James Forsyth comes up with an(other) excellent reason for hoping Hillary loses: it will be bad for Gordon Brown. Key point:
the British political class are obsessed with the US elections and in most people’s minds Hillary Clinton is the Gordon Brown candidate. The failure of her campaign would lead to a slew of articles about how Gordon shares Hillary’s shortcomings.
True. Brown might complain that he’s not really a Clintonite. Fair enough. Unfortunately, of course, his closest American strategist and confidante is, er, Bob Shrum – who now has an excellent chance of losing elections on each side of the Atlantic.
As James suggests, the parallels between Gordon and Hillary are, well, very entertaining:
a) Sense of entitlement. It’s my ball and how dare you think you can play with it.
b) Genuine policy wonk with rather fewer achievements to their credit than you might (especially in Brown’s case) expect*.
c) Control-freak.
d) Oft-cited (by friends) charm and sense of humour remains completely hidden from the general public.
e) Hillary’s “Ready from Day One” blather likely to be no more convincing, post-honeymoon, than Gordon’s. She must be envious that he was able to engineer a challenge-free succession and she was not.
f) Face a younger, more interesting, more eloquent, more charismatic – if comparatively inexperienced – opponent who is likely to beat them handsomely. Bottom line: When it’s Tomorrow vs Yesterday, Yesterday rarely prevails.
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