In the middle of the battle for this year's Republican nomination, a curiously irrelevant diversion has appeared. Suddenly, we're told, a "Hillary 2016" bandwagon has sprung up out of nowhere. Senator Gillibrand proposed the idea, Nancy Pelosi endorsed it, Bill Clinton has coyly denied it (but given it his blessing), and a Google search discloses over 300 hits about it.  In Hollywood, they say that if a starlet gets on a magazine cover, she's lucky, if she gets on two, she's good, but if she gets on half a dozen, all at once, she's got a good agent. Those 300 hits mean that somebody has been very busy. But to what end? To quote an earlier article about Hillary, "just as in Las Vegas, there are no coincidences in politics." This curious timing must mean something. Maybe Obama is in more trouble than we think. A president who's popular in the spring can be toast by election time (remember Carter?)  Something may be looming on the horizon (jobs? debit crisis? Iran? gay...(Read Full Post)