Hillary Clinton and her bad days
If Hillary Clinton manages to claw her way into the White House, despite the mounting avalanche of evidence to the contrary, she might start by proclaiming a six day week and abolishing Tuesday: The day is clearly bad news for her.
Last week, Hillary and her campaign were rocked by a cascade of unfavorable publicity and ominous poll results on what called her “Black Tuesday.” Now, she faces even worse news on “Black Tuesday II.”
First, came the latest CNN Poll, commissioned jointly with WMUR9 Television in New Hampshire, and the message it brings is catastrophic beyond imagining for the Queen of Democrats.
If the poll’s trends hold, not only is Hillary going to lose in New Hampshire, which loyally kept her in the 2008 race after she was rejected in the Iowa caucuses, it is going to annihilate her.
According to the poll, carried out by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, upstart Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, a man who was not even a formal member of the Democratic Party until this year, has nearly tripled his lead over Hillary in a single month.
Some 60 percent of Democrats will vote for Sanders with only 33 percent for Hillary, according to the poll conducted between January 13 and January 18. The northeastern US state holds its primary election on February 6.
The poll gives Sanders a lead of 27 points over Hillary, almost three times the 10-point lead he enjoyed over her in a similar poll conducted a month ago.
Hillary has argued that Sanders’ economic policies are radical and unrealistic, but the CNN/WMUR poll shows that more than twice as many Democrats trust him over her in this area by 57 percent to 28 percent.
Hillary is also regarded as the least honest candidate by more than half of all Democratic voters — 55 percent, compared to only two percent who said that about Sanders.
Hillary’s campaign — as obvious — slow-moving and torpidly predictable as a batch of World War I generals on the Western Front, has become complacently acclimatized to losing New Hampshire. The party line from campaign headquarters in Brooklyn is that Hillary has her firewall all ready to stop the Sanders’ surge down in South Carolina and Nevada. But that was predicted on a stinging but still respectable loss in the Granite State.
Hillary loses by a margin of two-to-one to Battling Bernie, or even worse — the damage done to her national credibility could be mortal. Calls to summon Vice President Joe Biden, the Dems’ Gallant Old Warrior, back to the hustings could suddenly swirl faster than a Texas Twister.
The looming catastrophe in New Hampshire is bad enough, worse than bad. But also on Tuesday, another poll offered further evidence that Hillary’s lead over Sanders is melting away nationally as fast as Arctic glaciers facing global warming.
According to the latest Monmouth University Poll (MOP), also released on Tuesday, Bernie has slashed Hillary’s national lead among Democratic voters by more than 50 percent in the past month from 33 percent to 15 percent.
“Clinton currently has the support of 52 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters nationwide, which is down from 59 percent in December,” MOP said in a news release. “Sanders gets 37 percent support, which is up substantially from his 26 percent support level last month.”
As the great Stan Lee, legendary writer-editor of Marvel Comics loves to say, “Nuff said.”
The MOP analysts pointed out that Sanders, who enjoys a double digit lead over Clinton in New Hampshire, the first primary state to vote on February 6, is now closer to Clinton in national standing than any at previous time in the race.
“This marks the first time Clinton’s lead has dropped below 20 points in a national Monmouth poll,” they said.
Bernie has come a long way fast before he even had to face a single real election test: In April 2015, Hillary enjoyed 60 percent support among Democratic voters in a Monmouth poll while he only had a derisory seven percent.
This Tuesday was even worse for Hillary than the one before.
Next week she should stay in bed, pull the blanket over her head and count the hours until it’s over.
Photo: YouTube
Martin Sieff is a former senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Times and former Managing Editor, International Affairs for United Press International. Mr. Sieff is the author of “That Should Still Be Us: How Thomas Friedman’s Flat World Myths Are Keeping Us Flat on Our Backs” (Wiley 2012) and “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East” (Regnery, 2008). He has received three Pulitzer Prize nominations for international reporting.