Although Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 election, Speculation is mounting that Hillary Clinton could launch a bid for the US presidency in 2020 after two former advisers in as many months floated the idea of a remarkable political comeback.
Mark Penn, a former adviser to the Clintons, and Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president, suggested in a Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed that she won’t let her “humiliating” 2016 loss — or her failure to win the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2008 — stand in the way of her presidential ambitions.
“True to her name, Mrs. Clinton will fight this out until the last dog dies,” they wrote. “She won’t let a little thing like two stunning defeats stand in the way of her claim to the White House.”
Republican Donald Trump picked up his first political victory Tuesday, as he beat out Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the race to become the next U.S. president.
Penn and Stein offered that while she may hold off on entering the race until “the legions of Senate Democrats make their announcements,” Clinton will likely be among the 2020 candidates “by the time the primaries are in full swing.”
They added that the former secretary of state has had time to reflect on what went wrong during her 2016 run and modify her strategy.
“She has decisively to win those Iowa caucus-goers who have never warmed up to her,” they contended. “They will see her now as strong, partisan, left-leaning and all-Democrat–the one with the guts, experience and steely-eyed determination to defeat Mr. Trump.”
Clinton hinted at a potential 2020 campaign in October, telling Recode’s Kara Swisher that while she did not want to run again, she’d “like to be president” and feels she’d be prepared to address issues that remain when Trump leaves office.
“There’s going to be so much work to be done. I mean, we have confused everybody in the world, including ourselves. We have confused our friends and our enemies: They have do idea what the United States stands for, what we’re likely to do, what we think is important,” she said at the time. “So the work would be work that I feel very well prepared for having been in the Senate for eight years, having been a diplomat in the State Department and it’s just going to be a lot of heavy lifting.”
Clinton added that she wouldn’t even consider a 2020 run until after the 2018 midterm election.
Longtime advisers, however, shot down reports that Clinton was eyeing another presidential run.
Despite that, Penn and Stein urged voters to be “rest assured that, one way or another, Hillary 4.0 is on the way,” The Hill Reported.
