American politics are best described by the playground refrain: “I’m rubber and you’re glue, what bounces off me sticks to you”. Democrats are the rubber, Republicans the glue. That’s how Democrats can commit the most egregious offenses imaginable and emerge unscathed while Republicans are run out of town for even the most innocuous episode. That’s how things work in this pluralistic double standard we call politics as usual.
This summer will be no exception.
While everyone’s eye was on the ball also known as the Tuesday (April 26) primaries, an important story went by unnoticed. A judge in New York ruled that a trial against Trump University would go forward. The start date just so happens to coincide with the Republican Convention in Cleveland in mid-July.
In the meantime, the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco continues and rumors inside the beltway suggest that in May or June FBI Director James Comey will take what he has to Attorney General Lynch. Conceivably, there will be enough to justify a recommendation for indictment against the Democratic front-runner.
By the summer of 2016 we may witness the first Presidential election in which both nominees are defendants.
It isn’t hard to see how it will play out. Even if Hillary spends the Democratic Convention alternating her time between speeches at the podium in Philly and answering the prosecution’s questions in a D.C. court room, media coverage will be fixated on the Trump University trial. As November nears, the narrative will be a familiar one.
Donald Trump will be portrayed as a sham artist whether he testifies or not, and no matter what the outcome of his trial. Hillary will walk away from scandal using “oops” as her excuse, and virtually no one in the media will acknowledge that an “oops” of this magnitude reveals a stunning level of incompetence – and that ignorance of the law doesn’t make breaking it okay.
They’ll gush that Hillary was just a hapless working woman – i.e. victim – that didn’t grasp the intricacies of a bloated federal bureaucracy, and that she needed to get the job done while she was at State. Trump, on the other hand, they’ll say, was an evil rich poster child for white privilege that sucked money out of working people’s pockets faster than George W. Bush was able to get us into a fraudulent war in Iraq. As ridiculous as it sounds, those will be the talking points.
Hillary’s the rubber and Donald’s the glue, the email server bounces off her and sticks to the man behind Trump U.
Image: photo credit: Hillary Clinton via photopin (license)
