Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in a humiliating landslide on Nov. 8, 2016. That’s 1,176 days.
And yet she still hasn’t gone away.
While traveling the world on a self-pitying, woe-is-me tour, blaming everyone and everything for her embarrassing loss — everyone and everything except herself — Clinton’s been making millions giving speeches and selling an endless string of books. And at every stop, someone asks her if she’s maybe, just maybe, thinking about running in 2020.
That happened once again when she sat down with Variety to pitch her new Hulu docu-series. Asked if she felt the urge to go up against President Trump, she said: “Yeah. I certainly feel the urge because I feel the 2016 election was a really odd time and an odd outcome.”
‘The more we learn, the more that seems to be the case,” she said, somehow forgetting that her claim that Russia altered the election was completely disproved by special counsel Robert Mueller after a two-and-a-half year investigation.
But as all shifty politicians do, she quickly added: “But I’m going to support the people who are running now and do everything I can to help elect the Democratic nominee.”
Here’s the lowdown: Iowa holds its first-in-the-nation vote on Monday, just six days from now. New Hampshire holds its primary the next day. While Clinton, with her massive name recognition, didn’t need to campaign like some of the no-names out there, like that mayor from South Bend, she does need to accrue delegates to win the nomination.
There are 41 delegates up for grabs in Iowa, another 24 in New Hampshire. In the two weeks that follow, and even 100 delegates will be pledged after primaries in South Carolina and Nevada.
But those four states represent just 4% of the total delegates available during the 2020 nomination process in the Democratic Party. While the winner of some or all of those states often carry insurmountable momentum, there have been plenty of candidates who have lost some or all of those states and gone on to win the nomination.
A real drop-dead date is March 3, when 1,344 delegates are up for grabs in what is known as Super Tuesday. In the two weeks following, another 942 delegates will be picked.
Another but: The delegates are distributed proportionally, meaning a candidate who wins 14% of the vote gets 14% of the delegates, and so on. With nine candidates still in the race, it may come down to no candidate winning a majority of the delegates, which means no one would be picked until the Democratic National Committee’s convention in July. Plus, there are “super-delegates,” which carry more weight than regular delegates and, in a skewed 2016 race, greatly helped Clinton win the nomination.
So what we’re saying is, Hillary is still not gone. STILL NOT GONE!
And Clinton recently took a swipe at Sen. Bernie Sanders, who just happens to be the frontrunner for the nomination.
“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Hillary says in a new documentary about Sanders.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published last week, she was asked if she would endorse Sanders and campaign for him if he wins the nomination. “I’m not going to go there yet,” she said. “We’re still in a very vigorous primary season.”
Then she returned to bashing one of the top candidates for the 2020 nomination.
“I will say, however, that it’s not only him, it’s the culture around him,” Clinton said. “It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.”
“And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it,” she added.
