I just watched (1:19 PM Pacific, Jake Tapper on CNN) a hit piece on Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton Foundation— it could have been a Trump campaign commercial. “Shocking” — transactional politics and influence and a ruling class who know each other occurring in DC and NYC! Perhaps CNN could spend such time and energy and breathlessness on Trump’s taxes and possible Russian entanglements, incitements to violence, invitations to foreign entities to influence our elections, devastating business record, racist labeling of President Obama, or other literally fatal-to-any-other-campaign behaviors? Many of us are writing about this — calling out NPR and Woodward just this afternoon.
Surely the extremely competent Clinton campaign has “Oppo Research and Responses” well in hand, but what about our dKos community? Below I describe some levels to highlight what appears to be the primary obstacle to President-Elect Hillary Clinton on November 9: the False Equivalence between investigations focused on her and the cursory investigations of Trump. Does our community believe that the ongoing media-driven False Equivalence between two completely incommensurate candidates, Hillary (whose competence, experience, intelligence, glass-ceiling-breaking-achievement, compassion, grit, and yes, now physical bravery) versus Mr. Meltdown — is a serious threat to her campaign? Also incommensurate is the lack of application of rules of evidence or basic critical thinking to US Presidential Elections: apparently utterly microscopic examination of the Democratic nominee and Party are “entered into evidence” by the media while any comparable level of evidence about Trump remains hidden. Might we speculate on what a comparably microscopic investigation of Trump and the Republican party might reveal? Some levels of risk:
Level 4: “Baked-In” threats from Benghazi nonsense, State Department Report, FBI Investigation, and loathesome-Judicial-Watch release up to today. The recent favorable polls seem to show Clinton, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Better House are OK. Perhaps where we were yesterday.
Level 3: Ongoing drip, drip, drip of things the media covers, which might be keeping her negatives too high or used as a reason to support Trump. Where I feel might be today after watching the CNN hit piece (opening what seems to be yet another line of attack). Or is False Equivalence practiced by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the NY Times, the Washington Post, etc. not actually relevant to influencing relevant voters?
Level 2: Future exposure of something that most of us on dKos wouldn’t want to defend; something Hillary or others would have to address explicitly; October surprise. Something so convincing to enough voters that it could put the Presidency, the Senate, the Supreme Court, or the Better House at risk.
Level 1: Public verification of something worthy of House of Cards or various Conspiracy Theories. Not likely since Hillary is comparatively honest, as studied by Mother Jones, The Guardian, and Politifact. I mention it as a logical possibility, not a likely one.
Whether we are still at Level 4 or now at Level 3, is there anything more we as a community can do: for example, wage an organized campaign against CNN? Agree upon use of a common “FalseEquivalence” or “False Equivalency” tag or meme on social media to flag and amplify our objections? Is there anything we as a community can do to prepare to respond to more of Level 3 or 2, as it may influence the perceptions of undecided voters and put at risk so much that we care about?
