Having a Pair

 

By John P. Warren
TownHall.com

Yesterday, in New Hampshire, Madeline K. Albright told a rally—with Hillary standing there, laughing—there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help women. I say there’s a special place in hell for voters in a free country who insist on being stupid.

For months, certain pundits have hooted over RNC nightmares of Trump or Cruz as the party standard bearer. Imagine, on the other hand, the terror amongst DNC insiders should Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton led them over a cliff.

For a party that produced the likes of FDR, Truman, and JFK, this is, indeed, a dark moment, as the DNC leadership must know that neither Hillary nor Bernie is electable. This is not a rant about them, however. A rant is a litany of frustrations fraught with emotion and likely devoid of reason or fact. Only the most blind partisans can put aside the truth-telling facts doggedly jangling each candidate’s bio, and the insiders know those realities will defeat them.

Most recently, there’s the image of HRC delivering her “victory” speech after Iowa, her shrill voice cracking the air as she channeled Howard Dean. Behind her is Bill himself looking like he’s about to drool, but not with envy. There was nothing much new about this Clinton “win,” which showed a nano-difference in her favor only because, she “won” six coin tosses in tight precincts (that’s six out of six if you’re calculating the odds). Only the simple-minded believe the Clinton fix-it folks were nowhere near Iowa the other night.

Hillary’s reputation didn’t begin there, however. Haunting her every strident promise of a new freebie began with HillaryCare (remember?). Then, there are the lingering odors from Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, the Lincoln Bedroom sales, and the Rich pardon during her First Lady years (sorry if I missed one of your favorites). For her years as US Senator from New York, it’s hard to find anything she did to improve or uplift the lives of anyone except the Clintons.

As Secretary of State, had she negotiated a Putin stand down from his imperial ambitions, had she dislodged Kaddafi from Libya and levered an anti-jihadist regime in its place, had she somehow neutralized the North Korean bully, or had she sponsored a peace settlement between the Palestinian National Authority and Israel, there’d be something to talk about. None of those historic achievements occurred.

What did occur are “accomplishments” of a more tawdry kind. During her entire cabinet stewardship, she was giving away our secrets, handling extremely sensitive information in so careless and reckless a manner as to expose and endanger Humint and Elint sources without any concern except for her personal convenience. For those in national security endeavors, the significance of her cavalier actions is beyond imagination. Edward Snowden is a fugitive? Since when is she too big to jail?

What is not a matter for the courts, but one of shame in any court of honor, is Benghazi and the lies she told the nation and the families of the fallen. Infamy, thy name shall forever be Hillary!

Then, there’s a man whose career has had no light shed on it at all. Born two months before Pearl Harbor, Bernie Sanders imprinted himself as a member of the Young People’s Socialist League and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. After three terms as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he became the first avowed socialist elected to congress in decades and served there from 1991 until 2006, when he was elected US Senator from Vermont and re-elected in 2012 with over 70% of the vote. After having served as an Independent, but caucusing with Democrats, he became a Democrat in 2015. Particularly fond of Scandinavian forms of socialism, apparently, Sanders running for president of Sweden was not an out of place suggestion by Marco Rubio.

Not a single bill has the Bernie Sanders name on it. No bill sponsored by him to improve benefits and services for veterans—though as Senate Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee for two hears, he was in an ideal position to do so. No bill to outlaw predatory lending and banking practices. No proposal anywhere to limit tax loopholes for the rich or raise exemptions for the middle class. For two and a half decades on the federal dole, he has occupied a sidelines seat carping about everything, but there’s nothing—literally nothing—the mad Muppet can show for his time as a public servant. He exclaims, over and over, that the system is “rigged” for the wealthy. If so, it must be rigged for do-nothings, too. Thinking about a waste of taxpayer dollars, are you feeling the Bern yet? We should have saved the light.

The irony is that Clinton and Sanders scream establishment while claiming they’re not, and just like progressives everywhere, they’re not interested in the people at all. They’re only interested in the power. What they have never understood is that merely occupying a position like First Lady, Mayor, Congressman, Senator, Secretary of State is not an achievement. Such honors bestowed by the nation are the means to achievement. Doing nothing but make noise is not.

Many of us have friends—people we like and respect—who are Democrats from another age. They are men and women who would move mountains to help the poor and bring justice to the oppressed. How those with such noble instincts—or anyone else—could consider either one of this pair of charlatans for our nation’s highest office is a Mensa puzzler of the highest order.

Running for office, these two have a pair, but not much else.