As of the voting in various primaries last week and this week, Hillary Rodham Clinton has the surest way to the White House of any candidate who seeks the presidency from either of the major parties. She may not complete the journey, it is true. But even the most ardent Bernie Sanders supporters must now recognize that a lot of brush has been cleared from her path, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may once again be Clinton’s address.
It is time, then, to bear down on Hillary Clinton yet more than we have and determine just who she is and what a Clinton II presidency will be all about. Forget the frivolous attacks of rightists. Those who might be inclined to vote for Clinton are the responsible parties now. They must bear down on themselves, so that we can rid the forward-thinking side of our political conversation of its many encrustations—its mythologies, conventions, orthodoxies and the stale assumptions that have been placed over many years in some zone wherein they are taken to lie beyond questioning.
As you may surmise, I take the prospect of a Clinton II era to be a grave matter. It is not that she is a pathological variant of the political shape-shifter, to borrow a phrase from Charles Blow’s excellent column on the collapse of American ideals in Monday’s New York Times. It is Clinton’s consistency that should concern us most.