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The rest will mostly take care of itself.

Political consultant Mark Penn wrote in the Wall Street Journal
that Hillary Clinton not only will run for president again, but
will prevail. He writes: “Mrs. Clinton has a 75% approval rating
among Democrats, an unfinished mission to be the first female
president, and a personal grievance against Mr. Trump, whose
supporters pilloried her with chants of ‘Lock her up!’ This must
be avenged.”

Actually, it doesn’t. Not if Democrats want to keep winning.

The slow-motion blue wave happened. At least in the House.
Moderate Democrats did well in the lower chamber, though Senate
moderates who hailed from deep-red states and voted against
Brett Kavanaugh fared less well. Progressives hopefuls lost in
the 2018 elections, especially statewide, but they really came
within a hair’s breadth in states such as Georgia and Florida.
In the end, Democrats ended up with more House seats than had
been expected on Election Day, and Republicans with fewer Senate
seats than they projected.

Commentators have been drawing lessons from these results:
Namely, that Democrats can reverse Trump’s electoral gains for
the GOP, and that they can do so by focusing on bread-and-butter
economic issues. The old Democratic campaign hits such as
“Republicans will take away your health care” still work.

But the most obvious lesson for Democrats is this: Just don’t
nominate Hillary Clinton. And you’ll probably do fine.

Recall that the 2016 presidential election featured the two
least popular major-party nominees in modern history. Two years
later, Republicans remain stuck with Trump, but Democrats have
been able to put Clinton out of mind. The result is that Trump’s
Republican party is losing territory and vote share, and
Democrats are gaining. The Republican party has suffered losses
throughout the Midwest and Rust Belt. And increased defections
in the suburbs around Oklahoma City, Dallas, Boulder, and
Phoenix should have Republicans looking at the formerly red
parts of the national map and wondering how to defend them.

There is no substantial argument for making Hillary Clinton the
nominee. She has won three political contests in her life. She
beat Rick Lazio for Senate in New York. She beat a Yonkers mayor
for the same seat again. And then she beat Bernie Sanders in
2016, with the generous support of Democratic superdelegates who
practically doomed his chances. She has never won a competitive
race in her life, and odds are that she never will.

Hillary Clinton has two talents as a candidate. She’s good at
emptying the pockets of big Democratic donors, and she unites
Republicans. If she has any legacy, it is that she helped push
her husband as president and her party to embrace the wine-track
voters. And Democrats won all of the 20 richest congressional
districts in 2018. Jacobin writer Matt Karp laments that
Democrats won 42 of the 50 richest districts, hardly a recipe
for a Democrat-controlled government with a broad mandate for
social democratic change.

But the fact is that the election results showed a path where a
Democratic candidate who doesn’t insult large swaths of the
country as “deplorable” can win all of Hillary’s states while
adding Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and possibly
North Carolina to their haul.

30
There are lots of things Hillary Clinton has messed up in her
life. Her 1993 health-care push, which contributed to a
Republican takeover of the House. Her vote for the Iraq War,
which led to her defeat in the 2008 Democratic primary. The
“smart power” intervention in Libya, which led to ISIS getting a
foothold in the Mediterranean and exacerbated the migration
crisis in Europe. She shouldn’t get a do-over on those. Nor, if
they want to win, should Democrats give her another chance to be
their party’s candidate for president.

Hillary Clinton isn’t owed anything. She’s become much richer
than anyone who was such a consistent failure in public life
should be.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/the-elections-lesson-for- democrats-dont-nominate-hillary-clinton/
 

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