Hillary Would Have Done Better? It's a Silly 'Fairy Tale'

A political parlor game of sorts is making the rounds among Democrats called WWHHD, or What Would Hillary Have Done, notes Rebecca Traister. Might Clinton have handled, well, everything better? As someone who supported Clinton in the Democratic primary, you might think Traister would be an eager participant and a leader of the I-told-you-so brigade. Nope: "Rather than reveling in these flights of reverse political fancy, I find myself wanting the revisionist Hillary fantasists—Clintonites and reformed Obamamaniacs alike—to just shut up already," she writes in the upcoming New York Times Magazine.

The truth is that there wasn't much difference between the two candidates in 2008, no matter what their respective camps would have had you believe. If Clinton had won, her presidency probably would have looked much the same as Obama's. Of course, she would have had to put up with the constant second-guessing about an "imagined" Obama presidency. "Alternate-universe President Hillary Clinton would have been competing with a dream," writes Traister. "But in a funny way, Obama is, too." So give it up, Clinton piners. "It's time to let go of the fairy tales." (More Hillary Clinton stories.)