What Hillary Probably Thought Watching the GOP Debate

My guess is she was humming Send in the Clowns where her only thought is which one she's going to get to beat up.

I think after seeing her at her Benghazi hearing, it's tough to imagine anyone on that stage going toe to toe with her in a debate.

Still she's probably not being overconfident either knowing her. And there were important takeaways from this debate for her and her team which they are no doubt looking at.

A few takeaways from the debate for Hillary.

1. Marco Rubio is probably looking more and more like the one for the GOP establishment. They know how daunting it will be to go up against Hillary-she's got to be the most formidable politician in the country to debate or oppose.

Remember the establishment first and foremost wants an establishment candidate.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/my-grand-unified-theory-of-gop-primary.html?showComment=1446175826956#c1535677431028603681

So the choice is Rubio or Jeb. In my view, neither Kasich or even less Chris Christie are at all plausible-Christie is a hostile witness in criminal probes over Bridgegate so this will take away from his campaign time.. Kasich because his image is too reasonable for the base-his call for reasonableness and to stop saying crazy things on Wednesday went over about as well as lead paint until Trump put him out of his misery.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/kasich-comes-in-frisky-but-trump-tars.html

If you compare Jeb to Rubio in terms of who has the best chance against the White Whale Herself, I think there's a much stronger case for Rubio.

For one thing, it's just in the interest of the establishment to unify around one candidate already. Jeb is the one who has just had some terrible buzz. Even before this debate there his intervention with his family and donors on Monday.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/10/bush-family-stages-intervention-for-jeb.html

Now he just had a debate performance that everyone thinks was just awful. If you are in the establishment then you probably wish Jeb would get out.

Besides that Rubio simply obliterates Jeb on the biography candidacy. Rubio is young, Latino. and can even use his personal financial struggles to argue that he knows where the average guy is coming from, he knows the struggles over average people.

You can already imagine his attacks on Hillary. He's been using them liberally already. He suggests that unlike her he really gets it, that she said she was broke when she left the WH with Bill, there will be rather transparent allusions to her age.

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/07/marco-rubios-ageist-attack-on-hillary.html

He'll key into 'Clinton fatigue' though a lot of us have made it clear we have Clinton fatigue fatigue!

But he can much more plausibly suggest that he's forward looking and fresh and that she's yesterday's' news and indeed, a dynasty candidate who cares only about her own legacy.

While Jeb loses the biography battle with the prospective first female President, Rubio as a young, good looking, Latino can compete.

So how does she prepare for Rubio who if I was betting probably is at this point something of a favorite to win?

She will have to differentiate between running on biography and running on policy substance.

Just being Latino doesn't mean his policies will be in the interests of Latinos. But this is going to be the implication of Rubio's campaign. He will argue that he's personally struggled so he gets the struggles of teh average Joe-or Juan as the case may be.

But this is false. While he may have had his own struggles this hasn't  led him to empathize with the average Joe. To the contrary.

Another interesting point was in this post.

But it’s also true that we saw two very different Marco Rubios last night. The scripted senator excelled, dazzling pundits and earning hearty audience applause. The unscripted senator struggled in ways careful observers shouldn’t overlook.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/tale-two-rubios

That's the  impression I get with him. He's always very studied. He is like a student who has photographic memory. But when it goes beyond simply apple polishing he is out of his depth.

2. The second takeaway is the Carly Fiorina syndrome. She won't win the nomination-my guess she's had her one 15 seconds of fame and has declined for good.

But watch for a lot of her attacks on Hillary to be used by the eventual GOP nominee-quite possibly Rubio.

She had all kinds of jibes at how Hillary is not good for women based on some pretty misleading statistics she gave out at the debate about how women did under Obama. She has that absurd claim that women 92% of the jobs lost in the President's first term.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/29/news/economy/carly-fiorina-wrong-92-percent-jobs-lost-women/

But I would examine Fiorina's anti Hillary barbs at these debates. Expect a lot of this material to be used against her in the general.