You won’t find a bigger supporter of Hillary Clinton than me. Sure, I stumped for Barack Obama in 2008, and for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary, but I have always been steadfast in my belief that Hillary Rodham Clinton had the judgment and experience to be Commander-in-Chief of the United States (unless there were some technical way in which Bernie Sanders could still pull it off).
So it is as one of Clinton’s biggest supporters that I say to her now: your work here is done. It is time for Hillary Clinton to disappear from our magazine covers and our television screens, and gracefully retire from public life. Ideally, taking all other women with her.
This is about moving forward, and how are we supposed to do that when we’re hamstrung by symbols of past failures, like Hillary Clinton, or Geraldine from human resources, who makes a federal case out of every bad joke around the water cooler? Let’s save the investigating for private e-mail servers, O.K., Geraldine? There are still a lot of unanswered questions there.
The Trump Presidency isn’t a slow-motion car crash. It’s happening at light speed, every day. How are we supposed to combat this existential threat when we’re constantly interrupted by the rejected message of a previous candidate? And how am I supposed to formulate my thoughts when my wife is constantly interrupting to ask what I’m thinking? It’s a political Catch-22 that can only be reconciled by Hillary returning to the Chappaqua woods, along with my wife, and her friend Sarah with the weird laugh, who apparently doesn’t have her own apartment where she can watch “The Good Fight.”
And don’t get me started on Chelsea. Yes, she’s a highly educated, well-spoken young woman with a lifelong front-row seat to politics and governance. As a private citizen of this democracy, she has every right to run for office. But should she? The last thing we need is to keep the Clinton dynasty on life support. Like my grandmother, selfishly clinging to a fortune she cannot enjoy, with one foot in the grave and the other in a tub of Epsom salt. The Newport house should be mine, Nana. The Newport house belongs to America now.
I can hear you formulating your outrage. But, I assure you, this is not a “gendered” opinion. No recent failed Presidential candidate has ever had such a prominent public role post-election, with the possible exceptions of Al Gore, who produced and starred in an Oscar-winning documentary; Senator John McCain, who is a constant television presence; and Mitt Romney, who—you gotta admit—seemed like a pretty good dude in that Netflix movie. Just an awkward guy from a political family who had no logical career move other than President at that point in his life. Sure, he lacked charisma in public, but you saw the real him around his family. Unlike Hillary Clinton, a calculating technocrat, who, it must be admitted, selfishly plotted a takeover of the Presidency for decades.
I hate her.
And it is with deep admiration and respect for her decades of public service that I request that she, and all the other women, disappear from sight somewhere far away from me. But nowhere fun, like a screening of “Wonder Woman.” I’m picturing someplace boring, like some kind of knitting camp, or a farm that makes kombucha and then keeps it there. (Elizabeth Warren, of course, can stay.)
The point is, we’ll never move ahead as a nation if we keep following a failed candidate. It’s time to think about Sanders 2020.
