On Tuesday, The Hill ran a piece with the hilarious title "Hillary's unlikely ally: The media." The media, of course, have been in Hillary Clinton's camp since the start. The vast majority of media figures are Democrats, and one of them, ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, has written openly of his love for his former boss.
But here's the irony: The media have destroyed Clinton.
They've destroyed her unintentionally, of course. They did so by shielding her from the sort of character attacks Donald Trump has weathered for decades; they did so by pulling the plug on guests who mentioned her husband's history of sexual peccadillos and sexual-assault allegations; they did so by dismissing any critiques of her handling of the Benghazi mess as "sexist"; they did so by talking up Clinton as the inevitable First Female President.
The media had no choice but to do this because Clinton is a terrible candidate. She's off-putting and unlikeable, programmatic and lacking improvisational ability. To protect the ruler, the Roman Praetorian Guard had to form a phalanx. The media did so for Clinton for decades.
All of this left her vulnerable.
As a candidate, Clinton is like the Bubble Boy: She's been placed inside the warm cocoon of an all-embracing leftist establishment, never exposed to the normal viruses of everyday politics. The minute she exits that protective bubble, she's hit with those viruses -- and she has no immune system to help her fight them.
Take, for example, Trump's latest line of attack on Clinton. She trotted out the usual "war on women" routine to attack Trump. His response: "Amazing that Crooked Hillary can do a hit ad on me concerning women when her husband was the WORST abuser of woman in U.S. political history." This is both accurate and on point. In the past, those who have repeated the same talking point on CNN have been cut off, a la Kurt Schlichter. But Trump has around 8.26 million Twitter followers and an unending torrent of media coverage, so Clinton will now have to answer. And her usual answer -- talking down to Americans and tut-tutting away accusations -- won't cut it. Not when she has an attack dog like Trump on her tail.
How about Trump? Trump has been made almost impervious to scandal thanks to media attention. The media have treated Trump as a plane-hopping playboy for years -- a cad and a rogue, a charming billionaire "winner." Trump is like black socks: He never gets dirty, and the longer you wear him, the blacker he gets. It's impossible to identify dirt on a man plastered with mud.
Clinton, by contrast, has been portrayed as pure. She has remained untouched, except by the clutching claws of grimy Republican reptiles. What happens when Trump bulls right through the media ropes and takes the attack directly to Clinton's character?
Nothing good will come for Clinton.
The media subsidized Clinton into a position of power. She's now so vulnerable that a 74-year-old charisma-free socialist nearly took her down. Now she's got a worse virus: a case of the Trumps. Her immune system has been so compromised that she may be politically terminal.
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