Just two days before the 2016 election, Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton abruptly canceled the two-minute fireworks display that was supposed to accompany her "coronation," as Millennial mom magazine Romper put it at the time.
Clinton's sense of presumption — right up until NYPD revealed the Hudson River permit had been pulled — was palpable.
"Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?" she asked during a Sept. 2016 videoconference with the Las Vegas of the Laborers' International Union of North America, with obvious frustration. To many people, Clinton appeared entitled. In her mind, I'd wager, she felt she'd already earned the Oval Office — voters be damned.
Clinton had done 40 years of "stand by your man" with her philandering husband. She'd led the Clintoncare initiative, even if those ingrates in Congress rejected it. She'd knocked aside one right-wing conspiracy after another. She served her time on a carpetbagger seat in the Senate. She bided her turn time after that slick upstart, Barack Obama, had usurped her first chance at the nomination. She'd even had the good grace to serve as his Secretary of State.
The White House was hers, g**damnit, and no orange-faced lout with a giant combover was going to take it from her. What a pity (and I use that word ironically) that she seemed to forget she had to appeal to the voters who decide these things.
The closer election day drew, the closer the polls got. Forget 50 points; Clinton couldn't get five.
And Another Thing: I made a solemn vow to myself in July that I would not write more than one piece about Kamala Harris on any given workday. But now that we're in the home stretch, that vow is more ditched than a drunk's car during an ice storm.
Frustration isn't an attractive look on anyone, and Clinton had never exactly been blessed with an abundance of likability.
"She wouldn't even go to Wisconsin" was the running excuse for Clinton's loss — a mistake Joe Biden did not repeat in 2020. For Kamala Harris, however, nothing seems to be working.
Former federal prosecutor and Jan. 6 defense attorney William Shipley explained on X last week that "When you see sudden changes in campaign tactics that signals that the polling is showing a problem that needs to be addressed" and that the Harris-Walz campaign had made "three abrupt shifts in the past 10-15 days."
That was a week ago. Since then Harris has shifted gears a fourth time, explicitly comparing Trump to Hitler while doing a series of puff-piece interviews on Telemundo, CNN, and NBC News. Except that she flubbed all three puff pieces and no one but the faithful still buy Trump is Literally Hitler™ any longer.
Wednesday on X, Publius told readers to "realize you are watching a 60-year-old woman who for the first time in her life is not having what she wants handed to her on a silver platter."
The child of affluent university professors, she literally made her way in life by sleeping with powerful men and relying on her skin color and genitalia as proxies for competency.
For the first time in her life, she is about to lose something she really wants, and she has no idea how to deal with it like a rational adult.
With yet more shades of Clinton '16, Publius asked, "So when she is too drunk on election night to give a concession speech, who will she send out instead?"
I'm not ready to call this election for Trump. But if you read on Nov. 3 that Harris has canceled her fireworks show, remember who reminded you first.
Recommended: Kamala Blows It on the Border for CNN *and* Telemundo
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