Who Will Be The Next President?

Conventional wisdom is so weird. Right now, it's telling us that November will see the Republicans will increase their margin in the House and probably take over the Senate as well. Tools of conventional wisdom, Steve Israel and Guy Cecil-- respectively-- are fulfilling destiny for the House and Senate. At the same time, conventional wisdom can see down the road and around some twists and turns to tell us that by 2016, voters will be more than ready to reward the Democrats with big wins in both Houses-- especially the Senate-- on the coattails of President Hillary's gigantic landslide. And if I believed in Fate, I could unwind and spend the next couple of years relaxing.

Kind of. I'm still trying to decide who I'm going to vote for in 2016. Maybe the Republicans will put the most exciting ticket ever together-- Jeb Bush and Chris Christie or Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson or, bets of all… well… that picture up top has nothing more to do with this post that this predicate. None of that will matter to me. I'm not a persuadable. I'm not like the handful of Jews in the early 1930s who said to themselves, "yeah, but he's probably good for the economy and who doesn't like a train running on time?" and there's no chance I would ever vote for a Republican no matter how horrible a Democrat was.

And Hillary might not actually be that horrible. I just don't know yet-- and probably never will… at least not before it's too late. I even met her a few times-- once at the White House and once when I was asked to hang out with her and keep her company for 10 minutes before she had to give a speech-- just me and her, backstage. I always hated her husband's corporate agenda. But what a swell guy! He was so likable. She sure never came across that way, not to me. Uptight and brittle is how she came across to me. Maybe she just didn't like me. But I'll vote for her if I think her policies are good for the country. (I voted for Jill Stein in 2012 because I already knew Obama's weren't.) In 2008 I was pretty sure-- having watched him in the Senate-- that Obama wasn't going to be a transformative or great president. I voted for him because I had some hope I could be wrong and because he was African-American. The same calculus might come into play in 2016 for me-- a woman president! Isn't it about time?!?!

Most of the very worst villains of Clinton World are gone-- no more Mark Penn, Dick Morris, Mike McCurry, Doug Schoen, Terry McAuliffe or Rahm Emanuel. It looks like they'll be replaced by the next generation of less talented but maybe a little less venal careerists of that ilk-- Robbie Mook, Jim Messina, Guy Cecil, Stephanie Schriock, Sid Blumenthal. Here in L.A. we just watch dthe local-yockel version of Team Hillary lose another one for a horrible candidate, who wasn't as horrible as the ugly campaign they ran for her-- Mike Trujillo, Sue Burnside and Ace Smith destroying poor Wendy Greuel's political career with their negativity, arrogance and gross mismanagement.

Next Tuesday the long-awaited Hard Choices will turn up in bookstores. No doubt Darrell Issa, Trey Gowdy and the two clowns pictured up top will have stooges waiting in line at Presse or Politics and Prose Monday night. CBS News already bought one-- in a bookstore, they claim-- yesterday. Hillary doesn't seem to have apologized for the vote to attack Iraq in 2002 that cost her the presidency in 2008, but she admits she got it wrong. A step in the right direction:

Many Senators came to wish they had voted against the resolution. I was one of them. As the war dragged on, with every letter I sent to a family in New York who had lost a son or daughter, a father or mother, my mistake became more painful.

I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had. And I wasn't alone in getting it wrong. But I still got it wrong. Plain and simple.

I want to vote for a woman to be president so badly. But Hillary? I just can't see myself doing it, especially if it looks like conventional wisdom is right about that landslide thing building.