September 5, 2015, Saturday Hillary Funnies
Let's try to do some reconciliation of the following, shall we:
Item: A national poll (whether we accept its methodology or not) now shows upstart Republican candidate Donald "The Donald" Trump with a 45-40 per cent lead over Hillary Clinton (and a lead over other Democrats such as Sanders, Biden, and for some reason, Al Gore).
Item: WaPo reports that the Gruesome Twosome Gomez and Morticia Bill and Hillary Clinton paid an on-duty State Department staffer separately to maintain Hillary Clinton's e-mail server (located in the Clinton manse in Chappaqua, New York), while Mrs. C. was the Secretary of State.
Item: The Grey Lady reports that this year's "grand Hillary strategy" is to hold on to a "Southern firewall" in the event that Bernie Sanders scores big early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. [Kind of like "by-passing Iowa" back in 2008, allowing Obama to pick up a win there... hmmmm...]
Item: The Clinton campaign proposes to "weave women's issues" into all of its campaign themes, and "take them out of the silo" they were in, I guess in her earlier campaign.
Item: A Gallup poll shows Hillary Clinton at her worst overall favorabality rating yet (around 41% overall) although she remains steadily strong among Democrats.
I don't know what to say about Trump, other than, as a Brooklynite myself for the last third of my life, I can't tell you how much I relish a national battle between Brooklyn's own Bernie Sanders and Queens' own Donald Trump. Notwithstanding that Hillary's main campaign office is a fifteen minute or so walk from Stately Dog Manor, and she has represented my state in the Senate, no one really thinks of Hillary Clinton as a New Yorker (including herself). Which, I suppose is what we're looking at: she would, if the question were specifically asked, register remarkably low on "authenticity." And say what you will about either Trump, or Sanders (or Biden for that matter), they register "authenticity" off the chart (and Jeb Bush, I'm talking to you-- your older brother was a far better actor than you, and pulled it off... just what is your problem, dude?)
Mrs. Clinton, you would think, would be campaigning as "Remember that eight years of peace and prosperity, growth, budget surpluses, and general optimism you had the last time a Clinton was in the White House? Isn't that what you want?" But she can't seem to get it out of her mouth, amidst what seems to be the Divine Right entitlement she seems to project (entitlement, of course, that allowed her family to earn well over $100 million in the last few years simply by trading on their name and apparent influence, as they fight to maintain their position in the aristocracy while she can't quite seem to project giving a crap about actual working people... the people she voted to screw by voting to make filing bankruptcy harder, and that her husband screwed in signing on to NAFTA, student loan exemption from bankruptcy, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that gave us unbridled derivative trading and... well, I could go on for days even before I bring up the deliberate and needless antagonizing of Russia at a moment when we could have made that nation our friend forever that has led directly to what maybe the next Cold War)... Did I say that out loud?
Bernie Sanders has been described as having the politics of Lenin (or is it Lennon?) and the charisma of Ralph Nader. And yet, actual people on the ground can't seem to get enough of him-- his crowds and popularity are growing. He. Is. Authentic. And. perceived. to. be. Trustworthy. And amidst ever-more trying times, his "Neo-New Deal" policy proposals are popular. Will America get Bernie Sanders as a major party national candidate, the most distinctly ethnic New Yorker since Al Smith in 1928? It once seemed an absurdity. Now? Repeat after me: "With Hillary, all things are possible."