A Rant About Hillary Clinton
One measure of Hillary Clinton's inspirational inevitability is the leadership role she's taken as a former secretary of state and president-in-waiting on the Iran negotiations. Oh wait a minute -- has she issued a single comment on Netanyahu's speech? On the 47 treasonous senators?*With all that I've written about cognitive dissonance, what amazes me the most these days isn't all the right wing bullshit. It's the certainty among so many self-styled liberals that Hillary Clinton, who has never run in a national election, who lost the Democratic primaries in 2008, who has been demonized as much as or more than Barack Obama has for nigh on 25 years and who is up to her neck in conflicts of interest today (no, not Benghazi, though that's never going to go away now that it's become a matter of Fox News dogma, or the Chappaqua e-mail account, though that's not going away either, anymore than the missing Rose law firm documents did--I'm talking about the Clinton Foundation's fund-raising; the six-figure speaking fees; and the 1 percenters the Clintons surround themselves with), is the only "electable" alternative we have. It's not Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sander's purity versus Hillary's monumental strengths. It's Hillary's vulnerabilities versus the abyss. Can't they see this? There are other Democratic senators and governors. Let's start a groundswell for one of them or a few of them. Let's change the narrative. Let's not write off Maryland's Martin O'Malley when he announces, as I am told he will.
The recent letter from Republican senators was out of step with the best traditions of American leadership. And one has to ask, what was the purpose of this letter?There appear to be two logical answers. Either these senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians or harmful to the commander- in-chief in the midst of high-stakes international diplomacy. Either answer does discredit to the letters' signatories.