Wapo politics writer
Anne Gearan may have just given us a tip for the 2016 race. It seems the front-runner for the Democrats has a long-shot gadfly putting her off her feed. Although Team Clinton would like to put her on the Bill Daly (race track slang for taking a horse to the front of the race at the start and remaining there to the finish) and would really just prefer a walkover, the field's got a few potential dark horses to contend with:
Backers and allies of Hillary Rodham Clinton are increasingly worried about the threat posed by a motley field of Democratic presidential hopefuls who could complicate, or even derail, a Clinton candidacy in 2016 by focusing attention on her weaknesses.
None of us want to draw attention to her weaknesses, of course. Who's out to actually win the presidency? We prefer gloss-overs and rose-colored glasses. But the would-be
Calidoscopios are circling:
Jim Webb, the former senator from Virginia who just formed an exploratory committee, is a populist native of Appalachia with potential appeal to working-class and Southern whites. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has been laying the groundwork of a campaign for months, focusing his energies on wooing the kind of progressive activists who view Clinton with suspicion.
We should all probably worry about a guy from the Reagan administration whose primary edge is appealing to Southern whites. As for O'Malley (who's got a fair shake as a dark horse candidate in the Primaries): if the Clinton team's main concern is
Democrats who are suspicious of her, how do they suppose she will fare when
non-Democrats consider her on the ballot for the actual presidential race?
Then there's that strange nuisance buzzing sound in the stable:
Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), the gadfly socialist who is also pondering a run in the Democratic primaries, represents the antiwar left still bitter with Clinton over the war in Iraq.
[Sidebar: as a rural Pennsylvanian, I cannot help but feel derided and abandoned by the Democratic establishment and their strategists here: we're bitter if we cling to our guns, and bitter if we don't.]
Although Team Clinton may be banking on all Democrats going with the smart money (slang for insider's bets on the insiders themselves) it's no wonder they've got an eye on Bernie "the Slayer" Sanders. They may view him as little more than a Bismarck (more race track slang: a favorite which the bookmakers do not expect to win), but for many Democrats outside the Clinton team he is becoming just that, a favorite -- and he might just prove to be the dark horse candidate, if the party turns out to vote more like dog players than insiders.
If Team Clinton is concerned about that whole "sense of entitlement that damaged her White House bid in 2008," might be they should look back to that primary for their cue:
Longtime Clinton family political adviser Harold Ickes said it would be a mistake to dismiss such challengers and the dangers they pose. “[What if] this were 2007 before Obama got into the race and you’d said, ‘Do you think Senator Obama is a threat to Hillary?’ ” Ickes asked rhetorically. The clear answer, he suggested, is that most would have dismissed Obama as little more than an annoyance.
An annoyance? Hmmmm. And what's the definition of a gadfly?
An annoying person, especially one who provokes others into action by criticism. I'm starting to think I should look at Gearan's previous coverage of primaries past and see if there's any correlation with the voters of Ohio.
But I suppose the insiders will just keep plodding on with their field horses and joint favorites (yes, more race track slang -- field horses are two or more horses running as a single betting unit. The term "joint favorites" is used when a bookmaker can't separate two horses for favoritism, so just lists them together: a.k.a. "Billary") Nonetheless, it sounds like the Jockey Club over at Team Clinton is already expecting a blanket finish in the primaries. Might be they ought to worry instead that she won't become an "also ran" placing out of the money in the home stretch.