A plan for Kerry 2016?
State of the 2016 Race
A weekly column for The Hill analyzing the current state of the 2016 presidential race.
The Kerry for P.O.T.U.S. ’16 plan:
1. In 2004, John Kerry lost to President George W. Bush, but came close — if 50,000 votes had switched sides in Ohio, John Forbes Kerry — who, back at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H., patterned himself after the first JFK all the way down to the hairstyle and extra-long shirt cuffs — would have been the 44th president of the United States.
2. As a competitive politician, Kerry has never given up the dream of living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
3. Now, as secretary of State, he sees a path to the White House.
4. It looks like 2016 is going to be a “foreign policy” election.
{mosads}5. Anticipating this — and in contrast to Hillary Clinton’s empty, accomplishment-free four years as secretary of State — Kerry has been piling up agreements and treaties: 1) An emissions agreement with China; 2) normalization with Cuba; 3) and he’s now on the verge of a nuke deal with Iran.
6. Kerry believes — and it may very well happen — that he and his Iranian counterpart will earn the Nobel Peace Prize, a la then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973 for the Paris Peace Accords that “ended” the Vietnam War.
7. Kerry and President Obama have seen their three biggest Iran nuclear deal opponents go down — or perhaps about to go down — in the last few days: 1) Netanyahu trails in the final rounds of Israeli polls in advance of Tuesday’s crucial Israeli election; 2) the Justice Department leaked word of “possible” corruption charges against the administration’s most influential Democratic critic, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez; and 3) the 47 GOP Senators who wrote the letter to Iran have effectively discredited themselves.
8. In his mind, this is how Kerry sees the next 18 months: Armed with the Nobel and favorable press from the media, which have grown tired of the Clinton Act, he will be there to pick up the pieces after Hillary implodes.
9. According to the New York Post story on Sunday from best-selling author Ed Klein, the White House — directed by senior adviser Valerie Jarrett — has secretly launched six internal State Department investigations into Clinton’s tenure there — clearly searching for information to discredit her. All done, of course, with fingerprints carefully concealed.
10. Why? Obama hates President Bill Clinton. The president and the White House staff want to see Bill “The Big Dog” Clinton fail in his attempt to return to the White House.
11. Bill Clinton and Obama are the two alpha males of the Democratic Party. They loathe each other. And Obama will do anything to prevent Bill Clinton from retaking control of the Democratic Party.
12. Obama owes Kerry — big time — for giving him the crucial keynote speech at the 2004 Boston convention. That appearance launched the Obama phenomenon and propelled him all the way to the presidency.
13. Now Kerry expects to collect on that debt by having Obama’s tacit support in 2016 — including helping to puncture the Clinton Balloon.
14. For the immediate future, we can expect that — for their own legacy and political reasons — Obama and Kerry will force this Iran nuclear deal to happen, even if it is a lousy deal for the U.S. These two will do anything to make this deal happen — now.
15. Obama wants this to be his Nixon-goes-to-China moment, where he brings Iran back into the community of nations.
16. And Kerry wants that Nobel to contrast it with Hillary Clinton’s empty legacy.
17. The only thing left to do is the un-doing of Hillary Clinton. How does that come about? Who does it?
18. Does the administration find more damaging info that could come back to haunt her?
19. Is more to come on these shady foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation?
20. And, on the political front, whom else could the Democrats turn to if Clinton indeed implodes?
21. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is the insurgent who could — still — take down Clinton. And she should run. Now. It is all sitting there awaiting her.
22. But so far, she continues to refuse to run.
23. If Clinton implodes on her own — a growing possibility — then the party would not turn to Warren. Instead they would look for a less divisive candidate.
24. And JFK — John Forbes Kerry — is warming up in the bullpen. In his head, he sees a clear path to reverse his 2004 loss. Armed with his wife’s unlimited Heinz family money, he could self-fund his campaign.
25. Most of all, he sees no viable opposition inside the Democratic Party. Vice President Biden is not a realistic option. The others — former Sen. Jim Webb (Va.), former Gov. Martin O’Malley (Md.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are minor leaguers.
26. No, Kerry can smell this thing. All he has to do is cave in enough to get the Iran nuclear deal. If Netanyahu loses on Tuesday, this “caving” becomes much easier. And Tehran will dig in its heels, knowing Iran’s biggest critic is gone.
27. Meanwhile, watch the Hillary Clinton train wreck continue — until Democrats realize she is a political loser.
28. Then they will turn to Kerry to save them.
29. This is what is in John Kerry’s head — all day and all night — every day and every night.
LeBoutillier is a former Republican congressman from New York and is the co-host of “Political Insiders” on Fox News Channel, Sunday nights at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. He will be writing weekly pieces in the Contributors section on the “State of the 2016 Race.”
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