It’s been a long week of handwringing over the Democratic Party’s electoral troubles. The Hillary Clinton email orgy is starting to break up, leaving some pundits seeming spent and a little hung over. But in the absence of new revelations, at least for now, the story has become a meta story about the trouble Democrats will be in if a real Clinton scandal comes along.
Walsh glosses over it quickly, be she seems to be saying that the current revelations aren’t damning and that there probably won’t be more. Yes, I’m inferring, but I am also quite familiar with Ms. Walsh’s modus operandi.
Both, of course, are wishful thinking but Joanie is nothing if not committed to the liberal lie.
She then goes on, much like Ezra Klein does today, to assure us that the Democrats do, in fact, have a super awesome bench waiting to fill in when the Great Wall of Inevitability comes crumbling down.
Klein may have taken a completely different approach to getting the bench talk going but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some classic leftmedia message coordination going on here. Both almost immediately reference Jonathan Bernstein’s piece at Bloomberg View as a rebuttal to the “no bench” theory.
The problem with Bernstein’s argument is that he really just lists a bunch of Democrats who seem viable and could potentially become serious candidates if they, you know, actually wanted to run for president and began doing so. Klein provides Bernstein some cover by claiming that this laundry list is on the sidelines because Hillary is “crushing” them.
Even though they aren’t running.
Make sense so far?
Bernstein undermines his own argument by peppering his list with names that are ridiculously implausible (Al Franken and John Hickenlooper), and some that even most Democrats would have to Google (Mike Beebe and Maggie Hassan).
A bunch of people in your party who have won elections does not a presidential election bench make, but thanks for playing, Joan, Jonathan and Ezra.
It’s already primary season. If there is someone in the wings who can step in when the public gets Clinton fatigue, he or she might want to stop cowering in the corner.
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