The wages of the refusal to fight is a drop in one recent poll!

SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 2013

Hillary Clinton’s numbers take a dive: Personally, we’ve never been sold on the idea of Hillary Clinton as a candidate in 2016.

(Not that there’s anyone else.)

We know, we know—our statement is shocking. On the One True Liberal Channel, the children have been telling us that Clinton would be a sure thing if she decided to run.

Serving comfort food to us rubes, MSNBC pushed this line quite hard around the time Clinton left State. If we might adapt the words of The Band, “We ourselves were among the ones who thought it was just a childish thing to do.”

Is it obvious Clinton will choose to run? It doesn’t seem so to us. Beyond that, it seems
to us that obvious problems loom if she decides to do so.

Clinton would be 69 in 2016. We don’t think that would be helpful. Beyond that, there is a pre-existing boatload of negative scripts about Clinton waiting to be re-activated.

The children don’t seem to understand that! But then, what else is new?

There are a million negative scripts about Clinton in the naked city. Most of these scripts were concocted out of whole cloth many years ago.

That said, these scripts are real, and everyone has heard them. They do exist, and they could easily be reloaded.

Unless you get your wisdom from MSNBC, this has been one of the obvious reasons for the endless attacks on Susan Rice over the past nine months. A cover-up was staged! It was designed to obscure the deaths of four brave Americans!

This bit of pathology comes straight from the pre-existing novel about Hillary Clinton, the dragon lady who will say and do anything to win. You just can’t believe what she says!

This brings us to Jake Tapper’s report on CNN last night. Tapper spoke with a trio of certified insider pundits. This explains the tapioca they offered:

TAPPER (5/31/13): I want to move to the next topic which is: In the next—most recent Quinnipiac poll, Hillary Clinton's favorability ratings have taken a hit. It was 61 percent which is huge, very, very strong. Now, it's 52 percent. The big question I guess is, why? Kevin, is this—

MADDEN: The wonderful confines of having an apolitical job in a very political city. And now once you step outside of those safe confines and you're then again put into the scrutiny of the political machine, whether it's on the media, opponents, and just the nature of politics itself, it takes a hit. And it's inevitable.

TAPPER: Do polls matter this early? We don't even know if she is going to run for president. But do they matter this early?

CUTTER: No, they don't. They don't really reflect ultimately how people are going to vote in primaries or, you know, general elections. It is an eternity between now and 2016.

BROWNSTEIN: Having said that, I mean, that is obviously true. But what this does show you is the natural kind of resting point in American politics right now is pretty close to 50/50.

TAPPER: Right.

BROWNSTEIN: You know, we are very closely divided. Slight demographic advantage for Democrats in the presidential race but 61 percent, reality and gravity are setting in.

According to Brownstein, the new poll shows that “the natural kind of resting point in American politics right now is pretty close to 50/50.” Let’s put the airbrush away: It also shows how easy it is to reactive negative portraits of Clinton.

This is only one poll. It may turn out to be an outlier. But this poll should serve as a wake-up call for the dreamers at MSNBC. We’ll try to type very slowly now, helping them follow our point:

For twenty years, the right has been given free rein to create unflattering narratives about major Democrats. Clinton, Clinton and Gore were the early victims of this change in the culture.

It will be very easy to reboot the negative themes about Hillary Clinton. (To cite just one giant offender, Chris Matthews worked like a dog to create and advance those themes right through 2008. For now, he has been repurposed.)

These narratives won’t suddenly go away because the children want that. If Clinton runs, those familiar, highly unflattering narratives will be back with a vengeance.

Mainstream pundits will play along. Will the children be willing to fight them?

That Quinnipiac poll may be an outlier. But anyone with an ounce of sense would have understood all along that Susan Rice was being trashed to produce this drop in Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.

For more than eight months, the children have run off and hid in the woods as Rice was trashed in ridiculous ways about what happened in Benghazi. But then, career liberal pundits have functioned this way for at least the last 21 years.

On the brighter side, they’re being paid very big money to make us feel good, to pleasure us with silly claims about the way Clinton can’t lose.

If Gore had run in 2008: A similar situation obtained in early 2006, after Al Gore had become the toast of the liberal world. For a real-time review, just click here.

In April 2006, Ezra Klein wrote a front-page piece in The American Prospect, asking if Gore would run again in 2008. To us, that prospect seemed highly unlikely. Because he isn’t the world’s dumbest person, Gore of course understood the way it would work:

The very day he announced a new run, a string of old claims would be back with a vengeance. Al Gore said he invented the Internet! Al Gore doesn’t know who he is! Al Gore has a problem with the truth! Why does Gore exaggerate when the truth would be just as good?

Back in 2006, Ezra showed no sign of knowing that this is the way the game would be played. Seven years later, the children on The One True Channel seem to be equally clueless.