I’m a courtroom junkie. I watched hours of the “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius trial and have been known to frequent the gallery of our county courthouse. I guess you could call me a legal barfly … get it? Legal … bar … fly … on the wall? Stretch.
So when I read that the Democratic National Committee is suing Russian hackers, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the Trump campaign, and anyone else they hold responsible for their 2016 presidential election loss, I perked right up.
After all, it’s not everyday one of our political parties sues the Russians.
And what’s really interesting is that this impressive legal maneuver made news on the same day the DNC’s losing candidate’s election-night lament came to light. Hillary Clinton’s alleged words when told she’d lost:
“I knew it. I knew this would happen to me. They were never going to let me be president.”
The evil they
Who are they? Wait, let me guess: men? White men? Members of The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy? The Russians? WikiLeaks? The basket of deplorables? The keepers of the glass ceiling? All of the above?
While her party blames the world for her loss, Clinton blames everyone but herself. Let’s look reality right in the face and get real, Hillary. You lost to one of the worst (and surprising) presidential candidates in our history because of you.
The truth is that you were a bad candidate. You’re unlikable because you appear arrogant, calculating, cold, entitled and dishonest—many of the attributes voters loathe in politicians. Stop blaming others. They did not fail to generate a solid ground game in several key states.
They did not pay more attention to a thirty-something social media and algorithm guru (campaign manager Robby Mook) than to your husband and two-term president who always knew how to connect with voters.
I know—you’re not Bill. You don’t have his charisma. But you do have smarts, determination and grit. Show a little character and take responsibility for your loss. You tried so very hard, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
But don’t try again. America doesn’t like a loser—especially a whiny one.
DNC vs. The World
Speaking of whiny, by suing everyone else for their mistakes and misdeeds, the DNC is taking things to a whole new, hypocritical level. First they cheated Bernie Sanders and his supporters—many of whom were fresh, young voters—by conspiring against the coot and indulging the diva.
Then they failed to safeguard against one of the most basic cybersecurity scams: phishing to gain access to someone’s email account.
Instead of preventing John Podesta (Clinton’s campaign chairman) from falling for this trick, their IT department verified the message as “legitimate.” Legitimate? With a sender email address of ?
And now they’re suing Russian hackers. They should be suing their former IT head. Or themselves … for incompetence and favoritism.
Why go after WikiLeaks? All they did was publish your damning emails; they didn’t create them. Why shoot the messenger when Debbie Wasserman Shultz and associates and several Clinton campaign officials are the ones who wrote and sent the messages?
This is like the Mob suing the FBI for wiretapping them. Or Trump suing Access Hollywood for recording his bragging about groping women.
As I’ve written before, if the Russians and WikiLeaks interfered with our election by hacking DNC servers and exposing the dastardly denigration of Bernie Sanders, please, Russkies and Julian Assange, keep interfering.
If election interference exposes the truth—or as the press likes to say—what we “need to know,” by all means, Russian “Fancy Bear” hackers, hack away. Teach us silly Americans to secure our servers and email accounts. We relish challenges and relations were kinda boring post Cold War.
It’s always about politics
DNC chair Tom Perez defends the lawsuit as “not partisan, but patriotic.” Critics, many in his own party, think it’s “ill-timed” because of the ongoing Mueller investigation.
Bad timing or no, the DNC can’t afford lawsuits anyway. Despite their financial woes, Perez says his party “can’t afford not to” pursue the lawsuit.
“It’s hard to put a price tag on preserving democracy,” he said. I’d say it should be impossible—democracy is priceless and should never be for sale, which begs the question: Why did the DNC pay Fusion GPS to subvert it?
Here’s an idea for preserving democracy, Mr. Perez: Rather than spend your constituents’ money on silly grandstanding lawsuits,
Secure your servers and email passwords.
Give your primary candidates a fair shake, so cream candidates can rise to the top and secure your nomination honestly and effectively.
Don’t engage in kingmaking—no one deserves the presidency—no matter how long he or she has waited to be crowned.
And above all, when you screw up and your candidate loses, take responsibility for your mistakes, make changes, and go get ’em the next time.
This goes for you, too, Hillary. But if you ever gain a smidgen of self-awareness, there won’t be a next time. Nor should there.
Yes, I also ask rhetorically …”How bad a candidate do you have to be to lose to someone with such obvious flaws and weaknesses?” Stop blaming Russians already.
But then I pause….and remember that all the other Republicans somehow lost to him, too. Interesting times we live in….
Yeah, during the primaries, I kept thinking Trump wouldn’t last, that he was a fad, that once the real politicians stepped up … yada yada. The he up and won. I guess I underestimated the power of the populist wave he surfed in on.
I was surprised by this strategy. Do I believe there were shenanigans? Yes Do I believe the Russians influenced the US election? Yes. Have we done that in other countries? Yes. Is it right? No.
We do consider our elections sacrosanct. We have been taught a lesson. The roosters do come home to roast.
Both Mrs.Clinton and Mr. Trump were horrid candidates. I voted for Mrs. Clinton because she was the best alternative to prevent the snake oil salesman from being elected. She would not have been my third, fourth, tenth choice had she not been the nominee. She was a bad candidate. You have stated it well.
At the same time I will not accept that a majority of the nation believes in what Mr. Trump espouses. It just isn’t a fact. Mr. Trump won because a plurality of Americans did not exercise their right to vote. That may speak to the candidates but I think it also speaks to the process.
My hope is that BOTH parties have learned lessons from 2016. If they haven’t, people will begin to look elsewhere, which may be the saving grace of our democracy. The parties have come from the smoke-filled rooms when the political bosses picked the candidates to now openly giving the nomination to the highest bidder. My hope is that alternative parties or people within the major parties will begin to make inroads for change.
We must demand it.