Well, in case you didn’t watch PBS’ Democratic debate last night, a possible felon and a disheveled 74-year-old senior citizen held another debate, where they found agreement, but also yelled at each other over how to drag America to the left on certain areas of public policy.
As taxpayers, it’s a friendly reminder that throughout the two-hour debate not a single question was asked about the Department of Justice’s investigation into Hillary’s probable mishandling of classified information. Instead, moderator Gwen Ifill decided to ask about the candidates about the resentments of white people.
To be clear, this is a pertinent question for the former first lady, who’s facing three separate federal investigations related to her private email system. Two stem from the State Department and the other emanating from the FBI. It was revealed yesterday that State slapped the Clinton Foundation with a subpoena last fall, where they asked for documents relating to projects that might have needed approval from the government while Hillary was serving as Secretary of State. Chris Cillizza explains why the latest development comes at a bad time (via WaPo):
It furthers the "where there's smoke, there's fire" argument. This hurts Clinton both coming and going. For Republicans, it hands them yet another way to suggest that something untoward is going on with Clinton. For Democrats, it increases their anxiety about the possibility of nominating someone who could fall under an ethical cloud just as the party is trying to elect them to the White House.* It makes it increasingly difficult for Clinton, as she has done since the revelation that she had a private email server broke a year ago, to cast the questions raised about her time at State as simply a partisan fishing expedition. "There is a concerted effort to try to make partisan advantage by really trying to throw so much at me that even if little splotches of it stick, it will cloud peoples's judgment of me," Clinton told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow this week. "That is a burden I carry."
There is, without question, a desire on the part of many Republicans to cast Clinton in the worst possible light using almost any means necessary. But it strains credulity to believe that Republicans somehow concocted a way to get the State Department and the FBI to look into Clinton's tenure at State.
As I wrote in this space this week, at some point Clinton will need to directly face down the fact that it's not just Republicans who are talking about her emails or her paid speeches or the Clinton Foundation. The numbers coming out of the New Hampshire exit poll make plain that Democratic voters care about honesty in their politicians, and those that prize it the most are voting heavily against Clinton.
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Yet, apparently this didn’t warrant a question from Ifill, or the co-moderator Judy Woodruff last night. So, there’s your taxpayer-funded news for you, folks.
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