As usual, I agree with Gabe Malor. If they wanted a lesbian to model the pantsuit tee, why not ask a lesbian?

If you needed to sum up the coolness disparity between Obama’s cult of personality and Hillary’s in one photo, this would be it.

https://twitter.com/johnpodesta/status/604314462368059394/photo/1

Then again, it was Obama’s campaign that produced this image, which to this day looks like it belongs on the bulletin board of some PD’s special victims unit.

https://twitter.com/Messina2012/status/248440417127903232/photo/1

Peggy Noonan asks a good question about Hillary and her dreary, awkward campaign: How can a candidate this terrible seem so inevitable?

In five of the past six presidential elections, the Democrats have won the popular vote. They enjoy certain locked-in advantages. The party itself is united and wholly organized around the idea of winning. (There is, however, a sense that its best talents have been exhausted in the two Obama terms, and its rising talents haven’t had the chance to learn what losers know.) Mrs. Clinton has 100% name ID, has one opponent in an old socialist to whom she can be publicly kind, and is connected to a former president whose presidency is looked back on with a sort of encrusted nostalgia—good economy, relative peace, colorful and singular messes. She has lasted long enough to go from wide-shouldered yuppie with angry blond hair to cooing grandmother. Soon they’ll be calling her “Mami.”

The polls show that even at this low point in her campaign, with the daily scandal cascade, she continues to beat all GOP comers. This week’s Quinnipiac survey shows her leading the closest Republican challengers, Rand Paul (46% to 42%) and Marco Rubio (45% to 41%). Republicans take comfort that this world-famous, unopposed icon is under 50%. I’m not so sure.

She’s an icon who lacks iconic qualities apart from the globally famous brand that is her surname. That’s what makes the pantsuit tee so goofy. It’s an attempt to personalize the appeal of someone whose appeal is emphatically impersonal. It’d be like making a t-shirt for Coca-Cola with the CEO’s face on the front instead of the Coke trademark. Obama’s cult of personality really was a cult of personality; there was more to it than just his personal charisma, like hopes for racial redemption in electing the first black president, but the “celebrity” knock on O resonated because he really did seem like a celebrity. He was young, good-looking, exquisitely poised in front of the camera, and charming to pretty much everyone outside the righty base. Obama’s celebrity built the Obama brand. With Hillary, the opposite is true — the Clinton brand built Hillary’s celebrity. Her only compelling personal quality is her First! Woman! President! narrative, which the pantsuit tee alludes to but only indirectly in playing up her supposed status as a personal icon. If she wants to push the gender angle, she’d be better off with a slogan (“It’s Time”) and her corporate logo than with anything that alludes to her as an individual. Hillary the person is a terrible candidate, arguably unelectable. Hillary the product, though? Money.