Juan Williams: Left and right will play tug-o’-war with Hillary

Karl Rove and David Axelrod agree. The two political strategists — both with winning presidential campaigns on their resumés — say the odds are overwhelming that Hillary Clinton will be elected as the 45^th president of the United States eight days from now.

Republicans on Capitol Hill seem to agree, too — or at least they did until the FBI’s Friday announcement about Clinton-related emails gave new hope to the GOP.

{mosads}The closing argument from Republican congressional candidates has been that they will serve as a check on a President Clinton. Advertising run by The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP political action committee, is based around the theme of no “rubber stamps” for Clinton.

On the Democrats’ side, the political gears are also moving on the assumption that the first female president will take office in January.

The New York Times reports that a scramble is already underway among different factions in the party to get their people into the Clinton cabinet. There is special emphasis on whom Clinton will select for key financial posts, including Treasury Secretary.

“We need a secretary of the Treasury who is prepared to take on the greed and recklessness of Wall Street, not someone who comes from Wall Street,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told the Times in an email last week.

At a recent campaign stop with Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) received a pledge from the candidate to work with her to “rewrite the rules of our economy.”

It all points to the fact that the real political hotspot right now is not the campaign trail but Capitol Hill. The question is whether Clinton can make deals with Congressional Republicans to get legislation passed into law and win approval for her judicial nominees.

The answer depends, in part, on whether Democrats claim a majority in the Senate. But even if they do, it will be a slim majority. And the odds are that the House will remain in Republican hands.

If past performance indicates the future of the Hillary Clinton White House, she will approach Republicans as a centrist and put pressure on Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to break away from the right wing of his caucus.

But such a move would ignite counter-pressure from Sens. Sanders and Warren, reminding the new president how important the progressive left is to her political fate. 

So, Clinton will be squeezed between left and right.

There is no escaping the fact that Clinton signed a 2016 Democratic Party platform that reads more like a Leftist manifesto, with its calls for a $15 minimum wage and abolition of the death penalty.

She will not be allowed to forget that she embraced free in-state public college tuition for families earning under $125,000 to win support from young, left-wing Democrats. 

How can she agree to any trade deals with free trade Republicans after she agreed during the primaries to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership to win support from unions?

It was smart politics. In an election cycle dominated by populist passions, she had to go left to reach out to the activist base of her party.

In the general election, with Donald Trump as her GOP opponent, she never felt the pressure to twist back to the middle of the road to win Republicans and independents. Trump’s ignorance of foreign policy, misogyny, racism, and vulgarity gave her all the help she needed. 

Just last week, former secretary of State Colin Powell became the latest GOP stalwart, along with former President George H.W. Bush, to say he is voting for Clinton.

But as president she needs to pivot to work with the GOP. So, will the real Hillary Clinton please stand up? 

The Clinton I know as a journalist is a political pragmatist; highly intelligent, consistent in her centrist views and the person who told me in an interview more than a decade ago: “You couldn’t get out of bed in the morning if you were listening to what everybody was saying or assessing.”

Clinton has never been a true liberal. During an Ohio primary event she was quoted as saying: “I get accused of being kind of moderate and [centrist]. I plead guilty.” It is easy to see why that statement gave progressives heartburn.

But she can’t run from her past. She began her political life as a conservative Republican. She grew up as a Goldwater Girl in Park Ridge, Ill., where everyone “thought Republican,” as one of Clinton’s former classmates told a biographer. 

“I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with,” Clinton said in a 1996 NPR interview.

On military interventionism, free trade, crime and welfare reform, Hillary has been a consummate conservative. 

She favors “intensifying” airstrikes against terrorists in Iraq and Syria, a hawkish contrast to President Obama’s approach over the last five years. She voted for President Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

Her hawkishness carried over to her work as Secretary of State. Clinton advocated for the 2009 surge in Afghanistan. She also helped convince Obama to work with NATO to oust Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi.

If Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks he can run over this woman, he is in for a rough time. Think back to the troubles she has faced ranging from her husband’s scandals to attacks on her leadership of the State Department during the crisis in Benghazi. 

She stood defiant through it all — including the legendary 11 straight hours of Congressional testimony on Benghazi.

That is why the smart money on Capitol Hill is betting Clinton will be a centrist dealmaker on the Hill.

How the far left and radical right react is the more explosive question.

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