I agree with a tweet by Maggyw519 yesterday that Hillary must be careful how she treats President Obama in her campaign. About the only thing she could to to upset me would be to act like she needs to 'distance' herself in any way from him.
Al Gore ran against Bill Clinton in 2000 and it didn't work-though even with a bad strategy he had been close and should have won if not for the GOP Supreme Court. In 2014 people like Allison Grimes in Kentucky tried to show they hated Obama more than Republicans do and this really didn't work.
As Paul Waldman says, there is no reason for her to distance herself from the President in 2016.
"First, let's dispense with the two main comparisons everyone is making: 2008 and 2000. Barack Obama's popularity right now is pretty middling, in the high 40s. Would it be better for Clinton if it were higher? Sure. But it's still worlds away from where George W. Bush was in 2008. In Gallup's last poll before the 2008 election, Bush's approval was at 25 percent. His administration was judged by Democrats, independents, and even many Republicans as an abysmal failure, because of both the disaster in Iraq and the financial cataclysm that had just hit. McCain was one of the war's biggest supporters, and was offering essentially the same economic policies as Bush. That's why it was easy for Obama to say that McCain offered more of the same, while he offered change—not only was there substance to the charge, but "more of the same" was something almost everyone agreed they wanted to avoid."
Al Gore ran against Bill Clinton in 2000 and it didn't work-though even with a bad strategy he had been close and should have won if not for the GOP Supreme Court. In 2014 people like Allison Grimes in Kentucky tried to show they hated Obama more than Republicans do and this really didn't work.
As Paul Waldman says, there is no reason for her to distance herself from the President in 2016.
"First, let's dispense with the two main comparisons everyone is making: 2008 and 2000. Barack Obama's popularity right now is pretty middling, in the high 40s. Would it be better for Clinton if it were higher? Sure. But it's still worlds away from where George W. Bush was in 2008. In Gallup's last poll before the 2008 election, Bush's approval was at 25 percent. His administration was judged by Democrats, independents, and even many Republicans as an abysmal failure, because of both the disaster in Iraq and the financial cataclysm that had just hit. McCain was one of the war's biggest supporters, and was offering essentially the same economic policies as Bush. That's why it was easy for Obama to say that McCain offered more of the same, while he offered change—not only was there substance to the charge, but "more of the same" was something almost everyone agreed they wanted to avoid."
"Today, people are less than satisfied with the way many things are going, but we aren't in the throes of a disaster. The economy is recovering rather nicely, and attention has turned to long-standing problems like inequality and wage stagnation. Republicans can say that Obama didn't fix these problems and Clinton won't either, but they'll have much more trouble saying that their remedy—essentially a return to George W. Bush's economic policies—will produce something better."
"As for 2000, the comparison is even less apt. Al Gore struggled to get out of Bill Clinton's shadow and prove he was his own man, and because of the Lewinsky scandal he had a certain reluctance to embrace the successes of the administration. But nobody is going to plausibly say that Hillary Clinton isn't her own woman or would just reproduce everything about the Obama years."
https://prospect.org/waldman/why-hillary-clinton-doesnt-need-distance-herself-barack-obama
Again, for me, the important point is that she's not distancing herself from the President. If you have any doubts about this, I'd recommend you start here with her recent book.
http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Choices-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-ebook/dp/B00C69EP1S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429021601&sr=1-1&keywords=hillary+clinton
She makes it very clear in this book that while in 2008 they were opponents, once he asked her to be his Secretary of State they became friends and partners. It's really quite stirring if you read it.
However, another way to see this is to look at her stance on Obamacare-she is hardly distancing herself from it. Indeed, soon it will become Clintoncare according to Jeb Bush.
Soon they'll be calling it "Clintoncare."
"Republican presidential candidates will do their best to tie Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama and the more unpopular parts of his presidency. Front and center is likely to be his signature legislative policy, the eponymous Obamacare, as it has been for the last three election cycles."
"But Obama's former secretary of State doesn't seem too worried about it—quite the opposite, in fact. Clinton has been openly enthusiastic about the law in the weeks leading up to her announcement."
"She singled out the congressional Republican budget's repeal of Obamacare for criticism in March 17 comments on Twitter, Clinton's preferred venue for official political statements these days."
"Our nation's future—jobs & economic growth—depends on investments made today. The GOP budget fails Americans on these principles," she wrote. "Repeal of the ACA would let insurers write their own rules again, and wipe out coverage for 16 million Americans."
A few days later, on the fifth anniversary of Obama signing the law, Clinton was even more explicit.
"#ACA@5: 16m covered. Young ppl. Preexisting conditions. Women get better coverage. Repeal those things? Embrace them!" she wrote, tacking on a picture of her and Obama, yes, hugging.
"The law is, after all, the culmination of the decades-long Democratic quest for near-universal health coverage, and Clinton, as first lady, had previously been the public face of the first Clinton administration's failure to achieve it. Before Obamacare, there was Hillarycare. With that history, and the need to rally a base that remains very fond of the president, Clinton was never likely to disavow the law."
But as she has steadily laid the foundation for her candidacy, made official Sunday, Clinton has run toward the law with arms open. Last year, she urged Democratic congressional candidates to campaign on it.
"If I were a Democrat running for reelection in 2014, I would be posing a very stark choice to the voters of my district, or my state," she said last June. "If you want us to go back to the time when your sister with diabetes, or your husband with his heart condition, couldn't get insurance at an affordable rate, then don't vote for me, because I think it's great that your sister and your husband now have insurance."
Of course, Democrats lost heavily in the midterms—though how much Obamacare was to blame, as opposed to the historic trend of the president's party losing seats in their sixth year, is harder to say
http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/hillary-clinton-doesn-t-seem-all-that-scared-of-obamacare-20150412
Most of the Democrats who lost in 2014 were running against Obamacare-or certainly Obama in any case.
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