Wasting no time in setting the tone for
her campaign against Trump, Clinton, savoring the historical moment—of securing
the number of delegates required for the nomination—appealed to the supporters
of Sanders thus: “Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to
generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment
possible.”
Endorsing Clinton’s candidature for the
Presidential race, though President Obama said of her: “I don’t think there’s
ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. I have seen her judgment.
I’ve seen her toughness. I’ve seen her commitment to our values up close”, the
road ahead doesn’t appear to be all that snowy white for her.
Of course, with Senator Elizabeth
Warren, a leading progressive voice and who took an attack-dog role against
Trump, throwing her lot behind Hillary Clinton—“I am ready to get in this fight
and work my heart out for Hillary Clinton to become the next President of the
US and ensure that Donald Trump never gets any place close to the White
House”—it becomes clear that it is only a matter of time before the Democratic
insurgent, Senator Bernie Sanders quit the race and endorsed Clinton
wholesomely to better her prospects against Trump. But till then, Sanders, a
rank outsider to Democratic Party till a year back, with his demonstrated
persistence is sure to make her look weak and Democratic Party divided.
When we talk of her bumpy road ahead to
White House, the other thing that immediately strikes a reader’s mind is: her
unusual e-mail arrangement as Secretary of State. The internal watchdog of the
State Department which has examined her using a private e-mail account for her
official business though does not allege her of breaking any law, asserts that
she was under an obligation to seek clearance from the Department, which she
didn’t. Any other seasoned politician, recognizing its potential to cause the
embarrassment, would have taken steps to quickly pass on the evidence about all
the traffic of electronic mail, confess the carelessness and express remorse to
silence the matter at its very budding stage itself. Instead, she displaying an
uncandid response to the scandal, mostly shifting positions—citing instances of
similar nature from the past, particularly of Colin Powell’s acts; stating that
she sought the administration’s approval; citing her strong desire to maintain
secrecy; or, stating, “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible”,
etc.,—offered herself on a platter to Trump for his tweeter-feast. Republicans
have indeed attacked her poor judgment that exposed the US national security to
risk and also accused her of deleting key e-mails that she did not want
Americans to know about. Once the OIG report is out, and should it contain any
adverse remarks, Trump is sure to exploit it to the hilt to nail her down. That
aside, all this amateurish act has only shown her in poor light.
There are also analysts who wonder that
her very essence of being ‘Hillary Clinton’ and the characters such as Bill and
his Clinton Foundation, Huma Abedin, Sidney Blumenthal, etc., that she is
surrounded by are good enough fodder for her opponent team to trouble her with
repeated teasers on the social media. Over it, there is also a fear—fear about
her poor acumen in campaigning via social media, that too, shunning sellable
phrases like ‘build a wall’, ‘ban the Muslims’, bomb ISIS, etc., which her
opponent is freely airing, and capture the attention of the young voters.
Nevertheless, Clinton is known for her
“idealism tempered by time and experience”. She is realistic, moderate, stable
and of patience with an eye to get results for people. For instance, reports
indicate that during the recent lead-pipe water scandal of Flint, Michigan,
she, unlike Sanders, sent two of her aides to the Mayor of Flint to ascertain what
needs to be done to help and accordingly, she picking up the phone spoke to
Governor and thus she added pressure to get water funds released. But the big
question is: how to communicate such incrementalism in a campaign?
Of course, Hillary, the lady of level-head
with a lifelong passion for social justice, who could differentiate herself
from her younger-self of the early 70s thus: “I know who it’s like to be
knocked down and how to dust yourself off and you get back up and you keep
fighting for what you believe in” is sure to infuse that missing fire in her
campaign. Having served as Secretary of State, Senator of New York and having
been a practicing lawyer, professor of Law and with a proven interest in
children’s law and family policy in the form of published scholarly papers, she
will not lose time in bouncing back and wooing the voters towards her policies.
Encouragingly, that sprit is already visible: for once her campaign team could
deliver a simple but scathing three-word tweet: “Delete your account” as a
response to Trump’s tweet, “Obama endorsed crooked Hillary. He wants four more
years of Obama—but nobody else does!” which went viral in no time.
No doubt, Hillary Clinton cannot
electrify the voters for she is not a natural politician like her husband or
for that matter Barrack Obama, but she has the intelligence, grit, energy and
importantly the ability to accommodate diversity and once preliminaries are
over and as an old follower of her said, when “head and heart” begin to set in,
voters are sure to shun away Trump—who “bragged about swooping in and
benefitting off other people’s misery” during the housing bust of 2006-08; whom
Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts called “a small, insecure money
grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he makes a profit off it”,
and “cares about no one but himself”—in preference to Hillary Clinton.
Nor did the rest of the world—which
strongly believes that it would be better off with Clinton—would fail in
rooting for her success against the Trump, that “bigoted, lying, isolationist,
egotistical seller of the ‘reversal of global-order’ whom the grand old party
has chosen as rival to Clinton. For, it believes that Clinton—who as the
Secretary of State advocated for ‘smart power’, a combination of military hard
power and soft power of economics, as a strategic-tool to assert US leadership
and its values in conducting global affairs—understands the
complex-interdependence of today’s world and importantly exhibits a
value-system that cares to uphold that global-interdependence.
That said, we also must take note of
what a journalist who covered her extensively both in the office and outside of
it has to say of her persona: “Clearly, however, something seems to happen to
Clinton”—the lady who has the political skills that an office holder needs,
which indeed had been acknowledged by even former Republican Secretary of State
when he said that she “ran the State Department in the most effective way that
I’ve ever seen”—“when the task is asking people to vote for her”. Over it, you
have Trump from the other side drumming down accusing her of ‘Criminal
misconduct’: “You have a President coming out and endorsing somebody who is
under criminal investigation. Is this supposed to be the way the country
supposed to be?”
So,
that being what it is and people’s ‘will’ being the final arbiter of democracy,
the question now is: Will Hillary Rodham Clinton create history?/Will America
remain as it is or morph into a cave-dweller?
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