After a stinging defeat at the polls Tuesday, liberal media members are rethinking the horse they backed in 2008, what with the economy struggling, unemployment near 10 percent, and the Democrats suffering their worst loss in a midterm election since before most of these so-called journalists were born.
It was therefore not at all surprising to see Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank waxing nostalgic in his Sunday piece about whether or not we'd all be much better off if Hillary Clinton had been elected president two years ago:
Would unemployment have been lower under a President Hillary? Would the Democrats have lost fewer seats on Tuesday? It's impossible to know. But what can be said with confidence is that Clinton's toolkit is a better match for the current set of national woes than they were for 2008, when her support for the Iraq war dominated the campaign.
Milbank's loyalty is touching, isn't it? So's his imagination:
Clinton campaign advisers I spoke with say she almost certainly would have pulled the plug on comprehensive health-care reform rather than allow it to monopolize the agenda for 15 months. She would have settled for a few popular items such as children's coverage and a ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions. That would have left millions uninsured, but it also would have left Democrats in a stronger political position and given them more strength to focus on job creation and other matters, such as immigration and energy.
Hillary Clinton settle on comprehensive healthcare reform? Really? Is that what we saw her do when her husband was president and her arrogance on Capitol Hill ignited an uprising that led to Gingrich and Company taking over Congress in 1995?
But Dana's delusions didn't end there, for next he made the case that Hillary's economic initiatives might have subdued the housing crisis.
Her "good relations with Wall Street" as well as her being "the heir to her husband's donor base" would have provided her "more executives in government - envoys who would have been able to ease the uncertainty about tax and regulatory policy that has been crippling business."
"Most important, there can be little doubt that, whatever policies emerged, she would have maintained a laser focus on the economy."
Little doubt? Based on what?
Milbank didn't say. Instead, he concluded by claiming Obama could easily re-instill the confidence the public has lost in him simply by doing "what Hillary would have done."
He makes a fine Monday morning quarterback, doesn't he?
Yet, nowhere in his piece was the name John McCain mentioned. Mightn't his economic campaign promises as well as his Wall Street connections likely have proved better for what's financially ailed us than Obama's plans?
Milbank didn't consider that. No, this column was an ode to Saint Hillary.
Could be Dana was floating a trial balloon about a new book on the current Secretary of State.
Mightn't be a bad idea. After all, that would have to sell more than his recent literary failure “Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Teabagging of America” which, according to Politico, has been flying off the shelves like umbrellas in a desert.
