The 'Hillary for mayor' story proves that we learn nothing
By David Weigel January 6 at 5:23 PM
If you rack your memory, you can probably recall living through the years when Hillary Clinton was a shoe-in to be elected president.
In 2008, Clinton die-hards insisted she was more electable than Barack Obama. (Exit polls did not debunk this.) In 2012, with Clinton's approval rating soaring as secretary of state, some pundits asked whether Obama should step aside and let Clinton run.
“Given her strong public support, she has the ability to step above partisan politics,” wrote pollsters Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell, who — incredibly — are still paid to churn out their cardboard insights. Up until 2015, Democrats insisted that Clinton could not only re-create the Obama coalition, but bring back voters who had deserted.
Then came 2016. Clinton, in exile (well, Chappaqua), ended the 2016 campaign with pundits across the political spectrum branding her one of the worst candidates of all time. The more people saw of her, the less they liked. Any other Democrat could have beaten Donald Trump. Bernie Would Have Won. You know the drill.
I think this is the proper context for reading the utterly blinkered rumor that Clinton, who will turn 71 next year, should celebrate by running for mayor of New York City. In the New York Daily News, this is credited to a “a well-placed source.” In a much more compelling New York Times story, it's circulating “from political circles in New York City to cocktail parties on Capitol Hill, on right-of-center Facebook pages and among left-of-center donors.” (How we got from a national debate over fake news on Facebook to “right-of-center Facebook” pages as part of the legitimate rumor mill, I just don't know.)
We don't doubt that these sources exist. The inherent problem with them, as Ben Terris wrote for The Post in 2015, is that over 40 years in politics, the Clintons have collected so many confidants that any decent reporter's Rolodex features someone who can speak for what Hillary might be up to. More people wanted her to be president than Donald Trump; it stands to reason that some of them want her to win another election. As the Times reports, a former Mike Bloomberg aide who wants to defeat Mayor Bill De Blasio has included her name in polls and found that she's popular in New York City. (She won it by a landslide in November.)
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