Shadowlands: America in 2016

It’s important to realize that Hillary Clinton won’t be indicted by Barack Obama’s Justice department before the election. We said so, and now so has Andrew C. McCarthy, former assistant attorney general for New York’s Southern District who has been closely following Clinton’s FBI problems.

If Clinton wins, her lies and corruption will go unpunished, having by then been ignored by the electorate that makes her president. Clinton wouldn’t win in any normal year. 2016 isn’t a normal year.

Kristen Powers is a Democrat but as a contributor to Fox News, well-informed on conservative thinking. Powers takes issue with Republicans who blame Trump’s rise on Obama. She instead scolds inside-the-beltway Republicans for failing to respond to lower and working class American grievances, even as these whites became the party’s natural constituency. While Powers is right about the GOP, Obama’s economic failures certainly helped plain-talking businessman Trump connect with suffering whites.

So what does America do now? If Republicans can’t stop Trump we get Clinton with her long, dark road of unchecked corruption.

Trump v. Clinton: Battle of Liars

Michael Bloomberg won’t run for president. Which means we may be stuck with the worst “leader of the Free World” choice since 1972, when it was either Richard Nixon or George McGovern. Depression.  

1. Trump Lies.

Former Reagan-Bush 41 speechwriter Peggy Noonan teaches us (2/25/16) “the five stages of Trump, based on the Kübler-Ross stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.” Noonan guesses GOP professionals are still in the “depression” stage, not yet at “acceptance.”

I agree with Noonan’s take on why Trump is winning:

There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it. The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully.

Noonan adds, “I want to call [the protected] the elite.” But of course, she stops short because she too is elite, and “elite” isn’t where her folks want to be right now.

In truth, the American elite has failed its working class. So Trump is right on the biggest issue of all. For years on this blog, I have been warning the national elite was on its “last legs.” Now Trump is cashing in.

But overthrowing our national elite was never going to be easy, and it especially won’t be easy for the Trump side in 2016.

Conservative Jonah Goldberg tells us why. Trump lies. It’s a fact, though amazingly so far, Trump has gotten away with it.

Goldberg is shocked at “the double standard Trump benefits from.” Writes Goldberg:

Trump knows little to nothing and he lies the way most of us breathe. But that’s him. And, bizarrely, many people like him (and many commentators have been seduced by his popularity). So he’s allowed to be Trump. No one else is allowed to be Trump-like because when we see Trumpism in others, we recognize its ugliness and vacuity for what it is.

So Trump also gets away with lying, because certainly

2. Clinton Lies.

When Michael Mukasey, ex-attorney general, was asked if the Clinton email issue will be resolved before July's Democratic convention, he replied “yes,” because FBI Director Jim Comey, who doesn’t use words casually, said the FBI would be handling Clinton’s case “promptly.” Mukasey guesses Comey won’t waste time on a grand jury. If the FBI has enough to indict Clinton, she will be presented the evidence, and offered a chance to plea--”promptly.”

But earlier, when Fox News Anchor Bret Baier interviewed Attorney General Loretta Lynch about the Clinton case, Lynch used a different word for the ongoing investigation into Clinton’s potential crimes. Lynch’s word for the probe was “thorough.”

Let me suggest that the Obama administration’s investigation of ally Clinton will indeed be “thorough;” thorough enough to prevent anything happening to Clinton before the election. Exhaust lower-level sources. Broaden the search. Above all else, be “thorough.”

And leave our nation to a sordid battle between two epic liars.

Trump. God help us.

"Trump is going to win without an extraordinary change in the race’s trajectory that seems unlikely, to put it mildly. He’s led this race since he entered it and he’s never surrendered the lead. That’s the truth, and the truth really hurts for conservatives who find his candidacy an ideological, moral and political calamity."

--John Podhoretz, New York Post

 “Fire Up Washington 
Send The Trumpinator”

 --Sign seen at Nevada caucus site

We have argued that the less-educated working class, angry with our elite’s version of “life,” will be heard this time. Trump is their megaphone. And after Super Tuesday, with help from the angry, Trump has nearly grasped the Republican nomination.

Podhoretz and other conservatives aren’t happy. Ben Domenech, who publishes the conservative Federalist, with a resigned shrug writes:

The Trump phenomenon is . . . the beta-test of a cure that the American people are trying out. It won’t work. But this is where our politics are going: working and middle class Americans are reasserting themselves against a political and cultural establishment that has become completely discredited over time and due to their own actions.

Working class ally Joel Kotkin, in the Orange County Register, thinks

Race may play a large role in the next few weeks of voting but, ultimately, other factors – income, age, geography – will be more determinative of the outcome in November.

But after Trump sent a possible “dog whistle” message to whites uncomfortable with Obama-black America by hesitating to “condemn unequivocally” David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan, I’m thinking race may well “play a large role” in defeating Trump come November. Democrats won’t let this one slip by. Kotkin hopes the election will be about economics. Maybe not.

I listened to Trump’s post-Super Tuesday press conference, for the first time considering he might be president. I understand the appeal enforcing our immigration laws has for people whose jobs are threatened by low-wage illegal or legal immigrants, and know new tax policies can help keep many American jobs here.

But I don’t trust Trump’s “renegotiate trade treaties” talk. High tariffs don’t work; they helped trigger the Great Depression. He seems sincere, which really bothers me. Doesn’t he understand the law of comparative advantages? We have to train our people to a place in the new economy, not fight to keep old economy jobs in place.

Marco Rubio may be down and nearly out. But he’s right to attack Trump on hiring illegal aliens, on hiring foreign workers over Americans, on talking tough on China while selling China-made ties and suits, on Trump's “Trump University” fraud, on posing as common Joe when he inherited millions, on going bankrupt several times saving his skin and ruining little people.

Trump is a con man. More than ever, one hopes, “God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.”