Kirsten Gillibrand has only one narrow path to the presidency — but it’s a very exciting one! – Washington Examiner

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Kirsten Gillibrand will finish out her Senate term as promised. That’s because she will never be president.

Well, OK — there’s one scenario that could actually give her a minute but tangible shot.

Gillibrand’s positions have flip-flopped on everything from gun rights advocacy (she once had a 100 percent rating from the NRA) to immigration. She now supports single-payer healthcare and tries to posture herself as a champion of the people all while waiting on Wall Street on bended knee for campaign cash. The former proud moderate has the single most anti-Trump voting record in the Senate, “evolving” into a #Resistance hero, coincidentally just in time to run for president!

[Read: Kirsten Gillibrand launches 2020 bid for the White House]

Gillibrand’s electoral issue, however, is less about her blatant political opportunism and more about the current landscape of the Democratic Party. The socialists and hard-leftists don’t trust her coziness with Wall Street, and she hasn’t exactly positioned herself well to claim the mantle of centrism or Rust Belt friendliness. She’s a white woman running in a primary race where as many as half of the voters have heard of “intersectionality” and think it actually matters. Although she doesn’t suffer from the same obvious unlikability factor plaguing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Gillibrand hardly oozes charisma.

Plus, an entire coalition of Clinton and Al Franken acolytes already have their knives out for her. Gillibrand, recall, spearheaded the push to oust Franken from office for his sexual predations, and she also denounced Bill Clinton’s treatment of women.

But this is where a target on her back can become an asset.

There’s just one issue that Gillibrand has been earnestly consistent on, and that’s advocating for sexual assault victims. Although her push to oust serial predator and former Sen. Al Franken from office earned her left-wing ire, it was probably one of the most honest and genuine things she’s done in a very opportunistic political career. We cannot know her motive, and it’s fully possible that she turned on Franken out of political expediency. But given the continued grudge held by Franken fans and donors levied against Gillibrand, it seems unlikely that she did so out of sheer political calculus. Her advocacy for sexual assault victims has spanned from those in the military to college campuses over her entire career in national politics. If Gillibrand has one “passion” that doesn’t seem to have come from a public opinion poll or campaign strategist, it’s justice for women.

Gillibrand doesn’t have a real constituency or base yet. Her biggest selling point at the moment is that she’s not as insane as many of her peers and has actual experience with a legislative record to speak of, unlike (ahem) a very popular failed Senate candidate from Texas. But what if Gillibrand could turn the Franken and Clinton outrage in on itself, making lemons into lemonade?

It would be bold and extremely risky for Gillibrand to open fire on hypocritical liberals who were more than happy to destroy Brett Kavanaugh’s life without a shred of evidence, but proudly defend Al Franken and Bill Clinton to this day. But it would be a masterful relitigation of 2016 and a stunning rebuke of President Trump at the same time. If executed correctly, it could even could have bipartisan appeal. If Gillibrand went kamikaze on her own party, forcing Democrats to take sides on #MeToo, either to expose themselves as hypocrites or stand with her, then she could buy herself time to build a base.

Then, if she did secure the nomination, she would have an easy pitch to suburban voters in the general election: I’m a non-insane Democrat who stands with women instead of groping them.

This isn’t a likely scenario, but it’s the only one where Gillibrand emerges with her image empowered instead of corrupted and her career doesn’t fade into irrelevance.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/kirsten-gillibrand-has-only-one-narrow-path-to-the-presidency-but-its-a-very-exciting-one

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