Why Did Nobody of Substance Run Against Hillary Clinton?

Political conspiracy theory time. Now that the dust is starting to settle and we’re seeing that Hillary Clinton is almost certain to be the Democratic nominee for President, one has to question why nobody other than Bernie Sanders really challenged her. Yes, there were others like Martin O’Malley (is he still running?) and Jim Webb who is more of a Republican than a Democrat, but why did nobody else oppose her?

Let’s state the obvious: she’s a weak candidate. It isn’t just her name or her years of lies, controversies, and failures that make her the worst Democratic candidate since Michael Dukakis. It’s the fact that most people, even Democrats, don’t really like her. Surely Joe Biden would have been a better choice (more on him later). What about Michael Bloomberg? Where’s Andrew Cuomo? Al Gore, Elizabeth Warren, or Howard Shultz would have been much stronger candidates. In fact, any of them would have been the favorite for both the nomination as well as the general election.

Instead, the Democrats put up Hillary Clinton. There’s something to this. Granted, the Democrats usually don’t have as many candidates as the Republicans, but in an up-for-grabs year like this one, it’s amazing that there are 2 (plus O’Malley) Democratic candidates while the GOP field has to have two different debates just to get them to fit on the stage.

Conspiracy theory: either Clinton has been tapped by the powers that be to win the Presidency or the Republican nominee (likely Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, or Marco Rubio) was tapped and they needed a weak Democrat to have the Republican run against. Nothing else makes sense. Here are some of the anecdotal pieces of circumstantial evidence that supports this claim:

• She was embroiled in controversy and seemed very vulnerable at a time when any of the Democrats could have chosen to run.
• Her early polling numbers practically begged for a better alternative. It was worse than John McCain’s rise to failure after Barack Obama was tapped.
• Sanders was the only other viable candidate and he’s a self-proclaimed socialist. While he has plenty of supporters, it’s unlikely that someone like Bloomberg or Gore viewed him as a threat.
• Criticism about Clinton from the mainstream media is unfathomably lower this time around than it was when she ran in 2008.

Now, regarding Biden. Some will point out that he strongly contemplated a run. I offer you the idea that he was never going to run in the first place but needed to diffuse early support for Bernie Sanders. If enough anti-Clinton Democrats thought that they had a non-socialist alternative, they would wait. They did, then by the time he declared that he would not be running, it was too late to rally around Sanders.

As conspiracy theories go, this one has even less evidence than usual. However, in the world of US Presidential politics, the secrets are protected better than any others. We will likely never know the truth other than the fact that it stinks.

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