Progressives managed not to see the nose on their face
The election of Donald Trump as our next president heralds a new political epoch for the United States. Whatever his shortcomings as a candidate, the Republican nominee, a political neophyte, slayed both of the political dynasties that had more or less run our national life for the last three decades. There won’t be anyone named Bush or Clinton around the White House for a good long while now. This is no mean feat, not to mention something for which all Americans who dislike dynasties should be grateful.
How Trump did it is being hotly debated. True to form, Hillary Clinton has announced that her loss is all the fault of the FBI and its director, whose eleventh-hour reopening of her email scandal sank her at the ballot box. Whatever one thinks of James Comey, who has managed to offend both right and left in recent months, the notion that his investigation of Hillary’s emails, rather than her own mistakes as secretary of state—the steadfast refusal to use government email for government work, her “private” server of bathroom infamy, all the highly classified information that wound up in her “unclassified” emails, not to mention her innumerable lies about it all—constituted the real problem in EmailGate reeks of the purest Clintonism.
Democrats are also pointing a finger at Moscow, claiming that its secret ties to the Trump campaign plus the clandestine help of Wikileaks, whose massive dumps of Democratic emails painted Team Hillary in a highly unfavorable light, ultimately did in Clinton, Inc. Here they’re on somewhat firmer ground. Kremlin interference played a role in the campaign—exactly how much will be debated for decades—in a manner that should trouble all Americans.
That said, there’s not much to deny here, since Moscow has now admitted its previously hush-hush ties to Wikileaks and its contacts with members of the Trump campaign. Moreover, those who are now so eager to find Russians under every bed in Washington are the same people who pooh-poohed warnings about Wikileaks and the Kremlin—I was issuing them years ago—as scaremongering. It’s too late now, the election’s over. Time to move on, learn lessons, and accept the people’s verdict.
Some Americans are clearly not ready to move on. Their radical fringe has been fighting in the streets, rioting and burning trees to show their displeasure, thereby proving true all the nasty things that Trump has said about the nut-left. The ugly nature of these outbursts has many wondering what has happened to the country. However, when Democratic leaders publicly denounce Trump and the Republicans as the party of “hate” it’s not surprising that the country’s perennially aggrieved lumpenriot contingent takes action.
Read the rest at The Observer …