Clearly I screwed up by not posting a version of this thread properly a while back.
People think they know the story because they’ve heard about “Benghazi!” Well, here are some of Hillary’s big ethical issues that you may not have heard of.
First, the Clinton Foundation. It’s not clear whether there’s a lot there, but this is where an indictment would probably come from if it came:
Leave aside for a minute that the GOP will not be above hypocrisy in their accusations. Note who is not mentioned there. Trump is self-financed.
I read the IBTimes story about a month ago, and it really scared me. Forget “baked in negatives.” We are now talking about the appearance of “high crimes.” And it doesn’t have to be true, it just has to be credible. We can expect this to be the story of the election, and it will put Democrats in the position of defending corruption. Because we can’t prove it’s false, and oh, yeah, maybe she did cover it up.
And what really scares me is that she’d probably be elected anyway, and then what?
One, she’d have the Sword of Damocles hanging over her administration. How would she govern? What would she give up to save her own neck, or whom?
Two, we’d be normalizing the idea of voting for corruption in the Democratic Party. That’s a dangerous precedent.
Three, I personally have an ethical line here: I can’t vote for someone whom is as far as I can tell guilty of high crimes, unless the alternative is so awful that I really, really have to. I am a very serious consequentialist, and endorsing this level of influence peddling is not something I do cheaply.
That’s why I’ve been so insistent that she’s a bad nominee.
I have to wonder why this from about a year ago did not stop her. Could it be that they expected yet another “where there is smoke there is fire” talking point?
It turns out that it has been investigated, but again it looks like yet another typical Clinton scandal, Typical as in not really as damning as reported and missing that the target of the investigations is not what their sources promise.
After a year of that “there’s no proof of serious malfeasance, either, just troubling questions.” (a quote from the one article cited by the OP) so far we got this:
Hillary was in private practice when her husband was governor. Her firm represented a Savings & Loan, which was regulated by the state, and in which she and Bill may have invested? Or they didn’t invest, but they were former partners of the owner, who’d given them a sort of crypto-donation in a weaselly way. It’s all very tangled. The FDIC judged that they were in the clear, apparently. But the owner of the S&L went to prison, the next governor of Arkansas later did too, and the Clintons got off. It was eyebrow-raising.
Dang keyboard, I meant to say that the last quote came form a source that was last updated in 2013. Regarding a case from the 80’s and the 90’s where evidence was lacking.
But on the ethics things, it’s a lot of “stinky but probably legal, maybe.”
And while the common “dumb guy” voter may not understand the nature of some of the ethics accusations, he can understand this:
Hillary is a crook. Hillary is for sale. Hillary and Bill grubbed Wal-Mart and Goldman Sachs and Citigroup for millions of dollars, and got rich off it, and then the economy went off a cliff, and you lost your career, your pension, and your home. Now, we don’t have a record of her voting to bail out Wall Street and let Main Street drown, like Obama did, like some of the Democrats who are endorsing her did. But the only reason for that is that she was busy selling the policies of the US State Department to the kings of Arabia in exchange for money they gave Bill.
Sound bad enough? Sound worse than Scandinavian-style socialism yet?
Sorry, kids, you better pray the Bernie wave has a big crest to come. Heck, you better join it.
Those not already on the Clinton fan club already think she is crooked. Most of them still prefer her to Trump, or any other of the losers from the GOP really. I don’t see what the point in trying to smear our nominee is.
Not going to chase for more debunkings until you disown the sorry items you posted early.
Really there is a reason to do so, back in other subject (that the Republicans love too) I do have a lot of disdain of climate change deniers that never remove or drop talking points from their sites that were debunked or had no good evidence to make them even half a talking point.
Reason being that then I put the makers of those sites in the column of just being wrong all the time.
So far what I have seen is that no, Hillary is not a crook, in reality most of the bloggers out there pushing the idea that she is are the crooks themselves. You need better evidence or sources than that.
But but but … there are allegations! It looks bad (to those who already won’t vote for her and are looking for reasons to say why). Who knows what might show up?
Nah, the GOP forces will try with much more vigor than this.
Have been for decades.
As much as foolsguinea may want to (s)he just doesn’t have the vicious streak to be the effective oppo hit person. But that wolf has been cried so many times with her the oppo work will mostly come up against glazed eyes, especially on the heels of her attackers having spent so much time first trying to convince everyone about what a liar and scumbag each of the other of them is.
Here’s the thing: the professional oppo research have been doing their best for decades and this weak crap is the best they’ve got and a bunch of already discredited shit. Sanders has never been been seriously oppo’ed before. Who knows what might look bad when you get the GOP professionals unleashed? He has zero experience at dealing with that sort of campaign.
If there really was anything that was seriously ugly to be found then the GOP would have found and used it by now. They are not holding anything for an October surprise.
In a normal year, that might be a flip response. This is not a normal year. Put aside the well-made points of others that the Clintons have been subject to a constant barrage of hate for over 20 years by legions of foes without any of them managing to uncover an actual proven scandal. Her negatives were well-known and acknowledged by everyone.
Sanders had zero chance to win the nomination. I’ve been saying that for a year. It remains true. I’ve said, in fact, that Clinton had a 100% chance of winning the nomination and a 100% chance of winning the election.
The alternative is a Republican.
What should be done now? What could have been done a year ago? Other than the eternal Democratic handwringing instead of wanting to win the Presidency, what are you saying that is worth the hearing? Do you have a point?
I do. The alternative is a Republican. That trumps your point, and I’m not being ironic.
Well, that towering edifice of innuendo you’ve built has certainly convinced me to throw my vote to Trump in the General. Texas primary’s already over so your helpful post is a little too late for that, you see.
Meanwhile, got to confess I have no idea what “selling the policies of the US State Department to the kings of Arabia” even means.
Actually, though, can someone explain to me how this notorious criminal has somehow carried out all these heinous crimes, over decades, in the face of numerous, repeated and very expensive investigations by groups of people who practically made careers of figuring out a way to nail her (and Bill) to the jailhouse wall? If she really is the crook some say, she’s a frickin’ Bond villain.
In your own OP you conceded the accusations might not be true. But you’re arguing that the accusations alone, regardless of whether they’re true or not, should be enough to cause Clinton to withdraw.
And that’s absurd. There’s no candidate who could meet the standard of never being the subject of an accusation. The fact that several of us recognize this doesn’t make us a brick wall.
But maybe you’d be good enough to tell us who you’re going to vote for that meets your lofty moral values so the rest of us lesser mortals can be edified.