With President Donald Trump nearly at the 100-day mark, Politico thought it would be a good time to evoke some Hillary Clinton fantasies. It's a rosy picture of competent leadership, sure, but it's a little long on puffery and a little short on political reality.
For starters, there's not one mention of Benghazi, the stick that Republicans used to beat Clinton over the head every time she seems like a threat. Wasn't that going to be a never-ending series of investigations to look into everything?
Heck, even after Donald Trump was inaugurated, House Republicans were crowing that "the investigation continues," as if there was another level to the email palooza going on or something. Oh, wait, in Politico's world, there is another email drama to enjoy:
A Clinton spokesman refuses to comment on questions raised by the Wall Street Journal regarding President Clinton’s continued use of a private server and email while in the White House. “The American people have spoken on this issue,” says Clinton friend James Carville. “And they don’t care.”
No, there is zero probability that Hillary Clinton, were she elected, would be using a private email server because she is not an idiot. And any interview with any of Clinton's staffers would have revealed that she probably wouldn't have used a private email server were she elected president. Those interviews could have also been helpful in scoping out her 100-day plans, so we wouldn't get wishful thinking like this:
President Clinton’s most controversial appointment, Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Warren, receives 62 votes for confirmation.
President Clinton appears at the Rose Garden to announce New Jersey Senator Cory Booker as her choice to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.
But if you want to go further into fantasyland, there's this little nugget:
With the Republican Party in disarray, and plunging in popularity, two moderate Republican senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, announce that they will henceforth be independents. They will caucus with the Democrats, effectively giving them a 50/50 majority (with Vice President Tim Kaine the tie-breaking vote).
Please find me a world where not one, but two Republican senators, holding a majority in the Senate, jump ship to flip that body to the Democrats, instead of running as the anti-Hillary party that worked so well for them the eight years prior. But I have another question:
If, on the eighth day, Collins and Murkowski caucus with the Democrats, how the hell does the Obamacare repeal vote manage to hit Clinton's desk on Day 13?
What the hell is this, guys?
Hillary Clinton stuns the audience at the Academy Awards by appearing on stage in person to present one of the evening’s first awards
Is Hillary Clinton a focused president passing laws left and right or is she going to be a celebrity president basking in the glow of her first 100 days? As someone focused on optics, she's not going to be inviting ridicule for appearing at an uber-Hollywood function. (Though if you gave me Tim Kaine, I'd believe it.)
It's like Politico wasn't sure if her would-be administration would be scandal ridden or uber-competent, so it decided to jump back and forth between the two.
And there's incomprehensible lack of understanding of how the media works — from Politico, of all places!
Chelsea Clinton is named senior advisor to the president and director of the brand new White House Women’s Empowerment Office. She takes an office in the West Wing. Except for a few columns in conservative-leaning outlets, there is no other criticism of the appointment.
No, there would be criticism all over.
Ah, but if there's one thing to count on, it's knowing that the white guy will come in at the end and save the day:
In a lengthy piece in the New York Times, “sources close to former President Bill Clinton” credit him for his wife’s razor-thin election victory with an “eleventh hour strategy change” that focused on North Carolina and Florida. . . .
Echoing the earlier piece in the Times, the Washington Post offers a tick-tock of the final weeks of the Clinton-Trump race, characterizing Bill Clinton as “the mastermind” of a narrow electoral vote victory. “Nobody understood the mood of the country better than he did,” says a source. “Not even Hillary.”
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