By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on September 8, 2010

Has the Democratic Presidential Primary of 2012 started already? Is Hillary Clinton beginning to 

position herself for a challenge to her boss? Yesterday, Hillary fired what may have been the first shot:

She said:

"I think that our rising debt level poses a national security threat and it poses a national security 

threat in two ways: it undermines our capacity to act in our own interests and it does constrain us 

where constraint may be undesirable. And it also sends a message of weakness, internationally."

The contrast with her husband's presidency is implicit: He balanced the budget and reduced the 

debt to the point where Wall Street fretted that there would be no more federal debt instruments to 

buy, leaving them without a safe place of park their money.

Hillary does nothing -- nothing -- without forethought. She plans every word, particularly when the 

words are critical of her president. By framing the "debt level" as a "national security threat," 

she gives herself jurisdiction over budget policy and makes her comments about it appropriate for a 

Secretary of State. And by criticizing the debt level which her president has amassed, she sets up the 

basis for a fiscal/economic critique of his presidency.

Remember that between the time George Washington took the oath of office and the day that Obama 

took the same oath, the federal government amassed $9 trillion of debt. And, in the nineteen months 

since then, it has piled up $3.5 trillion more! Debt is Obama's big negative, the concomitant of his big 

spending stimulus package. Now he has Hillary Clinton criticizing it and, by implication, him.

Will Hillary run? She might. The scenario would go like this:

Step One: Obama loses both houses of Congress by record margins, throwing the Democratic Party 

into shock. Disbelief yields to recrimination and the party leaders begin to turn on their president.

Step Two: The popular repudiation of their president leads Democrats to question Obama's leadership 

and his ratings plunge. Without a base of Democratic approval, President Obama's ratings sink below 

40% down into the low 30s.

Step Three: As it becomes clear that the Democrats will lose the election of 2012, more and more party 

leaders and the rank and file demand new leadership and look to Hillary to turn things around.

Who know is she will really run. She doesn't know. She can't know until she sees how low Obama falls. 

But remember this: If she does run, her candidacy started yesterday.


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