Hillary

Hillary – The Gift That Keeps Giving

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Like a bad penny, she keeps turning up. Hillary Clinton just won’t go away (we’ve noted this before). She has been in the news the past few weeks bashing Bernie Sanders. We get it – she is pissed at him for his lukewarm support four years ago and revenge is a dish best service cold.

While it may feel good to be back in the public eye bashing Bernie, it doesn’t reflect well on Clinton. Every time she opens her mouth she hurts her party. She gives Donald Trump the opportunity to run against her once again and remind people why they didn’t vote for the Democrats in 2016.

The not so ironic thing is that everything she is blaming Bernie for is now actually on her. Just like she was waiting for Bernie’s enthusiastic endorsement, the current pack of Democratic candidates are waiting for her to shut up and take a vacation.

They could be waiting for a long time.

Ivanka Might Have Stepped In It, Big Time

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Back in the spring of 2018, the US imposed sanctions on a Chinese electronics firm for stealing technology. The sanctions were about to put the company out of business when Donald Trump gave it a lifeline. The company was exempted from sanctions because “Too many jobs in China (would be) lost.”

It isn’t clear why the Democrats didn’t jump on this during the midterm election campaign. Maybe they thought that the job market was so robust that no one would really care that Trump was putting Chinese workers ahead of US intellectual property holders. It was clearly a China first, not America first, move, but Trump seemed to be getting away with it.

Coincidentally, a few days before Trump spared the Chinese company, the Chinese government granted Ivanka Trump some important and valuable trademarks. It smelled  fishy, but there was no smoking gun.

Last week, however, it was revealed that Ivanka was channeling her inner Hillary and using her personal email account for government business.

Now that the Democrats control the House and can launch investigations, it is a good bet they will subpoena Ivanka’s mails and more details will come out. Unlike Hillary, she doesn’t run her own server in her basement, so it will be hard for her to delete all the evidence. Lock her up?

The Clinton Standard

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Since when did the Clintons become the standard for propriety in politics? The latest news is that Hillary Clinton intervened to keep an accused of sexual harasser on her staff when he was about to fired. The implication is that the #metoo crowd should back off, because even Hillary tolerated harassers.

Well, duh. She’s the person who excused her husband when he cheated on her with a young intern named Lewinsy.  In fact, she aggressively defended him.

But here is the thing. The Republicans have spent the last 30 years telling us how corrupt and slimy the Clintons are. So telling us that even the Clintons cheat, lie, steal, etc. is not the best way to say that it is ok to do it. We are not really talking about Ghandi or Mother Terresa here.

The truth is that the Clintons are an excellent straw man. Bill is an admitted adulterer / harasser yet has high approval ratings – ergo, other harassers that aren’t as popular also should be able to get away with it.

Hillary doesn’t have Bill’s high approval ratings, but she is living in some kind of alternate reality. She fancies herself a politician and is easily drawn into the fray. But the truth is that she is a great policy wonk but a terrible politician, constantly making decisions without understanding how they will play out politically, such as defending harassers or ignoring advice not to use a personal email server.

The best thing she could do for the Democrats would be to declare that she is a flawed individual who should not be a standard for anything, and fade away from politics. A true politician would realize this. Unfortunately, she is not a politician.

Why Hillary Won’t Go Away

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ 1 Comment

Hillary Clinton continues to be in the news once a week. And, unlike her husband, it is not for humanitarian or charitable reasons. No, Hillary continues to be in the thick of it politically.

The question is why. She is an accomplished policy wonk, but a failure as a politician. Sure she won election as a senator from New York in the afterglow of her husband’s presidency, but that was really his victory, not hers, as he was still president when the election took place.

On her own, she is a political disaster. She lost the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination to Barak Obama. She lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. Both times, she snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Nevertheless, Hillary persists in the political arena (sorry, couldn’t resist). Why? Possibly because her ego won’t let her stand down. Or because Donald Trump keeps bringing her up to deflect from his own issues. Or because the media knows a juicy story and won’t leave her alone.

The biggest reason, however, is that a year after the election the Democrats don’t have any new leaders. Bernie Sanders was never a Democrat in the first place, and quickly moved back to his own path after the election. Nancy Pelosi is a great political operative but is completely tainted politically as a far left liberal. Chuck Schumer is the closest the Dems have to a leader, but he has been in Congress for 35 years and in the Senate for 20 and is old news.

Until the Democrats get some new leaders, the spotlight will default back to Hillary. Which is unfortunate for the Democrats, because she is not doing them any favors.