Democrats expose their own problems by attacking Trump
Michelle Obama’s emotional speech denouncing Donald Trump for alleged sexual misconduct last week got rave reviews from the left. She called Trump’s words and reported actions “shocking” and “demeaning,” and below “basic standards of human decency.”
Well said, and she gave a moving performance — but it would have been more powerful if the first lady had dared to say the same things about the proven sexual misconduct of fellow Democrats Bill Clinton or the late Ted Kennedy. Or if she had denounced the crude rappers she invites to the White House for their “demeaning” lyrics about women.
But she didn’t, which spotlights the Achilles’ heel of her argument. To wit, selective outrage in the service of partisan politics is neither moral nor persuasive.
Politics, someone once said, ain’t beanbag, and there is nothing more hardball than the stretch run of this year’s presidential campaign. The only rule is that there are no rules.
Because sex sells, and because she is seriously hobbled by her own past, Hillary Clinton is now running almost exclusively on charges that her opponent is a pig and a predator. The charges are spilling nonstop from the front pages and airwaves in a coordinated effort to deliver a kill shot to the Republican nominee.
The barrage represents selective outrage on an industrial scale, and is conveniently timed. Coming simultaneously with the WikiLeaks release of Clinton-camp e-mails and continuing disclosures about the flawed FBI investigation of her private server, many voters know far more about the allegations against Trump than about the latest proof of Clinton’s deceptions, not to mention her aides’ attacks on Christians, Latinos and Bernie Sanders.
The e-mail revelations, including numerous examples of biased media helping Clinton, deserve more attention. Instead, the lopsided focus on Trump is, temporarily at least, tilting the table toward a Clinton victory. Unless Trump gets back to matters of national substance and reverses the slide, he’s toast.
But so, then, would be the hopes of millions of Americans who have greater concerns than feverish reports about one candidate’s sexual mores. While there are understandable reasons to vote for Clinton and against Trump, alleged offensive conduct that happened years ago, and that was never reported to police, should not be the sole deciding factor in picking a president.
That is not to suggest the charges against Trump are false. Knowing what we know about his lifestyle and ego, I believe at least some are true.
But so were most of the even-worse charges about Bill Clinton’s sexual depravity while he held government power, starting in Arkansas, and ending in the Oval Office with an intern near his daughter’s age. And Hillary Clinton, after trashing her husband’s accusers, saved his presidency by staying married to him.
Thus, the record of both Clintons must count in weighing whether the sexual charges against Trump disqualify him from consideration.
When this campaign began, we knew that the character of both candidates — writ large — would shape the outcome. The two most disliked and distrusted major-party nominees in modern times, Clinton and Trump failed to improve their own standing, and now are limited to trying to make each other more toxic and less acceptable.
It is a joyless and soulless mud battle that is dispiriting and leaves little time for the vital matters the next president will face in just three months.
To cite a few: The collapse of ObamaCare, the erosion of middle-class incomes and the outbreak of murder, arson and looting in major cities, the metastasizing of Islamic terrorism, Iran’s expanding aggressions and a growing confrontation with Russia. Then there’s the Supreme Court.
Barack Obama’s regime is crash-landing, making it imperative that the next president be ready on Day One. Staggering challenges and crises await the winner, so let’s choose wisely, and for the right reasons.
Bill ‘De’-lusional on vote fraud
If you’re scoring at home, here’s what we know about Mayor de Blasio: He still doesn’t believe in the First Amendment, and he is OK with voter fraud.
Fresh off his refusal to take questions from The Post, the mayor flayed a Board of Elections commissioner who complained about double voting in the city and told him to shut up.
Manhattan Democrat Alan Schulkin didn’t realize he was being taped when he said the ID cards de Blasio created made fraud easier because there was no proof that people are who they say they are. “There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud,” he said on the videotape.
But instead of seeing Schulkin as an inadvertent whistleblower and promising to investigate the allegations, the mayor called for him to resign.
“That is crazy,” de Blasio raged on WNYC radio. “What he said was entirely inappropriate and unfair and absolutely the reverse of what someone should be saying on the Board of Elections.”
So the Board of Elections shouldn’t say there is fraud even if there is? Is reporting a potential crime grounds for dismissal in de Blasio’s New York?
Naturally, the Putz insisted that voter fraud “is an urban myth” and that “there’s no proof of it whatsoever.”
Well, there might be proof if anyone investigated, but apparently all we need is the mayor’s word.
Trust him? No thanks.
‘Lit’erally not music
Many thanks to the Nobel Prize committee for settling a family dispute. Back when Bob Dylan was inspiring my generation and confounding my parents’, I invited my father to listen to Dylan’s music so we could talk about it.
These were the days of anti-Vietnam War marches and the rise of the counter-culture, none of which my father liked. A child of the Depression and a World War II-era Navy veteran, he had a sentimental side that was buried beneath a hard life. Maybe Dylan could touch a nerve.
We sat opposite each other as the scratchy laments of “The Times They Are A Changin” warbled out of the stereo cabinet, and I watched Dad’s face for a reaction. A good poker player, he didn’t show much, but when the music stopped, his verdict was instant: “You call that singing?”
I was crushed, but it turns out he was right — it wasn’t music, it was literature! That’s what the Nobel Prize panel said in crediting Dylan with creating “new poetic expressions.”
If only Dad were here to savor his vindication.
All the hyperbole that’s fit to print
Reader Jim Martin is fed up with The New York Times ditching its standards to embrace partisanship. He writes:
“I noted to my kids that the language used by their reporters was deviating into that used in their editorial and opinion pages. Then it became an onslaught where the line between the two dissolved.”
He adds, “I don’t think either candidate is qualified to serve as president. But the more Trump is portrayed by them as the second coming of Hitler . . . well, who would believe them if the real thing came along?”
Michelle Obama’s emotional speech denouncing Donald Trump for alleged sexual misconduct last week got rave reviews from the left. She called Trump’s words and reported actions “shocking” and “demeaning,” and below “basic standards of human decency.”
Well said, and she gave a moving performance — but it would have been more powerful if the first lady had dared to say the same things about the proven sexual misconduct of fellow Democrats Bill Clinton or the late Ted Kennedy. Or if she had denounced the crude rappers she invites to the White House for their “demeaning” lyrics about women.
But she didn’t, which spotlights the Achilles’ heel of her argument. To wit, selective outrage in the service of partisan politics is neither moral nor persuasive.
Politics, someone once said, ain’t beanbag, and there is nothing more hardball than the stretch run of this year’s presidential campaign. The only rule is that there are no rules.
Because sex sells, and because she is seriously hobbled by her own past, Hillary Clinton is now running almost exclusively on charges that her opponent is a pig and a predator. The charges are spilling nonstop from the front pages and airwaves in a coordinated effort to deliver a kill shot to the Republican nominee.
The barrage represents selective outrage on an industrial scale, and is conveniently timed. Coming simultaneously with the WikiLeaks release of Clinton-camp e-mails and continuing disclosures about the flawed FBI investigation of her private server, many voters know far more about the allegations against Trump than about the latest proof of Clinton’s deceptions, not to mention her aides’ attacks on Christians, Latinos and Bernie Sanders.
The e-mail revelations, including numerous examples of biased media helping Clinton, deserve more attention. Instead, the lopsided focus on Trump is, temporarily at least, tilting the table toward a Clinton victory. Unless Trump gets back to matters of national substance and reverses the slide, he’s toast.
But so, then, would be the hopes of millions of Americans who have greater concerns than feverish reports about one candidate’s sexual mores. While there are understandable reasons to vote for Clinton and against Trump, alleged offensive conduct that happened years ago, and that was never reported to police, should not be the sole deciding factor in picking a president.
That is not to suggest the charges against Trump are false. Knowing what we know about his lifestyle and ego, I believe at least some are true.
But so were most of the even-worse charges about Bill Clinton’s sexual depravity while he held government power, starting in Arkansas, and ending in the Oval Office with an intern near his daughter’s age. And Hillary Clinton, after trashing her husband’s accusers, saved his presidency by staying married to him.
Thus, the record of both Clintons must count in weighing whether the sexual charges against Trump disqualify him from consideration.
When this campaign began, we knew that the character of both candidates — writ large — would shape the outcome. The two most disliked and distrusted major-party nominees in modern times, Clinton and Trump failed to improve their own standing, and now are limited to trying to make each other more toxic and less acceptable.
It is a joyless and soulless mud battle that is dispiriting and leaves little time for the vital matters the next president will face in just three months.
To cite a few: The collapse of ObamaCare, the erosion of middle-class incomes and the outbreak of murder, arson and looting in major cities, the metastasizing of Islamic terrorism, Iran’s expanding aggressions and a growing confrontation with Russia. Then there’s the Supreme Court.
Barack Obama’s regime is crash-landing, making it imperative that the next president be ready on Day One. Staggering challenges and crises await the winner, so let’s choose wisely, and for the right reasons.
Bill ‘De’-lusional on vote fraud
If you’re scoring at home, here’s what we know about Mayor de Blasio: He still doesn’t believe in the First Amendment, and he is OK with voter fraud.
Fresh off his refusal to take questions from The Post, the mayor flayed a Board of Elections commissioner who complained about double voting in the city and told him to shut up.
Manhattan Democrat Alan Schulkin didn’t realize he was being taped when he said the ID cards de Blasio created made fraud easier because there was no proof that people are who they say they are. “There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud,” he said on the videotape.
But instead of seeing Schulkin as an inadvertent whistleblower and promising to investigate the allegations, the mayor called for him to resign.
“That is crazy,” de Blasio raged on WNYC radio. “What he said was entirely inappropriate and unfair and absolutely the reverse of what someone should be saying on the Board of Elections.”
So the Board of Elections shouldn’t say there is fraud even if there is? Is reporting a potential crime grounds for dismissal in de Blasio’s New York?
Naturally, the Putz insisted that voter fraud “is an urban myth” and that “there’s no proof of it whatsoever.”
Well, there might be proof if anyone investigated, but apparently all we need is the mayor’s word.
Trust him? No thanks.
‘Lit’erally not music
Many thanks to the Nobel Prize committee for settling a family dispute. Back when Bob Dylan was inspiring my generation and confounding my parents’, I invited my father to listen to Dylan’s music so we could talk about it.
These were the days of anti-Vietnam War marches and the rise of the counter-culture, none of which my father liked. A child of the Depression and a World War II-era Navy veteran, he had a sentimental side that was buried beneath a hard life. Maybe Dylan could touch a nerve.
We sat opposite each other as the scratchy laments of “The Times They Are A Changin” warbled out of the stereo cabinet, and I watched Dad’s face for a reaction. A good poker player, he didn’t show much, but when the music stopped, his verdict was instant: “You call that singing?”
I was crushed, but it turns out he was right — it wasn’t music, it was literature! That’s what the Nobel Prize panel said in crediting Dylan with creating “new poetic expressions.”
If only Dad were here to savor his vindication.
All the hyperbole that’s fit to print
Reader Jim Martin is fed up with The New York Times ditching its standards to embrace partisanship. He writes:
“I noted to my kids that the language used by their reporters was deviating into that used in their editorial and opinion pages. Then it became an onslaught where the line between the two dissolved.”
He adds, “I don’t think either candidate is qualified to serve as president. But the more Trump is portrayed by them as the second coming of Hitler . . . well, who would believe them if the real thing came along?”
