Hillary Clinton As A Poker Player
To define Hillary Clinton as a poker player would be equivalent of describing Barbara Streisand as a singer of songs. Yes Hillary Clinton knows how to make moves and play her cards correctly, but she is a bit more than that. In fact she would be more like a chess Grand Master, rocket scientist and a poker player all wrapped in one.
Her power partnership with Bill Clinton shaped the politics of the USA and probably the World in the same way that F.D and Eleanor Roosevelt and shaped the World in the 1940’s. Partly in the opposition they illicit and partly from the policies they pursued they managed to dominate the political scene for the last 20 years.
The first real sense that Hillary Clinton had a great poker face was when she was required to support Bill Clinton when the opposition tried to impeach him for the Monica Lewinsky affair. If she had stuck the knife into Bill Clinton by basically being angry with Bill Clinton in public he was finished. However, she turned it around by saying it ”….was a vast right wing conspiracy….” that Bill Clinton was facing and the impeachment was a scam.
Clearly this was not the play that the opposition was wanting. She already stated that she was not a Tammy Wynette type of figure and here she was standing by her man. The opposition never realised that she had ambitions herself and she needed a knave by her side to do the dirty work when it was needed and there was no one better that ”…the great communicator….” Bill Clinton to be that man. Hillary Clinton was playing the long game.
She did get blindsided when Barack Obama came on the scene and took away the Presidency that she would have truly won because after Lehman’s Day, any Democrat would have been President since the Republicans, party of low government expenses and anti-socialist policy, effectively ripped up their mission statement and raised spending massively and nationalised the financial industry in the US. Not only did they nationalise the industry but the brought in a policy which privatised profits but socialised losses, a new and incredibly stupid policy.
Now that Obama has won a second term. Hillary Clinton has been hailed as a brilliant Secretary of State and is in pole position to be President. The Republican Party is in disarray the Democrats are in the mood to elect the first woman President of the USA and only ”….fate of god….” can stop her becoming President in 2016.
In poker terms she would have been chip leader 1996, almost down and out extremely short stacked in 1998, chip leader 2004, short stacked in 2008 and now once again chip leader 2012. Will she once again be short stacked? Based on her track record yes she will, However, this time she has some really big favours to call in Bill Clinton and Barack Obama! Bill Clinton obviously as she saved his presidency and Barack Obama for Bill Clinton destroying the Republicans after they continuously called him a great President and saying Obama could not match up to Bill Clinton’s brilliance. When Bill Clinton went to the Democratic convention of 2012 and spent several minutes tearing down the Republican fiscal and world view it was a master class of how to explain a political argument which everyone can understand. Barack Obama did not have to do much except get out the vote, which he did in buckets.
Therefore Hillary Clinton is a grinder. A grinder that ran into a few ”all in” merchants and survived. Now that she is well in the lead with the American public can their truly be a challenger with a greater vision than having the first female President of the USA? I am 80% sure she will be President and the only thing that could get in her way would be ill health and or a stupid move such as Mitt Romney ‘47% ‘video. Somehow I see Hillary Clinton being too focused for such a mistake.