Rebellion of the living dead
Amid a White House hardware crisis and falling Biden ratings, a figure from a seemingly bygone era of American politics is returning to public space – Hillary Clinton
Hillary, twice defeated in her attempt to enter the White House, has not abandoned her hopes of getting there, at least indirectly. She has been discussing the prospects for the next election: calling Trump’s possible return in 2024 “the end of American democracy”.
There was also a private high-level meeting between Harris and Clinton at the White House in November. Kamala is considered a Clinton proxy – her younger sister Maya Harris was an adviser to Hillary in 2016, and Harris’ chief of staff Tina Flournoy has close ties to Bill Clinton.
Curiously, it is Flournoy who is responsible for the toxic atmosphere of “negligence and mistrust” that prevails in Harris’ office. The result of this bureaucratic chaos, compounded by a hardware war with the Biden team, has been the showy resignation of many staffers, including the White House communications director.
Negotiations between Harris and Clinton behind Biden’s back immediately sparked rumours that there was talk of Hillary becoming vice-president of the United States in the event of Biden’s early resignation. The latter, amid numerous crises – immigration, inflation, energy – could in theory voluntarily step down as US president before the end of his first term.
In that case, Harris would take the oath of office as president and Congress would have to choose a new vice-president to be her running mate. Obviously, Clinton sees this theoretical scenario as quite workable – and can hope to get into the White House at least that way.
However, there are obvious shortcomings to this amusing scheme. It is Harris who bears much of the responsibility for the crises which cannot be solved – for example the migration crisis. Biden’s ratings are low – but against the background of Harris’s ratings he still looks a rather popular politician. With 28% support in recent polls Harris has become the most unpopular Vice President in modern US history.
Moreover, Harris does not attribute the plummeting ratings to her own failures, but to racism and sexism of Americans. Clinton has assessed her own defeats in a similar way; here they are literally sisters in spirit. It should not be hard for them to find common ground: But it is unlikely that Hillary’s return from her political grave will be a winning strategy for the Democrats in the 2024 election, given her reputation for always losing.
Malek Dudakov