Candidate Hillary?

Hillary Clinton was busy this week – with a speech in Canada, another before the Association of American Publishers, another before the American Jewish Congress and she is scheduled to speak at the Clinton Global Initiative event at Arizona State University in the coming days. In her appearances she is dropping not-so-subtle hints that it’s time to separate from President Obama, not only vigorously criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin but actually predicting the current nuclear deal with Iran won’t work. While she couched her conclusion by saying “This is a development worth testing,” Clinton also posited that the odds aren’t good for reaching a comprehensive agreement and that because of her experience with them, she is “personally skeptical that the Iranians would follow through and deliver.”

{mosads}Democrats everywhere now assume – as do Republicans – that Clinton is running for president in 2016. They are well aware that this is what running for president looks like. They only fear that something will happen to make her decide not to run, as her friends’ concerns that she should decline a campaign were the subject of a report in The Wall Street Journal this week. But as Clinton distances herself from Obama, rakes in the cash and prevents other Democrats from prepping a national campaign for a White House run in 2016, she might look around at the polls and see just what will happen to Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections if all current estimates are correct. They will lose badly. Does she want to start spending more time trying to save some Democratic senators in red states former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) won handily, where Obama is very unpopular? Maybe not.

The best thing for a candidate Hillary, running for president in 2016, is an all-Republican Congress that knocks heads with Obama week in and week out. Should the Democrats hold on to the Senate by a seat or two, and can do little, Clinton will have to run further from lawmakers and a president from her own party.   

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