Hillary for 2016?

I saw a TV segment today that made me start to think about the realities about Hillary Clinton running in 2016. Is she a fantastic choice for President and probably the most well known female politician for the past thirty years, yes! But, does that mean she should run again for the Presidency? I can say that after watching the TV segment (link below) that it made me highly question my previously unfaltering support of Hillary for 2016. In the segment Krystal Ball talks about some of her own reasons for not supporting Hillary Clinton's run including some of her anti-union stances and her inside the beltway attitudes. I can say that I don't agree with all of her own reservations for not backing Hillary but I do understand many points she makes. Hillary Clinton is a wonderful person and someone that all young women in politics look up to. However, we, as Democratic women especially have put Hillary Clinton on podium that is higher than many others because she is a powerful woman, she's been on a stage for many many years, and when she's in charge she can get shit done. However, she might have missed her time. 

There are other drawbacks I have about Hillary. I think that there is always a benefit to running someone who is outside of the beltway, Hillary isn't but Obama was.  Obama was an outside candidate that came with a different yet very good background and did very well against those who were very much beltway candidates. Not that I would put Obama at being the "best" example of a outside Washington candidate but I do feel like because he wasn't the well known, very rich, beltway mold of many Presidential candidates he did better than some others who were competitors of his in 2008, including Hillary Clinton. I also have a reservation with how well known she is, with a favorability rating of 66% before even deciding whether she is going to run or not. This can be a problem when there are many great "new" politicians that are coming in with "new" faces and beliefs that might back out if they assumed they would loose to Hillary. If Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, or even Martin O'Malley would decide to run, I might back any of them before Hillary because to be honest, especially Warren and Booker represent to me what Democratic politics is all about. I would like to see some information about Hillary's stances on many issues especially if she was running against a Warren or Booker. I mean honestly if you haven't seen some of the pure awesomeness from Elizabeth Warren, you need to because she is one of the greatest "new" faces of the Democratic Party. Her messages about gender and tax equity and her own sense of the "we're all in this together" politics are spot on and these are the issues that need more media attention than the issues are presently talked about. And though she says at the moment she wouldn't run, the question is whether if she was put in that position to truly decide to run...would she? Then there is everyone's favorite bachelor...Cory Booker, who has made democratic ideals sexy again. He has used social media as his jumping block to show constituents and others around the United State what he is doing moment to moment. He has also embraced an "all politics is local" ideal and has incorporated an open door policy, putting out his daily schedule EVERYDAY.

So as you can see there are many many great candidates who might not want to run if Hillary Clinton does because it already seems like Clinton has the entire election won even before anything has started. There are very important issues at hand. Even in this next election cycle, Congress is looking at having a very high turnover: there are 470 elections this year with 114 seats being highly contested. There are big issues at stake as well. To just name a few: there is the war on everyone's voting rights by conservative majority who are trying to take away anyone's right to vote at every turn, there is huge problem of America's failing infrastructure which is making us pay more taxes to repair the less impressive technology of the 90s versus looking forward to create the newest technology of the 2020s, and biggest problem facing the world: climate change which the South and East coasts are experiencing this winter. These problems are the current issues that will be talked about in the upcoming 2014 and 2016 as well as Obama's minimum wage and America's inequality problem. In the meantime, we can all hope for a little less gridlock in Congress as the Republican Party of our parents' is falling apart in front of our eyes as well as feel very patriotic watching the United States compete in Sochi.

Don't Run Hillary: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/02/11/msnbcs-krystal-ball-to-hillary-clinton-dont-run/