Electoral battles

Clinton’s top priority? Fighting her own worst instincts.

Hillary Clinton’s top priority, if she is elected president, shouldn’t be enacting an infrastructure plan or pushing immigration reform. It should be — must be, if she is to succeed on any substantive front — to combat her own worst instincts.

To be clear, I desperately want to see Clinton elected, not only because the alternative is Donald Trump and not only because it is time for a woman in the White House. Clinton has the experience, intelligence, skill and discipline to be an excellent president.

But she has also repeatedly displayed tendencies, overlapping and toxically reinforcing, that could undermine all those positive attributes:

To believe — correctly, in my view — that she is the victim of an implacable political opposition, and to respond by hunkering down and lashing out.