Hillary Survives Another Nothingburger “Scandal”

NEW BLOG PHOTO_edited- 3It’s a tough day to be Republican. But then most of them are this year, aren’t they? This thing with the FBI letting “crooked Hillary” off on that colossal e-mail scam … well, until someone starts shouting for a special prosecutor to investigate the FBI, that notorious den of lefties, men and women of conscience (and with nothing better to do with their time and our money) are going to have find another dead horse to flog.

Not that “e-mailgate” didn’t succeed almost as well as other ginned-up Clinton scandals. I mean it began with Benghazi and after throwing years and taxpayer millions at that mirage it begat e-mail servers. It was just like how Whitewater begat Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky and impeachment, which as you remember was such a winning strategy for Republicans Bill Clinton left office more popular than St. Ronald the Daft.

The fact is that like Whitewater and Travelgate and Benghazi before it, the Republican attack machine never had a coherent theory of the crime with e-mailgate. Which is why it bored people and never caught on like, well, like hanky panky in the Oval Office. (Now if among Hillary’s e-mails had been some hot mash notes to Anthony Weiner/Carlos Danger we might have had some fun.)

I mean, she used her own servers … to do what, exactly? Send military secrets to Al Qaeda? Sell off Texas to the North Koreans? What? Please tell me. Because I was never grasping the Constitution-tearing gravity of the situation.

“Well,” came the usual response, “we’ll never know. Because she won’t disclose everything. That’s the way the Clintons are. Clearly corrupt. Every time we accuse them of something they refuse to turn over all the evidence we need to make our case! Bastards! It’s like they don’t trust us! We have to Make America Great Again!”

This perpetual cycle of molehill non-scandals that … we the people have paid to prosecute … only to watch “the case” evaporate under the harsh light of actual evidence is of course central to the widespread perception that Hillary and Bill “can’t be trusted”. Never mind that if you ask “why can’t they be trusted?” the most frequent response is something along the lines of, “Well, because I hear they’re always in trouble over something.”

Somehow, maybe by adding a little video to this argument, from Kevin Drum Team Hillary has to turn the guns back on the firing squad.

For the record: Whitewater was a nothingburger. Travelgate was a nothingburger. Troopergate was a nothingburger. Filegate was a nothingburger. The Vince Foster murder conspiracy theories were a nothingburger. Monica Lewinsky was Bill’s problem, not Hillary’s. Benghazi was a tragedy, but entirely nonscandalous. The Goldman Sachs speeches were probably a bad idea, but otherwise a nothingburger. Emailgate revealed some poor judgment, but we’ve now seen all the emails and it’s pretty obviously a nothingburger. Humagate is a nothingburger. Foundationgate is a nothingburger.

Bottom line: Don’t let Donald Trump or the press or anyone else convince you that Hillary Clinton is “dogged by scandal” or “works under a constant cloud of controversy” or whatever the nonsense of the day is. That constant cloud is the very deliberate invention of lowlifes in Arkansas; well-heeled conservative cranks; the Republican Party; and far too often a gullible and compliant press. Like anybody who’s been in politics for 40 years, Hillary has some things she should have handled better, but that’s about it. The plain fact is that there’s no serious scandal on her record. There’s no evidence that she’s ever sold out to Wall Street. There’s no corruption, intrigue, or deceit. And if anything, she’s too honest on a policy level. She could stand to promise people a bit of free stuff now and then.”

I make no apologies. I have no great problem with Hillary. She’s pulling the gears on a huge, sophisticated, well-heeled and well-oiled political machine. Live with it. That’s the game in 2016 USA. It’s how you get elected. You want to change it? Me too. But it ain’t happening this year.

Moreover though, I tell anyone who cares to listen that I believe she’ll be a better president than Bill, who if you remember anything other than the stained blue dress, did a pretty good job of keeping the economy on the rails and US troops out of unwinnable foreign wars.

She arrives in the Oval Office with more experience on every imaginable level than anyone since maybe LBJ (problematic comparison), plus the full support of officers and staff from two successful Democratic presidencies and a whole lot less of Bill’s, shall we say, “impulse control” issues. She has also demonstrated masterful control over the Republican wing nut fringe, an enormous time, energy and money suck in D.C. these days, that must be persistently neutralized.

So there are plenty of rational reasons to trust her to competently manage matters here and abroad.

Not that the usual suspects will be screaming “scandal” and “special prosecutor” before she takes the oath of office.

6 thoughts on “Hillary Survives Another Nothingburger “Scandal”

  1. It doesn’t bother you that she said no emails were marked classified and Comey said a small number were? He didn’t say how many but it’s a lie to say none were.

  2. Enough! If Hillary applies to be the White House Information Technology Coordinator, I hereby refuse to hire her.

    Look, Hillary either lied or bungled when it comes to her characterization of the nature of the emails and her response to discovery requests. She’s being held accountable for that right now, and hopefully that experience will lead to a more secure State Department system and a more judicious leader.

    Hillary wasn’t my first choice. But in elections, the question is always “compared to what.” Compared to the extremely dangerous Republican nominee, we’re unbelievably lucky to have Hillary as a far superior option in every way — values, temperament, experience, intelligence, competence, and, yes, honesty. That’s why I’m not resigned to voting for her. I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to vote for her.

    • It does matter to me. That’s why I said “she either lied or bungled” and expressed the hope that being held accountable would make her a better leader. It definitely was not her finest hour.

      But in the end, my job as a general election voter is to select the nominee who is better, not throw away my vote because no one is flawless. If we only had two Trump-esque major party candidates to choose from, that would be a desperate situation. Fortunately, though, we have someone who is, despite this episode, clearly better. I’m grateful about that.

    • Rob and Bruce: Yeah, it bothers me — some — that she lied/obfuscated/dodged various facets of this case. But, again, what was the gravity, or the intent, of the case? I don’t want to wade too deep into the Supreme Court’s recent (unanimous) decision on Virginia Gov. Bob McDonell, but our great and grand experiment in democracy is riddled with characters, many lacking any talent for delivering solutions to relevant problems, who trade in graft, lie and steal. It’s an epidemic, of human nature. But at this point, I’m just cynical enough that I always ask, “What’s in it for me?” Will this person (Hillary) better deliver the kind of policy changes and competent governance I want? Or will Candidate “B”? If the rejoinder is, “What about Bernie?”, I’ve said all along I greatly admired Sanders’ message and the honorable way he conducted his campaign … but that he was in no way capable of dealing with what I regard as a level of institutional corruption (today’s Republicans) far worse than the Clintons trying to keep “their business” away from the prying eyes of their myriad enemies, (which I guess was the reason for the separate e-mail system at the start, irony of ironies). When it’s all said and done next January, we will likely look back on Barack Obama as the extraordinarily rare term of disciplined intelligence and morality in the White House. But he ain’t running again.

      • On a more meta-level here’s what worries me: We’re being setup to endorse a partisan reformation – one where a rump racist/xenophobe/insane Republican Party is opposed by a neocon-neoliberal Democratic Party where the true left is shut out, again. We can already see that in all the neocons who have endorsed HRC.

        Beyond that, I’m really worried that HRC will start a war with Russia, and get us into more wars all around the world. And then there’s her alliance with the one percent, which is where our political divide really is today.

        And don’t say that Trump is a fascist or something – he isn’t – and the US in 2016 is not Germany in 1930. Trump is an incompetent doofus who would have no allies anywhere in government or outside it. He’d be impeached or useless within a year. In my experience the Democrats act much more like Democrats when they’re in the opposition.

        Bottom line: I’m getting real tired of journalists defending HRC because Trump. Let’s tell the whole stories and let the chips fall where they may.

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