Another Bad Review for Hillary

The reviews are not good. The reviews from normally sympathetic commentators have been disappointing.

We can all agree that Hillary Clinton’s presumptive presidential campaign needs a sympathetic press. What then are we to make of the fact that normally reliable liberal supporters of all things Democratic have nothing good to say about her news conference last week.

New Yorker editor David Remnick is the latest to weigh in. His commentary is damning:

It was hard not to think of this status report on the condition of women in the twenty-first century while Hillary Clinton stepped into the lights before an agitated crowd of reporters at the U.N. last Tuesday. A large tapestry of “Guernica” hung behind her, and she looked no happier in that setting than the tormented figures in Picasso’s image of civil war. And yet contrition was not in her plans. Instead, she chose a familiar course, offering explanations that were by turns petulant and pretzelled. Asked about the way she chose to deal with federal guidelines on e-mail when she was the Secretary of State, she said, “I opted for convenience.” Clinton’s further explanations were so familiar, such a ride in the Wayback Machine, that you had to wonder, Why do I suddenly feel twenty years younger yet thoroughly exhausted?

Remnick was thrilled to see Clinton advance the cause of women’s rights. But when he compared her eloquent speech on that issue with her defense of her email practices, he gave Hillary a failing grade:

This was one reason that the press conference last week—given, presumably, as Clinton was preparing to announce a run for the Presidency, in 2016—was so dispiriting. At that moment at the U.N., she should have been returning to those feminist themes, but she used the opportunity to claim that she was only trying to protect the sanctity of her communications about her “yoga routines,” her daughter’s wedding, and her mother’s funeral. This was a notably transparent exploitation of gender. It’s one thing for a politician to be stupid; it is quite another for her to assume that we are.

It looks like the liberal media is not going to be running interference for Hillary Clinton. Savvy political observers should take note.

One notes that Remnick is still enamored of the Obama presidency. And yet, when he wonders where the political talent went, why the Democratic Party cannot field a second viable candidate, he ought to admit that that is the direct consequence of six years of Obama.

As everyone knows, last year’s election was a crushing defeat for Democrats. It effectively cleared the bench.

If Remnick is getting ready to wax nostalgic for the Obama presidency, he ought to begin by asking how the great Obama has so thoroughly damaged the party he leads.