What's more annoying, the Third Way or Politico's willingness to keep giving them a megaphone, no matter how irrelevant they become?
If she wins the presidency, [Hillary] Clinton would likely enjoy the shortest honeymoon period of any incoming commander-in-chief in recent history, according to Washington strategists, confronting major roadblocks to enacting her ambitious agenda, as well as Republican attacks that have been muted courtesy of the GOP nominee.
"It will be the defining fact of her presidency," Jonathan Cowan, president of the moderate think tank Third Way, said of Clinton's problem of entering office with a divided Congress. "It’s unprecedented." […]
"What that would leave her with is an absolute imperative to govern from the center," said Cowan, a former Bill Clinton White House official. "She will have no choice. There is no choice. Obama will have picked most of the low hanging executive orders, and she'll be in this Grover Cleveland moment."
Of course, that would be Cowan's prescription no matter what the outcome of this election. If Democrats win the House and Senate and White House in a landslide, Cowan would find some excuse for the need for governing from the center. The landslide is probably not going to include the House, but she'll still have a choice. She'll have the choice of working with a Democratic Senate to take on the fights that matter most to a Democratic base that she'll need to turn out in 2018, both to protect a Senate majority and make gains in the House. She won't do that by following the Third Way centrist playbook. That might have worked in 1996, but in case Cowan hasn't noticed, we've all moved on in the past 20 years. Hillary included. Or maybe they notice her primary campaign in which she was damned successful and stayed out of the center.
The rest of the story isn't news to anyone paying attention. Republicans who are now refusing to engage because they don't want to align themselves with Trump are promising to make Clinton's presidency a living hell, to make their obstruction of President Obama's agenda look like child’s play. Like we all didn't know that was coming. The answer isn't to bow to the will of Republicans and Third Way dinosaurs—the answer is the same as it's been for the last decade: fight it.
Can you chip in $3 to help Hillary Clinton keep fighting?