Poor Hillary.
In 2008, she was set for her coronation as the Democratic candidate for president — until a young Illinois senator came out of nowhere to take it from her. Signs now suggest she’s running in 2016 — and once again Barack Obama may be gumming up the works.
This time the issue involves two biopics planned respectively by CNN and NBC, which would run during the 2016 election cycle or just before. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus says this amounts to a “political ad” for Hillary Clinton. And he’s threatening to ban the two networks from hosting GOP primary debates if they go ahead with their films.
Now, in a free political universe, the networks could run as many Hillary Clinton films as they please, and the GOP would be free to keep the nets from broadcasting their debates. But campaign-finance laws have distorted our politics. And Hillary films have been at the center of the legal wrangling.
That was the case during the 2008 elections, when the Federal Election Commission blocked a group named Citizens United that wanted to advertise and broadcast its film “Hillary: The Movie.” In a now-famous decision, the Supreme Court held that campaign-finance provisions used to block the broadcast violated the First Amendment. You will recall this is the decision President Obama has loudly denounced as a threat to democracy.
We don’t accept the argument that there should be restrictions on the right to broadcast or advertise any film, even a fawning one, during a campaign. That’s the Obama argument. Now it’s being used against Hillary.