Clinton nostalgia
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The Clintons have injected former President Bill into the battle to such an extent that an insulting (yet not inaccurate) word -- Billary --is back in political parlance. In fact, the Clintons have played the Bill card so belligerently that you would think Bill is the candidate and Hillary his spokesperson! Obama was quite right in saying that sometimes he could not realize which candidate he was running against. And the sharp reality of the resurrected past seems to be eclipsing the fuzzy nostalgia that preceded it. For me, that feels like Clinton fatigue eclipsing Clinton nostalgia. What makes nostalgia such a fine feeling is that often the past seems more pleasant in memory than it was in reality. Ordinarily, the reality of the past can't deny the delights of nostalgia because the past is, by definition, gone. But this is not the case in the election at hand. The dynamics of the Democratic primaries (and of the general election, should Clinton become the Democratic nominee) have a lot to do with the tension between two conflicting forces: Clinton nostalgia, and Clinton fatigue. Voters who yearn for the fine old days of Bill's presidency tend to support Hillary. Voters who are glad the Clinton White House is over tend to support someone else. The question is, which force is stronger? I think the answer here is: fatigue. If I'm right in deeming that the unwelcome reality of the past will trump the nostalgia of the present, then the longer Hillary and Bill are in the limelight, the more Hillary's candidacy will falter. Even if she somehow manages to survive her growing weakness throughout the primaries and become the Democratic nominee (a far-away possibility), Clinton fatigue will continue to worsen, and the Democrats would be sending a debilitated contender into the general election. Nostalgia is a feeble foundation for a campaign in a developed country like America. Not just because campaigns are and ought to be about the future, but because when reality intrudes upon nostalgia, it tends to ruin the reverie.
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