I don’t think Hillary will do anything overt to challenge Obama. For one thing, she’s out of money and would need lots of cash in the bank to challenge him.
She’ll put her name in nomination, be defeated and say and do almost nothing in support or opposition to Obama.
What is interesting, is that the WSJ reports that Congressional Republicans are looking more optimistic about holding back a deluge of Democrats that would give them veto proof majorities (along with filibuster proof majorities) in both Houses. The key being drilling (and lower gas prices). Republicans for, Democrats lock-step against. Along with, probably, the deep unpopularity among swing-state voters for Obama.
Obama’s Denver coronation promises to be an empty celebrity-fest of adoring crowds chanting his name, waving red flags, like a Communist cult of personality fest. Making McCain’s point over and over for him.
Obama’s hard-left leanings, over twenty years of Ayers and Wright and (likely) Farrakhan, with hard-left abortion/eugenics positions (even Barbara Boxer voted for the Born Alive act) are now fair game as McCain defines Obama, and Obama has no recourse.
Hillary was known, any attacks to define her would bump up against her well known, public persona. Which was cold, icy, steely, self-centered, but essentially apolitical calculation for personal benefit. Obama is really unknown to most voters except as a fad, and for older voters (America is an older nation where Seniors outnumber youth vote by 8 million) that is a huge negative.
Obama is the “Republican Miracle” that can allow the Republicans to recover from the near-death experience of GWB’s Presidency and political incompetence. Obama is also the NutRoots candidate, and shows how the hard-left has essentially taken over the Democratic Party. This takeover is unlikely to ever be reversed, because the Hard Left is the result of the elites of this country being opposed to the people.
Domestic oil, gas, mining, real estate, and industrial elites have at least a few areas of common interests with the people. For domestic production, it’s using a high skilled workforce efficiently with cheap land to win in the domestic and global marketplace. That’s the traditional basis of the American Economy.
The current financial, entertainment, legal, governmental, and media elites are completely different. [Which is why they are Marxist/Leninist and back Obama.] They are not “sunk” into the nation, they are trans-national and make much/most of their money abroad. They depend often on government control of the marketplace and extracting monopoly rents, ala Carlos Slim, world’s richest man, who leveraged political control of Mexico’s phone and cell-phone market into the world’s greatest fortune. The fortunes of the Kennedy’s, the Boxer’s, the Feinstein’s, the Obama’s, the Daily Kos’s, etc. are tied up into this political control. As is the Entertainment, Media, and Legal industries. All of which use various government-assisted monopolies to retain monopoly rents that are hostile to populist interests.
This is why environmentalism is not about protecting wild lands from abuse, but controlling the populace to keep them poor (and retaining the apparatchik relative advantage in wealth and power). It’s why Dems hate oil drilling and want to keep gas high [so everyone else is poor.] These elites control the Dem Party and won’t change any time soon, unless their economic position is destroyed (so they have little money).
It is frightening how quickly an elite can change to Chavez-style dependency on absolute state control.
