policy, it would be possible to answer you on the point. But even so, in a primary or even a general election in the US, foreign policy just doesn’t matter much anyway, unless the screwup is so monumental that our own people are getting killed in large numbers over it. Even when the subject comes up, a candidate whose one answer to every problem is to bomb the bastards will typically not do well.
No one seeking an ideologically pure or ethically pristine candidate was ever going to get enthused about Hillary Clinton. She’s primarily a wheeler-dealer political insider type of politician.
Obama was an inspiring speaker whose campaign positioned him as ideological (more so than he really is, he’s much more of a pragmatist than his followers tended to think he was). In Illinois he was pretty good at working with politicians from both parties (which was not emphasized overly much in his campaign). As US prez he has neither been greatly effective at working in a behind-the-scenes way with Republicans in Congress nor has he been the irresistible political force speaking from the proverbial bully pulpit and getting the American people squarely behind his policies and getting them to push Congress on his behalf. (He has, however, gotten far more successes tallied up in his political agenda than folks tend to realize, so he has some skills for the job).
Clinton may be far far better at making deals and engaging in agenda-fulfilling political insider trading than folks expect. (Many expect Republicans to spend all of her tenure in office frothing at the mouth).
Some of the skillset for that may involve a certain oiliness, pragmatic plotting, and lack of ideological purity that are the very characteristics that make some hold their noses or recoil from the idea of her in that office. I’ll say this: she’s been efficient at Senator and as Sec of State and although Republicans have frothed in front of their voting base about her they’ve apparently found her someone they can work with, or at least that’s the opinon I formed from reading news articles and profiles over the years.
Distasteful though some find those “impurities”, they *are *what make a leader effective in Getting Things Done. Face it. Inspirational speeches and life stories, usually not so much.
Meh, Cuba hasn’t been a threat for a long time and the embargo is only being lifted because the Castros are just about done being in power. Any president would have done the same so this is nothing special.
The negotiations aren’t done. We’ll have to wait and see how this turns out.
Of course her vulnerabilities could be exploited in a primary. There aren’t likely to be any significant primaries though. But her opponent(s) in the general election will come after her with the same ammunition. Her vulnerabilities are part of her strategy, she’ll be running as a victim. Her greatest vulnerability is her lack of accomplishment despite decades of her positions of power. The GOP is busy honing that message right now.
Guns are the example of an issue that will cause a swing voter who otherwise agrees with the Democrats to flip his vote, especially in the three states that determine the outcome of the election. Obama’s policy of silence on guns played a huge role in his ability to win in 2008 and 2012. If Clinton does not repudiate her history of support for gun confiscation, this will be one avenue that hurts her in a close election.
Whatever. The fact is that there is a substantial population of “people who agree with Democrats on every issue but guns” and Democratic candidates who shut up about guns always do better because they attract the votes of those people.
It’ll be a moot issue by 2016. I’ve been hearing since 2008 how Obama is going to confiscate all the guns in America. I know he’s fallen behind schedule but I figure he’ll grab them all in his final year and there won’t be any guns left for Clinton to confiscate.