the hillary clinton campaign will be used for decades as a lesson in political science classes on how not to run a campaign. of course, i've been arguing since before she declared that one prob would be that she might go down in the flames of scandal at any given minute. as the investigations wind toward possible indictments and so on, the campaign's strategy is this: just say squarely that the inspector general's office in the state department (that's kerry's state department, hill's until relatively recently) is literally working for republicans who are trying to stop hillary. never mind how. but why would they do that, especially now that they can just watch her collapse on her own? because they are scared of the real progressive change that hillary will bring to the nation, like campaign finance reform and ways to address inequality. christ i don't even know where to begin; there are just infinite layers of dishonesty: sometimes i think they're pursuing it for its own sake. even when straightforward would do them better, they just slather on the incredibly obviously false shit all day. the sheer ridiculousness of the current approach appears to give them no pause at all. right some of this crap sort of worked in the 90s, or perhaps they survived in spite of it, actually. but this has been more like a weeks-long self-assassination. they are absolutely bent on losing the last three people who when the pollsters show up describe hillary as "honest and trustworthy." i think it's gotten to the point where they're living in their own global hallucination, and they are puzzled when we aren't in there with them or something. i swear she's gonna be lucky to last a few days if this is the approach. even if they knew that an indictment would be handed down tonight during the debate, the approach that they're taking is just so obviously wrong.
the response is fully reflexive, invariable: blame the republicans. hyperintense obsessive partisanship is all they have, the fallback strategy every time, the vast conspiracy etc etc. a clinton administration - i want you to imagine this - will be far more partisan that what we've seen in the last eight years. look it has to be: the clintons have portrayed the republicans for decades as having one overarching project: destroy the clintons, personally, with insane lies so they can take and destroy the county. now if the pres thinks that, or if the pres was someone who thought she had to say that all the time, or used that to explain every failure or mistake, how well would you expect the budget negotiations to go? not only is she obviously utterly incompetent, she will never get anything but rage through congress.
