Hillary Clinton no longer looks inevitable

 

Hillary Clinton no longer looks inevitable

ON December 8th Hillary Clinton received what should have been a boost from Andrew Young, one of the giants of the civil-rights movement. Mr Young pronounced that he wants her chief rival, Barack Obama,

to be president—but in 2016, not 2008. Burberry Outlet

The 46-year-old Mr Obama is just too green about the gills for the highest office in the land, Mr Young argued, and lacks a network of political allies that could sustain him in times of trouble. “To put a brother in there by himself is toRed Bottom Shoes set him up for crucifixion,” he said. But he could not resist adding a kicker. “Bill [Clinton] is every bit as black as Barack—he's probably gone with more black women than Barack.”

Mr Young's faux pas is a small symptom of the Clinton campaign's troubles. Mrs Clinton's commanding leads in the make-or-break states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have evaporated. And the much-vaunted Hillary machine is looking, for the moment at least, more Heath Robinson than Vorsprung durch Technik. The bad news keeps coming, Discount Oakley Sunglassesand even the good news has a way of turning bad.

Mr Obama is proving to be Mrs Clinton's perfect nightmare. He has not only neutralised her most compelling claim for attention—the first black president is a more momentous prospect than the first woman president. He has also shaped the race. His early entry into the contest forced Mrs Clinton to declare her candidacy sooner than she had planned. His fund-raising prowess forced her to make much more use of her husband than she had intended. Last weekend stadium-sized crowds turned up to watch Oprah Winfrey, the only woman in America who can turn “Anna Karenina” into a bestseller, stumping for Mr Obama. Mrs Clinton was reduced to touring Iowa with her daughter, Chelsea, Air Max 2011 and her mother, Dorothy.

Mrs Clinton's problems have forced her to abandon the high horse of inevitability for the boxing ring. Yet so far she has proved to be no great shakes as a pugilist. She excused her poor performance in a debate in Philadelphia by accusing her fellow (male) candidates of “piling on”. This feebly suggested that she wanted to be given special treatment because of her gender. Then she threw a succession of wild punches that made her look like an amateur. The Clinton campaign's decision to dredge up the fact that Mr Obama had written an essayAir Max in kindergarten on how he wanted to be president was particularly misguided. What sort of person quotes a kindergarten essay against a rival?

Mrs Clinton's recent troubles have raised questions about what is arguably her most important selling-

point, her competence. The Clintonistas have always presented her as a woman who is “tough enough” to deal with anything that is thrown at her—trained in the Clinton wars of the 1990s and always ready with a counter-punch. SheOakley Sunglasses is certainly one of America's most accomplished practitioners of the politics of personal destruction. But the skills that she perfected behind the scenes seem to be far less effective when they are practised in the limelight.

精英有这么好的写手，当然人气火爆！