Uncouth Reflections

Fenster writes:

Is anyone thinking as I am that there is something a little–odd? revealing?–about how Brazile is handling this affair? She didn’t have to start it up and surely knew she was punching people with power.

Her old buddy George Stephanopoulos seems in an interview to want to give her room to walk back from the ledge and her response is that critics can go to hell. There are the peculiar Seth Rich statements. She’s going on Tucker Carlson tomorrow.

I have thought that this could all be part of a gang-up by the disparate Dem forces who want to push Hillary from the stage, forcibly if necessary.   While that may be the case there is still something reckless about Brazile’s way of doing it, and even if people are happy at the damage she is doing she might still “never work in this town again.”

So if she has made herself so toxic that no one will hire her, what is going on? Maybe she sees one of those buy-low sell-high opportunities that Trump grasped a couple of years back?

The Republican field was crowded at that point, with many bigfeet consuming all the oxygen and seemingly making it harder for outsiders to find sunlight.  Trump saw this as an opportunity.  In the case of the Republicans there were plenty of bigfeet but none were capable or willing to take on the issues that needed attention.  The issues themselves were being starved for oxygen, which Trump supplied, and the more opponents in the race the better.  Trump turned conventional wisdom on its head, and he did it by seeing an opportunity when others did not–a classic buy-low sell-high businessman’s instinct.

Does Brazile see something similar among the Dems?  Hillary won’t leave the stage.  Biden is well past his sell-by date but hovers, hovers.  Sanders excited a chunk of the base but he is old. And can he win if he continues to move from his old-fashioned leftism (which might attract middle America) to newfangled progressivism?  Warren has some of the same problem.  And Obama?  Obama is doing something no other recent president has done–attempt to run the party as an ex-president.  Roger Stone–a possibly crazy man but not someone I would ever bet against on political matters–is quite sure the plan is to run Michelle.

That is a lot of oxygen consumption.  The question is whether the situation is analogous to that of the Republican’s last time around, with the gaggle of opportunists unable to do the necessary things, being captives of the past.  And whether the stage is set for a dramatic play by someone who can cut through the fog.

It’s possible that Tulsi Gabbard could play that role.   Getting the party to walk back from its dangerous identity politics plank may require someone immune from charges of racism, sexism and so forth.  And Gabbard may be able to pull that off.

But why not Brazile?  Is the surplus drama that she has brought to her return to the national stage a way of saying she is ready for a starring role?  It does not matter that no one will hire her if she herself can establish herself as her own political force.  She’s got the name and brand recognition already.  She’s tough as nails.  She can speak truth to power, even the off-the-rails power brokers in her own party if necessary.  Does she see the buy-low sell-high moment for the Dems, and is she rushing to establish herself as the Trump-style disruptor before others take the plunge?  Brazile 2020?

Fenster writes: