Pruden: One last dance with Hillary

There’s scarcely a pundit, wise guy or blowhard at the end of the bar who hasn’t sworn off Hillary Clinton, vowing that it’s time to find something new to rant and rave about.

But Washington pundits on the make for a clever insight owe her at least a case of fine old 120-proof Russian vodka. She’s always worth a column or rant, if not today surely tomorrow. It’s a piece that writes itself, only Miss Hillary will write it for whoever is stumped for a start.

The candidate who would put the word “deplorables” in William Safire’s authoritative dictionary of politics, if there still was one, is always rewriting the history of minor and major disasters of her life in politics, someone forever failing to engage brain before opening mouth. H.L. Mencken could not have written more colorful invective, vilification or vituperation than her bitter shout-out to the many millions who didn’t vote for her in 2016.

“If you look at the map of the United States,” she told a wise-guy conference the other day in India, of all places, “there’s all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coasts, I win, you know, Illinois, Minnesota, places like that. But what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.

“And his whole campaign, ‘Make America great again,’ was looking backward. You know,” she said, affecting to put words in the Donald’s mouth, “‘you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs, you don’t want, you know, to see Indian Americans succeeding more than you are. Wherever your problem is, I’m gonna solve it.’”

This work of loose lips angers, and more to the point, terrifies sane and savvy Democrats who understand that inventing a tidal wave to carry the 2018 midterm congressional elections will be far more difficult than just counting the ballots and celebrating now. Beyond adding further insult to the “basket of deplorables,” she affronted women her party desperately needs in the new “year of the woman.” Particularly white folks. When a panelist in India asked her why a majority of white women voted Republican in 2016, she blamed it on men the color of Bubba.

“Part of that is an identification with the Republican Party and an ongoing pressure to vote the way your husband, your boss, your son, your boyfriend, whoever believes you should.”

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