I read the word “corruption” and “corrupt’ in a screed that equated the wealth earned by the Clintons with those words. According to the dictionary, the word “corrupt” is defined as
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Having or showing a willingness to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain:
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verb [with obj.]Cause to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain
However, I did not read anything in the diary “Enough” posted that identified even one proven act of “corruption” where a Clinton received money in exchange for acting dishonestly. Moreover, if there was such corruption, it would not be left to a blogger here to expose it. It seems logical that opposition research by Sanders and the Republicans has been thorough, and additional research by the news organizations likewise was extensive. Yet, we have only the empty insinuations and libelous statements from Dallasdoc, her on Daily Kos to rely on. if there is proof that Hillary Clinton really is corrupt, by all means lay it out on the table. Better now than after she gets the nomination. Otherwise, if Dallasdoc is just into defaming her to make his chosen candidate, Bernie Sanders, look pure, he and his acolytes should look back at the presidential campaign of 1968.
I am old enough to have been a campus supporter of Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. I respected Johnson’s domestic achievements, but I hated the war. I also supported Robert Kennedy and George McGovern. None ever had a chance of being elected president. My choices of candidates were doomed from the outset due to the nature of their ideologies compared to the preferences of a majority of the electorate. History teaches that in America, candidates who are ahead of the views and assumptions about the world held by the mainstream, face huge hurdles because America’s diversity is not based just on ethnicity, rural vs. urban, or geography. Some people abhor politics and vote out of ignorance, often because of what a relative or neighbor told them. Some people have an agenda: Union members have economic reasons to try to get an NLRB appointed by a Democratic president, and a factory owner whose biggest challenge is his labor relations, would have reasons to want a Republican based NLRB. We live in a country where a third of the voters think that the evolution is a lie, and Obama was an illegal president. There are ea Party loyalists, gun worshipers, bigots, and tax haters who have the right to vote. None of these people are up for grabs by a liberal or a socialist. Another slice of voters have a vested interest in electing Republicans. They are employees of state and local governments under Republican rule.
There is another axiom that I have read which creates a great obstacle to a win by a ideology-grounded candidate like Sanders: Elections are won by the votes of independents who comprise less than 20% of the pool of actual voters. They are independent because they have no set ideology, and indeed may actually be the least informed voters. If that is true, it explains why candidates with a new or out-of-the-mainstream ideology rarely win. While it is true that the public is fed up with the 1% and with a political system where corporations and special interests make large contributions and see, to control the legislative agenda. The theory is that they get a hearing based on their contributions. But labor gets a hearing based on its contributions and work at the polls, minorities in cities get a hearing based on their votes as do evangelicals. Politicians favor those they need to survive, and they find a way to discover what their supporters want, and how to deliver within the confines of their power and status. What else is new?
Can Sanders win? Probably not. An elderly Jewish liberal from a small New England state with no strong relationship with or backing by local Democratic leaders in towns and cities where they must turn out the vote, is a long shot, especially when he promises to raise taxes and change the way medical care is delivered and paid for. The 3 months he will have to educate the public of his ground breaking policies will be much too short a time to educate the public, especially with the Republicans and the special interests distorting his message. Can Clinton win? Maybe, but the lesson of Hubert Humphrey’s campaign should be heeded by the Sanders supporters. Historians say Humphrey would have won the 1968 election but for the animosity that McCarthy’s supporters brewed at the Democratic National Convention (and the antiwar protests outside of the convention venue in Chicago) and carried after Humphrey was nominated. McCarthy himself like the diarist Dallasdoc here on Kos stated that they system and Humphrey were corrupt, and that he "set out to prove...that the people of this country could be educated and make a decent judgment...but evidently this is something the politicians were afraid to face up to." (See, Gene Vows He Won't Back HHH", St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, Florida), August 30, 1968, p. 1). MacCarthy never backed up his allegations with specifics or proof that Humphrey ever did so much a s fix a parking ticket, but his supporters did not need any proof to stay home on election day, and to influence other potential voters for Humphrey to do the same. That sounds much like Sanders’ call for a political revolution, his insinuations (without proof) that Clinton’s acceptance of speaking fees made her a stooge for the sponsors, and the unproven smears by Sanders supporters that nakedly accuse Hillary Clinton of being “corrupt. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes people pay to hear a former President or Secretary of State of the United States speak because they want to listen to the speech, or tell their grandchildren they were in the same room as these celebrities.
The bottom line is that smearing Hillary Clinton with the empty accusation that she is “corrupt” resembles the behavior of the McCarthy supporters, and anti-war protesters at the Chicago convention who ushered Nixon into the White House.