Hillary Clinton is the 2016 Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
And it’s historic.
Whether you share Hillary Clinton’s political views or not, all Americans are living through history at this moment.
Let me paint the visual for you.
Below are all of the Democratic presidential nominees throughout American history, beginning with Andrew Jackson in 1828:
Now add Hillary R. Clinton to the list.
I can ask you what makes Clinton unique from every other Democratic presidential nominee in history, or ANY presidential nominee for that matter, but I think by looking above you know the answer.
America is one election away from electing its first woman as Commander In Chief.
IS AMERICA READY?
There are currently 17 female world leaders on the planet, accounting for about one-in-ten of the United Nations member states. That’s not a lot. Some nations, like India, Ireland and Bangladesh have been electing women to top positions for a long time. But after 240 years, American women still haven’t broken the ultimate political glass ceiling.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found about four in ten Americans believe the nation is not ready to elect a woman as president. That’s a huge hurdle for Clinton to jump, on top of the historical fact only once in my lifetime has one political party won three presidential elections in a row (George Bush in 1988).
Clinton also faces in her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, an unknown wild card. A complete political outsider, the New Yorker seems ready, perhaps anxious, to denigrate “crooked Hillary” every chance he gets. There is every reason to believe this will be the most negative presidential campaign in American history.
But Clinton is ready.
Where Trump is the ultimate outsider, Hillary Clinton is the ultimate political insider. As a bright and up-and-coming attorney in Washington, D.C. she followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas as they plotted and planned his political career. You can find many operatives who worked on the early Clinton campaigns who will say “without Hillary, Bill would have never made it.”
She stuck by him through his multiple extramarital affairs, his political defeats in Arkansas and the unprecedented partisan attacks they both endured during his presidency.
When Bill Clinton admitted he had lied about a sexual relationship with a White House intern, Hillary could have left and gone into seclusion. The public would have understood.
Instead she eyed a U.S. Senate seat in one of the biggest states in the country. As a sitting first lady she went to New York and won two statewide elections. Then, in 2008, she came close to winning the Democratic nomination but was stopped by Barack Obama. After his historic election, Obama, who like Lincoln wanted to keep his enemies close, appointed her as his Secretary of State. For four years she held keys to the world, building on her legislative experience.
Of course, she’s now running in an election year where political experience seems of very little importance to the American voter. Add to this a potential indictment for not protecting her emails as Secretary of State, and you have the makings of a very tough campaign ahead.
Still, most seasoned political observers believe when it comes time to choosing a Commander In Chief, Clinton will have the upper hand over the billionaire former reality television host.
Whatever you think of her personally or politically, the fact we are referring to “she” as the nominee of a major political party has already made 2016 an historic year in American politics.