Pushing Back on the "Evil Hillary" BS

Whatever hopes were still left of "liking" both candidates at the end of the Democratic primary were basically put on some level of ice a few days ago, when Jane Sanders said "it would be nice if the FBI moved it along" in regards to the Hillary Clinton e-mail probe. While I strongly believe the FBI will eventually come out and say there is no crime in regards to Clinton's e-mail server, and I suspect Jane Sanders knows that too, she clearly wanted to put the impression that the outcome of this investigation is in question, which is basically what Donald Trump would like you to think too. I don't have any use for people who would run in the Democratic primary and scorch the Earth if they are not likely to be the winner in the end. We're rapidly arriving at that point in this process.

I always really liked Bernie Sanders, but that's rapidly not the case anymore. Hillary Clinton does not deserve the dishonest personal attacks and innuendo being shot her way by her soon-to-be vanquished primary opponent. I guess if you arrived to this process five minutes ago and think that there may be merit to Republican accusations against her on her e-mails or Benghazi, you might want to believe Bernie and Jane, but for the rest of us, the record speaks for itself. Republicans have accused her of everything up to murdering an aid over the past four decades that she has spent in the public eye, and not once has she ended up in trouble for illegal or unethical behavior. Despite the best efforts of the Republican Party to make people believe Hillary is a crook, there is not, and has never been, any kernel of truth to that.

The loose and misleading attacks against Hillary Clinton probably won't stop, because it's good politics with the bases of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Bernie can loosely make it sound like Hillary gave paid speeches to Goldman Sachs while she was a Senator, even though that never happened, and his base likes to hear that. Unfortunately, that is the way these decisions are being made right now, and Jane Sanders is just nakedly laying that out there for everyone. There's not even a pretense of hiding this talk behind responsible language.

I'm not going to give any credence though to the idea that Hillary should be lumped in with Donald Trump as "unlikable" heading into November. Donald Trump has said bigoted, sexist, and false things in his campaign, and if he is really that unliked, has well earned it. Hillary Clinton, as the clear front-runner in this Presidential race from day one, has been the subject of attacks in a way that "more popular" candidates like Sanders and John Kasich never have. The good news though is that Clinton's unpopularity has not yet translated into any ballot-box weakness- despite the best attempts to tear apart the person, she leads the general election polls and has the most votes so far of any candidate in this primary election. Maybe most people are pretty smart, in the end.