However that was before it was discovered that Mrs. Clinton understood so little about national security as to send and receive top-secret classified documents on a homebrew server. In the last several months, Clinton, whose likability ratings have never been good, morphed into such an undesirable candidate within her own party that an over-70, over-the-hill self-described independent socialist equaled her best efforts in Iowa. Virtually tying with Bernie Sanders in the Iowa caucus was a bit like Shaq O’Neal losing a game of H-O-R-S-E to Danny DeVito. Nevertheless, final tallies in Monday’s caucuses showed Clinton winning by the slimmest of hairs.
As it turned out, Clinton is popular with the older people while millennial’s love Bernie Sanders, the longtime senator from Vermont.
In the 2016 general election, Republicans and Democrats are vying for the young vote which does not bode well for Mrs. Clinton since Mr. Sanders received an overwhelming 70 percent of the 30 and younger vote in Iowa. In comparison, as an untested senator from Illinois, Barack Obama got 57 percent. Clinton also lost the 30 to 44 vote 50-37 percent. Clinton easily took the elderly vote as analysts had predicted. However, only a handful of votes separated the two at the end of the night.
Analysts say the 2016 general election is very different than Bill Clinton’s election in 1992. Today’s Democratic Party is a very different coalition than the one that gave Bill Clinton the presidency. Mr. Clinton, a veteran campaigner popular in all age groups ran on more of a Republican platform than today’s Democratic Party planks. Welfare reform, Wall Street deregulation and tough-on-crime criminal justice policies were then and are now Republican priorities. Mrs. Clinton on the other hand, has been too busy dealing with scandals related to her Secretary of State performance to develop a clear campaign policy theme.
Meanwhile, today’s Democratic base is far more hostile to police and corporations than during the 1990s, so much so that a bipartisan consensus has emerged that Bill Clinton’s GOP-backed crime bill fueled mass incarceration and that his welfare reform hurt the poor. Nevertheless, poverty has increased in the United States under Democrat Barack Obama’s administration and crime rates are skyrocketing in Democratic bastion cities like Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit.
In her 2008 presidential campaign Mrs. Clinton also lost the youth vote, but she was able to justify the loss since Mr. Obama was younger than her. In primaries and the general election campaign Clinton will have to win the youth vote to stay competitive. Beyond her inability to overtake an aging socialist from Vermont in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton is facing increasing scrutiny over her part in the email controversy that is currently being investigated by the FBI. Allegedly, Mrs. Clinton, for convenience, used a homebrewed computer server to store the government’s most top-secret information. Reports that Mrs. Clinton exposed US spies to hackers around the world so that she would not have to use two email devices may prove the more onerous barrier that her campaign will face in 2016.
