How Hillary Clinton survived a gauntlet of saboteurs
The universe seemed to
conspire against a successful Democratic National Convention. But now Clinton is off and running
Kevin Baker and Jack Hitt
Who says she cant bring us all together? Hillary Clinton, in the middle of her glass-shattering ascent, found herself besieged on all sides as a cast of Batman-style villains from literally around the world sought to sabotage her convention.
Donald Trump, Julian Assange, Susan Sarandon, Nina Turner, Vladimir Putin, and Dr. Jill Steinpolitical bedfellows dont get any odder than this.
The most infamous moment, of course, was Trump pleading with Vlad the Eavesdropper to further aid his ratfucking of Hillary by producing still more computer hacks. Trump had already exposed himself as a gushing Putin fanboy, even offering to turn NATO into a protection racket for the shirtless Kremlin tyrant.
Just being sarcastic! Donald said the next day. Tantamount to treason, said one of the members of George W. Bushs national security team, as he followed George Will, Brent Scowcroft, Max Boot, and the other members of the GOPs shrunken national security wing out the door.
The treason might prove to be greater than we now suspect: a further undermining of political reality itself. For whatever line the Russian intelligence apparatusa leader in disinformation for over a centurychooses to feed to Assange will be taken as gospel, no matter how outrageous it might be.
And whatever they invent will fall on wide-open ears in the Khmer Rouge faction of the Bernie-or-Bust crowd. More annoying than a stadium full of vuvuzelas, the Berners chanted and ranted and cried and cat-called throughout the convention. Almost no one was spared, with insults hurled willy-nilly regardless of who was at the podium or what they stood for.
Inane cries of Goldman Sachs! greeted the Senates scourge of Wall Street, Elizabeth Warren, while chants of Black lives matter! interrupted Senator Cory Booker, the former mayor of Newark, and shouts of No more wars! stomped on former CIA Director Leon Panettas attempt to bring up Trumps collusion with a foreign potentate. Much worse were the visuals of enraged, young white people, their faces contorted in hate, obliviously screaming invective through the speeches of older, African-American representatives such as Marcia Fudge, Elijiah Cummings, and even the 76-year-old dean of the civil rights movement, John Lewis.
Anastasia Somoza, a woman bound to her wheelchair by cerebral palsy, got the same treatment. So did Cheryl Lankford, a young black woman who was ripped off by the colossal grift that is Trump University, after losing her husband to the war in Iraq. It didnt matter. Such individuals had nothing to teach the Berners, in all their righteousness. When Sarah Silverman, a Bernie volunteer, dared to call them ridiculous from the stage, her Twitter account was promptly hacked.
Just who these bravehearts were representing was unclear, since polls show that 90 percent of the Berners are already on board with Hillary. Pulled into post-convention interviews by MSNBC, the Bernie refuseniks proved to be stunningly young and inexperienced, with little or no idea of how a convention even works.
Its extremely unfair that a vote has not happened, one of them nearly sobbedon the first night of the convention.
This is not to ridicule their naivete but to point out how little effort was made to either select or school them by Bernies minimalist campaign. Nothing better illustrated how unequipped Sanders is to run anything bigger than the city of Burlington, Vermont. If it is the responsibility, in politics, of the old to teach the young mercy, humility, and judgement, that duty was sadly neglected by Sanders, whoeven as Hillary generously thanked him from the podiumslumped in his box looking as grim as a satrap whose sapphires had been insufficiently burnished that morning.
Other muses rushed to fill in the instructional vacuum left by the great man. Dr. Jill Steinduring her quadrennial glamour runtook to the airwaves to claim that Hillary Clinton would be willing to risk nuclear war with Russia. Susan Sarandon assured delegates that Hillary had stolen the election with massive voter fraud, and that Trump was likely a preferable alternative anyway.
Ms. Sarandon, who was not a delegate herself, was able to sit in the front row of the Florida delegation for the same reason she will be able to escape the consequences of a Trump presidency: She is rich and famous. While many of the Americans she would enlighten will have to actually consider leaving this country to get health care if Trump is elected, Sarandon can always return to the swankier precincts of Europe, where she has lived much of her life.
New Republic
