The Patriot Post® · Clinton Campaign Flounders Ahead of Iowa Caucus

Getting Hillary Clinton elected is a family (crime) business, but one that’s facing a bear market. Her lead in the polls has shrunk to only 8.6 percentage points ahead of Bernie Sanders — the narrowest gap in the campaign so far. Clinton is running an uneven racetrack. Of course an avowed socialist named Sanders is making headway, because a socialist named Barack Obama has paved the way and the party can’t tell the difference between Democrat and socialist.

This is terrible news for the Clinton campaign 15 days ahead of the Iowa caucus, as Clinton’s lead is shrinking faster than it did in 2008. In what appeared to be a last ditch effort to reach out to younger voters, the Clinton campaign sent Chelsea Clinton to attack Sanders’ health care policy in New Hampshire Tuesday, saying it would destroy ObamaCare, and thus take away health insurance from millions. (She didn’t mention he would replace it with a single-payer system.) Chelsea is the figure Clinton has used to soften her image, to highlight her maternal side, to mitigate the fact that she fought for her husband’s reputation after women accused him of sexual assault — a fact that has come back to hurt Hillary because today’s society is more likely to believe women who speak up.

But this race isn’t for Sanders or Clinton — with the baggage of the email scandal and dealings through her nonprofit — to decide. “The person who will decide the nomination on the democratic side is FBI Director James Comey,” said commentator Charles Krauthammer. “If he decides to do a criminal referral [on Clinton], I think she can collapse — either it’s quashed and then there’s a huge scandal, or there’s an indictment, in which case, [Joe] Biden steps forward and he offers himself, self-sacrificially.” Don’t count out Elizabeth Warren, either. While many of the deadlines have passed to get Biden’s or Warren’s name on the primary ballots in key states, Democrats could make the unusual move of running a brokered convention months later, replacing their inevitable candidate with a savior.