Toward the end of his speech, Sanders did briefly acknowledge that he and Clinton still disagree on some issues. But then he pointed to the Democratic Party platform that the two sides have agreed upon, describing it as “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.” He continued, “Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratically controlled Senate, a Democratically controlled House, and a Hillary Presidency—and I intend to be in every corner of this country, to make certain that happens.”
.. Perhaps nobody had informed Clinton that “Stronger Together” echoes the slogan of the Remain side, which lost the recent Brexit referendum in the U.K.
Hillary Clinton’s Scandal Mistake
Clinton’s first experience with a criminal investigation came with Whitewater, the name given to various activities centered around a money-losing land deal that she and her husband invested in during the nineteen-eighties. Republican (and journalistic) claims of illegality in connection with the investment led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, Robert Fiske, in 1994. Fiske quickly cleared the Clintons of allegations of wrongdoing that had arisen in connection with an earlier investigation of Whitewater, as well as in the suicide of their friend and colleague Vincent Foster. Shortly after Fiske’s report, however, the court in charge of the case, under the independent-counsel law, replaced Fiske with Kenneth Starr, and Clinton’s true ordeal began.
Starr and his successors spent eight years, and more than seventy million dollars, on an investigation that began with the remains of the Whitewater probe and metastasized into an open-ended search-and-destroy mission into the personal and political lives of Bill and Hillary Clinton.
.. The lesson she took was that Republicans used criminal investigations as a political weapon against her.
.. That Clinton would even install such a rattletrap system suggests the influence of the Starr legacy.
.. Clinton’s visceral distaste for being the target of partisan smears led her to overreact, overdeny, and make a bad situation worse. As a victim of partisan vendettas, she couldn’t recognize a good-faith F.B.I. investigation when she saw one.
The (G.O.P.) Party’s Over
This column has argued for a while now that there is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy. At least a one-party autocracy can order things to get done.
.. We can survive a few years of such deadlock in Washington, but we sure can’t take another four or eight years without real decay setting in, and that explains what I’m rooting for in this fall’s elections: I hope Hillary Clinton wins all 50 states and the Democrats take the presidency, the House, the Senate and, effectively, the Supreme Court.
.. Finally, if Trump presides over a devastating Republican defeat across all branches of government, the G.O.P. will be forced to do what it has needed to do for a long time: take a time out in the corner. In that corner Republicans could pull out a blank sheet of paper and on one side define the biggest forces shaping the world today — and the challenges and opportunities they pose to America — and on the other side define conservative, market-based policies to address them.
.. Right now, the G.O.P. is not a healthy center-right party. It is a mishmash of religious conservatives; angry white males who fear they are becoming a minority in their own country and hate trade; gun-control opponents; pro-lifers; anti-regulation and free-market small-business owners; and pro- and anti-free trade entrepreneurs.
.. The party was once held together by the Cold War. But as that faded away it has been held together only by renting itself out to whomever could energize its base and keep it in power — Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, the Tea Party, the National Rifle Association. But at its core there was no real common denominator, no take on the world, no real conservative framework.
.. John Boehner gave up being speaker of the House because he knew that his caucus had become a madhouse, incapable of governing.
The Clinton Contamination
Obama was left in the awkward position of vouching for Hillary’s “steady judgment” to run an angry, violent, jittery nation on the very day that his F.B.I. director lambasted her errant judgment on circumventing the State Department email system, making it clear that she had been lying to the American public for the last 16 months.
.. So many lawyers in this column, so little law.
.. President Obama is not upset about being pulled into the Clinton Under Toad, to use an old John Irving expression. He thinks Washington is so broken that the next president will need a specific skill set to function, and he thinks Hillary has that.
.. The Clintons work hard but don’t play by the rules. Imagine them in the White House with the benefit of low expectations.