Hillary Clinton

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No doubt, the White House has extensive contingency plans in the works over what to unleash upon the United States from Nov. 9, 2016, through Jan. 19, 2017, in case Trump wins. But, presumably, Mrs. Clinton has made it clear to Mr. Obama that he needs to keep the southern border calm through Election Day.

After that, though…

As we saw this weekend, however, Muslim terrorism is a more worrisome problem for Hillary. I would imagine that she has friends in the Persian Gulf who have assured her that they”€™ve directed their efforts to export their domestic troublemakers away from the U.S. through Nov. 8.

But America now has a more-than-adequate supply of angry young Muslims. And the more the terrorier.

Hillary and her allies in the news media are adamant about keeping voters from noticing that more Muslim immigrants means more terrorists. Correlation doesn”€™t prove causation! But that kind of pro-stupidity argumentation gets tiresome.

Since this weekend, Mrs. Clinton has been furiously trying to signal to the Potential Muslim Terrorist community that they”€™re just helping Trump. But the Allahu Akbar crowd tends to respond to its own erratic internal urges, so it’s by no means clear if she can talk all of them into delaying their next acts of butchery until after the election.

Or maybe she can convince voters that immigrant Muslim terrorists are false flags that are part of the vast Putin-Trump conspiracy?

At this point, Hillary’s most obvious strategy is to rest up for the first debate, use her strong debating skills to lure Trump into the wonkish weeds, and hope that Trump’s masculine dominance ploys that worked well on Jeb won”€™t be that appealing to voters when used against a fragile but feisty old lady.

But if that doesn”€™t work for Hillary…

Why not pivot on immigration security?

In 1593, Henri IV gave up Protestantism because the people of France wanted a king who was Catholic. “€œParis is well worth a Mass,”€ he supposedly said.

Similarly, American voters seem to like having working borders. Would it kill Hillary to promise that?

But if it would, why?

Is it her Huma?

Or is it that elites too much these days resent their fellow countrymen as deplorable wastes of space to even pretend to wish them well? In The Guardian this week, for example, Yale economist Robert Shiller promises/threatens to war on the curse of “€œbirthplace injustice”€:

In other words, sure, you losers in West Virginia are descended from Americans who fought in every battle the United States has won from Yorktown to 73 Easting, but what have you done for me lately?

Personally, though, I kind of like having been born an American. And I am not all that enthusiastic about plotting with Professor Shiller against the American birthplace privilege of West Virginia hillbillies because I appreciate their ancestors fighting on my ancestors”€™ side. As Lincoln observed, “€œThe mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave…”€ should be evocative. But who can remember such debts anymore?

And because I figure that if push ultimately comes to shove, I”€™d like to have some West Virginians on my descendants”€™ side, too.

Maybe I”€™d be more enthusiastic about our betters”€™ crusade to take away our birthplace privilege if I didn”€™t suspect it would just make them even more money than they already have.

Or is Hillary getting outmaneuvered by Trump, a 70-year-old political novice, because she is just too sick to innovate? Is she limited to the same old routines because it would be just too much work for her to come up with a response to the new realities? Is her staff too tipped toward yes-women?

One obvious question: Is Hillary’s husband, who showed impressive ability to adapt to new circumstances in the 1990s, too ill to give her good advice? Or is Bill kind of checked out, looking forward to getting back to his golf at Trump National? Or does she see this campaign as her chance to finally prove to him that their long-ago success was as much her doing as his?