This is a post by
Piers Morgan for Daily Mail Online, about US Democratic presidential candidate
Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, the leaked emails by WikiLeaks which revealed
that the DNC chairman rigged the primaries, called African Americans racist
names, questioned Bernie Sanders' faith and the ongoing Democratic National
Convention which started on Monday. He wrote:
The narrative of
this presidential race has been set in stone for several years: Hillary Clinton
WILL be the next President of the United States. This has been the widely held,
inherently-understood belief amongst all the ‘smart’ political, media and
celebrity elite in Washington, New York and Hollywood. Oh sure, there will
still have to be a contest of some sort.
But Hillary’s
victory in this election is, to them, the biggest nailed down in-the-bag
certainty since the Warriors went 3-1 up in the recent NBA Finals and Stephen
Curry’s name was being slowly engraved on the MVP trophy. Oh. Wait a moment.
Hold those horses. Or, as Goldfinger used to say to 007: ‘Not so fast, Mr Bond…’
We all remember what happened at the NBA Finals; LeBron James suddenly morphed
into Superman to wrestle back a 4-3 win for the Cavs and snatch the MVP title
for himself from a distraught Curry. Proof, not that any was really needed,
that there really is no such thing as a certainty in either sport or politics.
Particularly when you have an opponent bursting with self-confidence who defies
the conventional rules of engagement and simply refuses to bow down even in the
face of apparently inevitable defeat. Like LeBron James, and in his own way,
Donald Trump.
As Trump moves ahead
of Hillary in the polls for the first time, enjoying the traditional
post-convention bounce, I am smelling a similar dramatic upset at the general
election in November and if my nostrils are correct, then Hillary will have
only herself to blame. The shocking sense of entitlement that pervades from
every pore of this Democrat nominee and her supporters is almost overwhelming.
Nowhere has this been more lamentably confirmed than in the sudden avalanche of
20,000 emails revealed by Wikileaks late last week, which laid bare a
distinctly unpleasant Clinton-ite underbelly to the Democrats. Hillary’s
Democratic National Committee wild attack dogs, led by chair Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, went after her rival Bernie Sanders like they were hunting down an
elderly buffalo in the prairies of South Africa. Nothing was off limits, not
even his personal religious faith. ‘Does he believe in a god,’ wrote one
staffer, the DNC’s chief financial officer Brad Marshall. ‘He had skated on
saying he has a Jewish heritage.
‘I think I read he
is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My
Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an
atheist.’ The chief executive of the DNC, Amy Dacey, replied with one word:
‘Amen.’ Another staffer, national communications director Luis Miranda,
regularly exchanged emails with reporters directly briefing against Sanders.
Isn’t this just utterly disgraceful?
These DNC staffers
are supposed to be candidate neutral. But such was their obsession with the
presumed ‘Hillary Will Be President’ premise, they couldn’t stop themselves
chewing up and smearing a brave, decent, inspiring 75-year-old man who at the
very least surely deserved a fair fight within his own party.
I interviewed Debbie
Wasserman Schultz many times during my tenure at CNN. She was always a good
guest, forcefully presenting her opinion and arguing strongly with other
pundits of a different political persuasion.
But there was a
certain zealotry to her work, particularly when it came to defending Hillary
Clinton. I got the firm impression she would do literally anything to ensure a
Clinton win in 2016. And indeed, it turns out she did, even if by doing so she
has now wrecked her career and dragged both the DNC and Clinton herself by
association into serious disrepute.
Even worse, it will
almost certainly cost Hillary much-needed votes from Bernie supporters who made
their fury felt today by loudly booing when he called for them to back the
nominee. This latest email scandal couldn’t come at a worse time for Hillary,
as the Democratic National Convention starts in Philadelphia. The problem is
that she’s still desperately trying to run on a ‘Trust’ platform. Trump’s a
very bad guy who can’t be trusted, she keeps reminding us. Only she can be
trusted with serious stuff like the nuclear button, she insists.
Only she has the
experience required to occupy the White House. Etc. But for this stance to be
effective, Hillary herself has to be viewed as more trustworthy than Trump and
the latest CNN poll published today shows she isn’t. It revealed that only 3
out of 10 Americans find her ‘honest and trustworthy’, a staggeringly low
number for a woman who wants us to believe she’s the Trust candidate
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