The Democratic Debate

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

Oh come on, people crack jokes all the time. The GOP has been trying -- in vain mind you -- to destroy her and her husband for over 20 years...

TDF has been an equal opportunity cracker of jokes on the GOP as well as on the Dems. Maybe even more on the GOP. And the Dems are equal opportunity agents of destruction of GOP folks. Some of the "destructions" have been successful on either side. Some attempts have not. You have pointed out, in the past, that Dem attempts were just politics. What's could for the goose is good for the gander. It's just politics.

And the attempts at destruction, as in the case of the Clintons, were not based solely on maliciousness. There has been much substance, as in the case of TDF's joke about Clinton's #^&#^&#^&#^&. And if you think that Hillary's image has not been tarnished, you have not been paying attention, or you're just in denial.

It's become engrained in our political expectations that the really "smart" politicians are tarnished to some degree, and must be good liars and manipulators in order to overcome the tarnish. The pols who seem to be "goodies" are ridiculed as "purists" and too burdened with principles to effectively navigate through the cesspool of politics.

Your continued insistence that Hillary's actions, or lack of them, have not been proven to be illegal, misses the point that they are at least mistakes or evidence of incompetence. Nor have they yet been determined to be illegal. If they eventually are proved so, she will be a candidate for prison time.

In any case, the reputation of being prone to mistakes and incompetence and to being a liar (or delusional if she believes the lies--or not so smart if she believes narratives that are or were obviously wrong), but is, nonetheless able to escape "tarnish" in the eyes of her butt-suckers, either makes her a model for political office in the eyes of those who are mesmerized by realpolitik, or not someone who should be trusted as President in the eyes of those more innocent to the ways of the power hungry.