Rare News Desk
Hillary Clinton faces a real dilemma as she and her team not-so-subtly lay the groundwork for a seemingly grassroots call for her to run for president: Will she embrace or shun President Obama’s policies?
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Hillary needs to differentiate herself from Obama’s policies, both foreign and domestic, because they have been an utter disaster. That differentiation is made more complicated by the fact that both she and Obama are creatures of the far left, plus she was the face of Obama’s foreign policies for four years.
But she can’t attack Obama personally because he remains popular with the left. Plus, she wants him to throw his support towards her instead of Vice President Joe Biden. Below are some of the issues she will try to dodge as long as possible.
Obamacare — Both Clinton and Obama proposed health care reform during the 2007-8 presidential campaign. We know from their previous statements that they both want a single-payer health care system, but both proposed keeping the private sector involved. Obama initially opposed a mandate to have coverage, while Hillary always wanted it. And Hillary proposed subsidies to buy insurance for people making up to 500 percent of the federal poverty level. Obamacare kept it to 400 percent (which is still way too high).
In other words, Hillary was probably to the left of Obama on health care reform in 2008. But can she be critical of the president’s signature legislation, when she would have backed something very similar—and did back in 1993-4? And yet if she isn’t critical of it, she may be one of the few Democrats defending one of the most unpopular entitlements in history.
Obamanomics — Obama’s economic policies have been as big a failure as Obamacare. Whatever Hillary proposes as her solution to jumpstart the economy will be an implicit criticism of Obama’s approach. Since she’s every bit the tax-and-spend Keynesian Obama is, about all she can do is propose more government spending and higher taxes, which implies Obama didn’t do enough.
Of course, it’s possible she could pull what the Financial Times called a U-turn when French socialist President François Hollande proposed a return to supply-side economics. In that unlikely event, it would be a slap in the face of Obama’s, and virtually all Democrats’, economic policies.
Obama-gridlock — Every presidential candidate makes the case that he (or she) can work with people across the aisle. Clinton will claim that as a senator, she got high marks from Republicans like Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) —note, I didn’t say conservatives—though she has nothing to show from her years in the Senate.
The obvious question, even from an adoring media, will be what she plans to do differently to end the partisan gridlock? Any answer necessarily contains a criticism of the way Obama has created the most deadlocked, partisan divide in history.
Obama-snoops — What will she say about the NSA spying scandal? Politico recently captured her efforts to dodge the issue in its headline, “Hillary Clinton goes mum on NSA, skirts surveillance fight.” The newspaper points out that she managed to talk for more 11 minutes on the subject without saying anything substantive.
Obama supports NSA spying and killing American citizens with drones, both here and abroad—it took Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to make Obama foreswear killing Americans with drones on American soil. Hillary may be dodging the question now, but she’ll eventually have to answer it.
The Obama Doctrine — Apart from apologizing for America and coddling tyrants and dictators, it’s not clear what Obama’s foreign policy is. But whatever it is, Hillary was its chief implementer. Nothing will be more interesting than to hear her try to climb out of that cesspool. Will she throw Obama under the bus by saying that stand-down orders on Benghazi came from the top? Can she shed some light on Obama’s kowtowing to Russia’s Vladimir Putin? And most importantly, how will she try to help America regain its standing in the world, and especially with Israel — a standing that has been shattered by Obama.
Because Hillary is tied at the hip to Obama and his far-left vision, she can’t afford to shun his policies. But if she wants to win, she can’t afford not to.
