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Hillary Doesn't Care What You Think, Liberals (And For Good Reason)

Hillary Clinton does not care what liberals think. And who can blame her? Since quitting her job at the State Department, she has shown far less interest in promoting the causes liberals care about than she has in getting as rich as humanly possible.

Clinton has hobnobbed with Wall Street executives, given paid speeches hosted by foreign banks accused of fraud, charged public universities $300,000 to hear her speak, lifted her foundation’s ban on accepting donations from sketchy foreign governments—all things liberals would find outrageously offensive if done by Mitt Romney or the Koch brothers.

But liberals haven’t really complained at all. And even when they do, it’s only to express mild panic at the possibility that she won’t get elected, because ordinary voters will find her egregiously out of touch. Efforts to draft a serious left-wing challenger to run against Clinton have been underwhelming, at best. Elizabeth Warren almost definitely won’t run. Bernie Sanders probably will, but his supporters are spending most of their time trying to convince Warren to get in the race. At least she would present more than a token challenge to the Hillary juggernaut, unlike Sanders, or practically anyone else. Hillary Clinton’s formidable array of rich donors—not to mention her notorious penchant for grudge holding and score settling—has scared off potential challengers. One gets the sense that, if Sanders does run, he will do so only with Clinton’s expressed permission.

Yes, there is certainly some liberal angst about the prospect of an unchallenged Clinton candidacy. After all, she has collected millions of dollars in donations from Wall Street banks over the course of her political career, including from some of the most hated corporations in America. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is a close friend, and Wall Street titans are so ready for Hillary they would almost definitely support her over a less subservient Republican. And yet, it's all meaningless. Many of the same liberals who hailed the Occupy Wall Street movement as a transcendent excessive in American democracy cannot wait to usher in a second Clinton presidency. Elizabeth Warren backers, for example, are pleased that their preferred candidate met with Hillary back in December, but polling shows that most of them would vote for Hillary if Warren doesn’t run. So why would Hillary care what they think?

When it comes to foreign policy, many liberals have rushed to President Obama’s defense against critics who suggest he lacks toughness and decisiveness. Others have been critical of what they see as Obama’s refusal to end the cycle of "endless war" in the Middle East. And yet these same liberals are lining up to embrace Hillary, who has expressed regret that the president rebuffed her hawkish sensibilities during her time as secretary of state. Clinton was reportedly the driving force by the decision to intervene in Libya, and was pushing for early military action in Syria as well. NBC anchor Brian Williams’ embarrassing false stories about the Iraq War have prompted many liberals to whine like children: "Bush and Cheney lied about Iraq too, and they didn’t get fired! It would be nice all the people who lied us into war got in trouble!" And yet these same liberals are totally ready for Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war as a senator when it was politically popular, only to admit she was wrong almost a decade later when the war was immensely unpopular. So again: why would Hillary take these people seriously?

On another issue the left cares about—the Keystone XL pipeline—Hillary has refused to take a position, even as her charitable foundation accepts six-figure donations from a Canadian government agency promoting the pipeline. Who cares? As if that’s going to stop anyone from voting for the first woman president. Because who cares if we end up with another Wall Street-loving hawk in the White House? At least she won’t have an "R" next to her name. "Maybe she’ll listen to us this time," said the liberal. But she won’t.

Why would she?