The Democrats Are Too Invested in Hillary

Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed person. She is a habitual liar – she will lie when the truth would serve her better. She is greedy and more than willing to use her positions in government to advance her wealth – the Clintons are worth between $150 –200M after having left the presidency – at least according to them – dead broke. And she is suspicious and mean spirited with regard to anyone who does not serve her purposes – ask the Secret Service agents who have been assigned to her over the last two and one-half decades. And most of all she believes the rules simply do not apply to her.

In the spring of 2016, Ms. Clinton created a patently false story suggesting that now President Donald Trump was colluding with America’s number one enemy – Russia – to steal the upcoming presidential election. Ms. Clinton utilized the services of Glen Simpson of Fusion GPS – a Washington D.C. opposition research firm. In turn Mr. Simpson contacted Christopher Steele, a former British spy with no apparent attachment to the truth. It was insufficient to simply create a story about Mr. Trump colluding with Vladimir Putin, Mr. Steele had to lace it with tales of Mr. Trump engaging in bacchanalian trysts with a bevy of Russian prostitutes and thus subjecting himself to blackmail by the ever vigilant former Soviet spy chief – Mr. Putin. (You know, it wasn’t enough that Mr. Trump was a traitor he was, even worse, a sexist.) It was a story so outrageous that only the simple-minded would actually believe it. And most importantly it was a lie – start to finish. In the process she called upon the services of political appointees in the FBI, CIA, NIA and the Justice Department to provide substance and “legitimacy” to her lies.

In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal William McGurn wrote an opinion piece regarding the rectitude of Ms. Clinton:

“This weekend Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) told Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo that the two cases point to a glaring double standard between how the Clinton and Trump investigations went down. Mr. Graham added that he’s not alone. Attorney General William Barr, he said, is ‘pretty upset’ by the way the Justice Department dealt with the Clinton investigation.

“’I want a prosecutor to look at this, not a politician,’ said Sen. Graham, hinting there may yet be criminal consequences.

“But not for Mrs. Clinton. And as disappointing as this may be for the lock-her-up crowd, that’s a good thing.”

As per the requirements of Washington insiders, Mr. McGurn declared that even though she is likely guilty of all sorts of crimes she should not be prosecuted. His rationale is the very reason that so many politicians are willing to bend and break the law:

“. . . Even more dispositive, criminally prosecuting an election loser isn’t going to help a nation that needs to move beyond 2016.

Somehow these Washington insiders have deemed jailing felonious politicians creates an aura of America as a third world banana republic. Nonsense. Failing to pursue criminal charges against Ms. Clinton and her allies reinforces the proposition that in today’s America there is a double standard for justice: one for the rich and politically connected, and another for everyone else. Before worrying about the tender souls of Washington’s politicians, we should be worried about addressing the alienation of American voters that gave rise to the election of Mr. Trump. We are a nation of laws and we ought to start acting like it.

But be that as it may – we’ll await the tepid outcome of Mr. Graham’s investigation – there is a greater problem for the nation’s two largest political parties. Put simply why have the Democrats invested so much time, energy and financial resources in promoting and protecting Ms. Clinton as a party leader?

The Democrats are well aware of Ms. Clinton’s flaws going all the way back to when she was basically the “bag woman” for former President Bill Clinton while he was Arkansas’ attorney general and governor and continuing on through her latest run for the presidency. Why would the Democrats support Ms. Clinton’s ever changing rationale for losing the 2016 election? It was sexism, it was a parade of horribles, it was FBI Director James Comey, it was the Russians in collusion with Mr. Trump, it was anybody and everybody but Ms. Clinton. And yet every rational human being recognizes that Ms. Clinton was a poor candidate – distant, demanding, entitled and without a genuine bone in her body – who presumed that the presidency was hers for the taking.

The Democrats stood by while Ms. Clinton savaged Sen. Bernie Sanders and rigged the primary election so that he could not win – even though they knew that Mr. Sanders would likely win against Mr. Trump and that Ms. Clinton was simply a disaster waiting to happen. They knew that Ms. Clinton had enlisted the support of panelists during the primary and general election debates. And they knew that as a result of this corruption she was endangering the loyalty of Democrat voters once the corruption was disclosed. And they knew that the corruption would be disclosed because it always is – even though the corrupting influences seldom ever suffer the consequences.

And, in the aftermath of the election the Democrats embraced Ms. Clinton’s narrative that Mr. Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. A narrative that was based on opposition research directed and funded by Ms. Clinton that was false from its inception. I can understand how the Democrats could be deceived initially, but even after the disclosure of its fakeness, the Democrats persisted. Ms. Clinton enlisted the support of the intelligence community – Messrs. Comey (FBI), James Clapper (NIA) and John Brennan – to support the false narrative even though, to a man, they knew or should have known it was false.

But more importantly, Democrat Congressional leaders fell in line – Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) and virtually every other Democrat in Congress. They promoted the Russian collusion illusion for two years while investigation after investigation failed to produce any information attesting to the collusion. You might expect some of the wing nuts like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) to cling to this false narrative without a lick of proof, but this was a party deeply committed to an obvious lie.

Why would a national party sacrifice is credibility on a narrative that they knew to be false? The lie existed solely and only to protect Ms. Clinton. It did nothing to promote the substantial policy differences between Democrats and Republicans. It put at risk the credibility of future Democrat leaders such as Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand, (D-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and others, all of whom had embraced the collusion myth.

And even at that, the Democrats aren’t done yet. For two years the Democrats have warned that Mr. Trump was going to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller despite the lack of any evidence that Mr. Trump was actually entertaining that idea. They stressed that justice would only be served by allowing Mr. Mueller to finish his investigation and issue his report. They passed a resolution seeking to protect Mr. Mueller from a threat that was never issued. But now that he has completed his work and issued his report which determined that there was no evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russians the Democrats have turned on Mr. Mueller with accusations that his report is a partisan cover-up and that he intends to withhold critical information. There is no more truth to these false narratives than there was to the original Russian collusion myth. But yet they persist. But for what good reason?

Why haven’t the Democrats acknowledged that Ms. Clinton was a flawed candidate, that she was the primary reason that she lost the election and that the primacy of the Clintons in the Democrat Party is over? Privately, the Democrats are relieved that Ms. Clinton is not mounting yet another campaign and yet publicly they have not turned away from her. The credibility of the Democrat Party rests on whether they will accept the truth or continue this costly and ultimately losing hysteria.

And the Republicans governing class is no better. They have been tepid in their response to the Trump Derangement Syndrome. They have been absent in response to some of the most outrageous lies despite having in hand the proof against those lies. And they have been duplicitous in demanding accountability from the bureaucrats who used the resources of the government to protect Ms. Clinton and smear Mr. Trump.

There are no heroes in Washington these days. Mr. Graham and Attorney General William Barr have the opportunity to remind the country that we are a nation of laws and that the rich and powerful will be held to account. Disclose the facts – all of them – and prosecute those guilty of crimes regardless of their fame or fortune.