Why Hillary Doesn't Want to Be Seen As Obama's Third Term

As the GOP presidential candidate clown car lurches along and Jeb Bush feels he need not discuss the disasters his idiot brother brought to the country, presumed Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton, is doing a rapid tap dance to avoid being seen as a vehicle for a third Obama term.  True, given her skin color, in the eyes of the most vociferous racists in the GOP base, in some ways she can't usher in a third Obama term, but the insane, spittle flecked reaction of the GOP base to anything tied to Obama cannot help bust cause Hillary concern with such a label.  A piece in Slate looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

A third Obama term. The vice president isn’t the only one who feels this way. This, of course, is what Republicans have been saying Hillary Clinton’s presidency would be for months. Biden didn’t introduce this idea, but it’s one thing for Republicans to say it, it’s another thing for the vice president to bolt it onto the eventual Democratic nominee.  

This is a standard attack. Indeed, Democrats are raising money today playing on the idea that Jeb Bush is a third George W. Bush term. The big obvious difference in 2016 is that Obama is much more popular right now than George Bush was at the end of his presidency. Bush’s approval rating was 28 percent in the 2008 election night exit poll. Right now Barack Obama’s approval rating is 47 percent in the Gallup poll, almost 20 points higher. If the economy continues to improve, that number could climb higher still and you could imagine Hillary Clinton saying, If by third term you mean another 59 months of continuous job growth and falling unemployment, then yes I’ll be a third term.

He [David Axlerod] wrote to Sen. Obama in 2008: “When incumbents step down, voters rarely opt for a replica of what they have, even when that outgoing leader is popular. They almost always choose change over the status quo.” This is a different formulation of what President Obama was talking about recently when he said voters wanted “that new car smell.” Clinton is associated with the status quo even more because she has the Obama years and the Clinton years attached to her.

Given this view, simple distinctions between Obama and Clinton on policy or positioning won’t be enough to break the third-term lock. . . .  She is probably, for example, a better deal-maker and would work harder at connecting with Republicans, but that’s hardly a vast distinction that makes voter sit up. Gender is an obvious distinction, but that’s not the basis for a presidential platform.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons Clinton is working so hard to come up with a message that is so unique and powerful it looks new. Amy Chozick of the New York Times reports that Clinton has consulted more than 200 experts in her effort to craft an economic message. She’s not just trying to come up with a policy that creates distance, but one that achieves escape velocity.

If the public doesn’t think there’s any big difference between what she’s offering and what President Obama would offer in a third term, Clinton’s efforts will look like Third Term Monte, a sleight of hand confidence game.