Is Hillary running in 2012?

Could Hillary Clinton unseat the president?

(Image credit: CC BY: The White House)

last updated 8 January 2015

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she's won't stay on in her current job for two terms, assuming her one-time rival President Obama is reelected in 2012. Clinton told PBS host Tavis Smiley that she is "absolutely not interested" in running for president, but not everyone's buying her denial. Is Clinton floating a bid to unseat her party's sitting president in 2012? (Watch a CNN report about Hillary Clinton's possible presidential run)

Obama-Clinton in 2012 isn't unrealistic: With "the ongoing decline in the president's approval ratings," says Peter Roff in U.S. News, the "chatter" about a Hillary challenge is only growing. It may be "just wishful thinking on the part of those Democrats who have already grown tired of Obama," but why not? Similar unease led Ted Kennedy to challenge President Carter in 1980.

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A Hillary insurgency would be "awesome," but unlikely: Clinton-Obama 2012 would be the "best rematch since Balboa-Lang II," says Allahpundit in Hot Air. But though "the very thought of it is so sweet that we simply must entertain it," a Hillary primary challenge doesn't make sense. She'd "almost certainly" lose, and she'd then "be staring at so many burned bridges that a run in 2016 would be impossible."

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