HRC-Postgame

Hillary Clinton travels the talk show circuit submitting herself to softball interviews that promote her new book, What Happened. In each interview, Hillary blames everybody and everything possible for her loss. She "takes responsibility" but you kind of get the feeling that phrase is hollow. The reason Hillary lost is really quite simple—she was, throughout her political career, dishonest, unethical, and largely incompetent. She skated on the edge of criminality. She was stiff and lifeless as a candidate.

A real, not fawning, interview of Hillary Clinton would probe her dishonesty surrounding the events at Benghazi—why she lied to the public about the causes of the attack and countenanced the jailing of the maker of an anti-Muslim video (protected free speech) when she knew the video was NOT the cause of the attack. A real interview would probe all of the pay-for-play aspects of The Clinton Foundation, it's pathetic record of charity outlays (about 6 percent of the millions it took in), and the manner in which it was used as a money laundering scheme for her political ambitions. A real interview would examine her use of a private (and ethically questionable) email server, her lack of proper security for secret documents and, most important, her destruction of 33,000 emails after an investigation of her wrong-doing was initiated—that's obstruction of justice, folks. But the trained hamsters of the media don't do real interviews, not of Hillary and not of most Democrats.

Kim Strassel comments further:

Hillary spent eight years planning her first presidential bid, and the next eight warning Democrats not to get in the way of her second. The Clinton Foundation was erected to serve as bank and Rolodex, and to enable the Clintons to retain their grip over the party. And that party was committed to a Clinton coronation, right up to Mr. Sanders’s cheeky assault.

Mr. Obama aided Mrs. Clinton’s ambitions by decimating his party. By the time Barack Obama finished his eight years in office, his party held 65 fewer House seats, 14 fewer governorships and controlled 30 fewer state legislatures. It had turned a once-filibuster-proof Senate majority into minority status. The big-tent Democratic coalition shriveled to a coastal, progressive minority, wiping out a generation of Democratic politicians and most of the party’s political diversity.

And so the party nominated perhaps the only Democrat in the country who could rival Donald Trump in unpopularity—and beat him in untrustworthiness. Mr. Sanders refused to go after Mrs. Clinton on her ethical baggage, even though it was her biggest weakness and despite how glaringly obvious was the risk that her foundation and server scandals would hobble a general-election campaign. The parties gave the country a choice between two unpopular people, and the country disliked her more. The real question is how Democrats rebuild a party whose senior leaders in the House boast an average age of 72 and which has almost no young, experienced up-and-comers.

Rather than hyperventilated about "white supremacy" or Islamophobia, income inequality, misogyny (of course!) or universal healthcare, the Dems might be well-served to ask themselves why after Barack Obama's eight years in office, "his party held 65 fewer House seats, 14 fewer governorships and controlled 30 fewer state legislatures.

Then again, it looks like they've already answered that question by doubling down on potential candidates who want go even further left than Obama. And they claim that the GOP is stupid.