Thursday, September 24, 2015

Come clean or get out of the race, Hillary

Hoo boy, this is going to piss some people off.  From Ron Fournier at the National Journal (who, like Chris Cillizza at the WaPo, is coming to be loathed in certain center-left circles)...

If the Demo­crat­ic Party cares to sal­vage a sliv­er of mor­al au­thor­ity, its lead­ers and early state voters need to send Hil­lary Rod­ham Clin­ton an ur­gent mes­sage: Come clean or get out. Stop ly­ing and de­flect­ing about how and why you stashed State De­part­ment email on a secret serv­er—or stop run­ning.

Tell her: We can’t have an­oth­er day like this.

Story 1: The State De­part­ment con­firmed that Clin­ton turned over her email only after Con­gress dis­covered that she had ex­clus­ively used a private email sys­tem. Ac­cord­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post, the de­part­ment first con­tac­ted her in the sum­mer of 2014, at least three months be­fore the agency asked Clin­ton and three of her pre­de­cessors to provide their emails.

The story un­der­cuts Clin­ton’s claim that her de­cision to turn over self-se­lec­ted email was a re­sponse to a routine-sound­ing re­cords re­quest. She hasn’t been telling the truth.

Story 2: A fed­er­al court has helped un­cov­er more emails re­lated to the Benghazi raid that were with­held from con­gres­sion­al in­vest­ig­at­ors. Clin­ton has in­sisted she turned over all her work-re­lated email and com­plied with con­gres­sion­al sub­poen­as.

Again, she hasn’t been telling the truth.

Story 3: The FBI has re­covered per­son­al and work-re­lated e-mails from her private serv­er, rais­ing the pos­sib­il­ity that the de­leted in­form­a­tion be­comes pub­lic. “The FBI is in­vest­ig­at­ing how and why clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion ended up on Clin­ton’s serv­er,” Bloomberg re­por­ted.

While the Demo­crat­ic front-run­ner still in­sists there was no clas­si­fied in­form­a­tion on the un­se­cured serv­er, the FBI has moved bey­ond wheth­er U.S. secrets were in­volved to how and why. In the lan­guage of law en­force­ment, the FBI is in­vest­ig­at­ing her motive.

On Sunday, Clin­ton told Face the Na­tion host John Dick­er­son: “What I did was al­lowed. It was fully above board,” and “I tried to be fully trans­par­ent.” Both claims are ob­ject­ively and in­dis­put­ably false.

It's all NOT a big nothing.  The refusal to accept reality by Clinton supporters is truly the most dangerous thing to the prospects of Democrats holding the White House in next year's election.  Frankly it is similar to the way Republicans deny climate change.  Or evolution.

...(M)onths of dis­hon­esty and de­cep­tion took their toll: A ma­jor­ity of Amer­ic­ans don’t trust her, and the Demo­crat­ic nom­in­a­tion fight has shif­ted from a coron­a­tion to a com­pet­i­tion. A poll re­leased (yesterday) by Bloomberg shows Clin­ton barely lead­ing so­cial­ist (sic) Bernie Sanders and Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden, who’s not even in the race.

Let's give the Fournie-haters their due here.  Sometimes the guy -- like too many others -- can't help himself.  He steps in the same holes that David Brock does, applying smeared paint jobs to people.

For Demo­crats, this is an op­por­tun­ity wasted. A crowded GOP field has been taken host­age by a celebrity bil­lion­aire with a his­tory of bank­ruptcies, sex­ist be­ha­vi­or, and ra­cially of­fens­ive state­ments. Lack­ing a firm grip on policy or the truth, Don­ald Trump is the GOP front-run­ner. His closest com­pet­i­tion, Dr. Ben Car­son, said Sunday he didn’t think a Muslim should be pres­id­ent, and his ef­forts to clean up the con­tro­versy have been as ham-handed as they are dis­hon­est.

Both Jeb Bush and Hillary should hold a joint press conference, alongside his brother and her husband (read this, please), and announce together that they are giving way to the next generation of political leaders.  A group which does not include their children.

She an­nounced a plan Tues­day to re­duce pre­scrip­tion-drug costs, prom­ising to cap monthly out-of-pock­et ex­penses at $250 without curb­ing profits that fund re­search in­to life-sav­ing drugs. Can you be­lieve her?

Actually I do, Ron.  She'd have a much better shot at getting something significant done if she had a Democratic Congress, of course, and the powerful greed of capitalist sociopaths like Martin Shkreli are formidable opposition, but any step in that direction is progress.

She might fall short but it probably won't be due to capitulation, not in the way Obama folded on single payer and the public option within the legislation that bears his name.  He caved too early to the capitalists himself, you see.

Over­shad­ow­ing that news was her long-awaited de­cision on the Key­stone pipeline: Clin­ton now op­poses a pro­ject she was once in­clined to sup­port at the State De­part­ment, a flip-flop that she jus­ti­fied with a rhet­or­ic­al wave of the hand. “I think it is im­per­at­ive that we look at the Key­stone pipeline as what I be­lieve it is—a dis­trac­tion from the im­port­ant work we have to do to com­bat cli­mate change.”


A flip-flop in the proper (not right but left) direction.  This is exactly what some of us who are supporting Bernie Sanders had hoped to achieve.  Drag her -- kicking and screaming if we have to -- toward real progress.

A dis­trac­tion from the im­port­ant work. That could be her cam­paign slo­gan.

Okay, that's good.  I hope Sanders starts using it.

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