Juan Williams: Hillary Clinton can rescue Democrats in the midterms

Democrats need a strong voice ready to fight to restore women’s rights, now that the Supreme Court has struck down Roe v. Wade. 

There’s only one Hillary Clinton. 

Right-wingers on the Supreme Court rescinding the constitutional right to abortion “is incredibly dangerous and it is not just about a woman’s right to choose. It is about much more than that,” Clinton told CBS News back in May, when a draft version of Friday’s decision emerged. 

“Any American who says, ‘Look, I’m not a woman, this doesn’t affect me. I’m not Black, that doesn’t affect me. I’m not gay, that doesn’t affect me’ — once you allow this kind of extreme power to take hold, you have no idea who they will come for next,” she said. 

Go, Hillary. 

Unlike most Democrats at a loss for a midterms message, Clinton knows how to deal with the far right’s bullying. 

The GOP’s media echo chamber long ago demonized her. She still beat Donald Trump in the popular vote in 2016.  

Now it is her turn to lash the GOP extremists for ending nationwide abortion rights, putting more guns on the streets, punishing corporations for supporting gay rights and dismissing history lessons on race as upsetting to white children. 

Clinton is exactly the right person to put steel in the Democrats’ spine and bring attention to the reality that “ultra-MAGA” Republicans, as President Biden calls them, are tearing apart the nation. 

The Supreme Court justices last week acted as political enforcers for extremist views that are far out of line with public opinion on abortion and gun safety.  

They opened the door to women losing control over their lives without the right to have an abortion. They also gave a pass to more violent shootings on the streets by striking down a New York safeguard that required people who want to carry a firearm in public to demonstrate a specific need. 

These decisions amount to a political powerplay by former President Trump’s three nominees. 

Biden measures his words about the far right out of fear of being charged with further polarizing the country. 

So let Hillary roar her message to suburban white women who will be key to deciding the outcome of the midterms. 

She already bragged back in April that Biden and congressional Democrats have had a “lot of good accomplishments” in the last two years, including passage of a long-delayed infrastructure bill to strengthen America’s roads, bridges and electricity grids. 

She is pumping up Democrats for passing the financial aid package that kept many families afloat through the pandemic. 

Without a strong voice like Clinton’s, those Democratic accomplishments get drowned out by Republican culture wars centered on hatred of transgender children, fictions about whites being replaced and the embrace of the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. 

Clinton has the added potential to change the national conversation by scolding social media sites, newspapers and television networks for attempting even-handed treatment of both parties, even though one party is now an autocratic cult complicit in a violent insurrection against the U.S. government. 

“I don’t think the media is doing its job, to be honest,” she recently told Harry Lambert of the British publication The New Statesman. 

She added, “The mainstream media hasn’t yet caught up to the reality we live in. They are much too reluctant to stand up for the truth in the face of massive lying — to call a lie a lie — to be on record as saying that we are in a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and it can’t just be business as usual.” 

In a separate interview with Edward Luce of the Financial Times, Clinton even called out fellow Democrats for the excesses of “woke politics.” She labeled it as a distraction that feeds right-wing media’s distorted image of mainstream Democrats.  

“We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window,” Clinton said. 

“Look, the most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.” 

Clinton is feeding a hunger aroused in April by Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D). The little-known politician went viral by firing back at GOP lies about Michigan Democrats wanting to “groom and sexualize” children because they favored laws allowing teachers to address sexuality. 

Calling herself a “straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom,” McMorrow stood in the state Capitol and called out the GOP attack as “absolute nonsense.”  

Speaking with fire in her voice, she said: “I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight, white and Christian.” 

This is the model for Clinton. 

The U.S. needs “leaders who endeavor to bring out the best in us, not the worst, who don’t play to our fears, but help us address them,” Clinton said in Britain. 

In her Financial Times interview, Clinton specifically warned Democrats not to fall victim to Republican claims that Democrats want to defund the police. 

“It doesn’t even pass the common-sense politics test not to believe that [police are necessary, and should be accountable],” she explained, adding “politics should be the art of addition not subtraction.”  

Keep talking and talk louder, Hillary!  

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.