The Electoral Stacked Deck

I'd like to deal with two incidents in the last week that show just how difficult it is going to be for Democrats to have a fair shot of winning the 2016 election.  Those of us who actually pay attention to what goes on in this country spend their time in a constant semi-daze at the thought that, after its performance the last few decades, the Republican party is afforded any credibility whatsoever by the electorate.  By now, the Republicans should be as lost to history as the Whigs or the Know Nothings, but there they are, seemingly taken seriously around the country.  A buffoon like Donald Trump is treated like the Conservative equivalent of Bernie Sanders, while a malignant, corrupt liar who has devastated everything he ever touched, like Scott Walker or Chris Christie, is treated as a suitable opponent to Hillary Clinton.  How does this happen?  How does this madness continue?  Well, here are a couple of examples of how this magic trick is pulled off.

The first one has to do with the reporting of the New York Times regarding a fabricated e-mail scandal involving Hillary Clinton.  The Times published a story headlined “Criminal Inquiry Sought in Hillary Clinton’s Use of Email”  stating as a clear fact that there was a criminal inquiry into Hillary's behavior itself.  As the days went by, first of all, it turned out that the supposed inquiry was not about Hillary at all, but about how some of the e-mails had been handled after she turned them over to the government.  What's more, the inquiry was not a criminal one in any way.  It turned out that some of the information in a couple of the e-mails had been classified long after Hillary left office, and the inquiry was designed to make sure that the later treatment of the e-mails, by people utterly unrelated to Hillary, did not reveal information which was only classified after Hillary left.  There was never a suggestion that Hillary herself did anything wrong- not a suggestion, that is, except in the New York Times, which as much as accused her of being a criminal.  And where did this information that the New York Times relied upon come from?  From the usual unnamed "high government sources," i.e. lying Republican operatives, whose word is as good as gold to the New York Times.

And now, let's look at a couple of excerpts from an article in the Washington Post, by Jennifer Rubin.  Now, given that Jennifer Rubin has a years-long history of dishing out the most abominable Republican lies to the American people, it's stunning that she can get any job in journalism, let alone one at the vaunted Washington Post.  Well, here's Jennifer a couple of days ago, lying her ass off about the Iran nuclear deal:

"As we learn more about the Iran deal — the side agreements, the lifting of the arms and missile embargoes, the loophole-ridden inspections regime — the more apparent it is that only people so enamored of their own work, so gullible to embrace the Iranians’ soothing words and so desperate for glory could have negotiated this deal. Rather than acknowledge the criticisms on the merits, the administration sinks lower and lower, casting aspersions on critics.

The administration sounds more unhinged with each passing day, no doubt because it is not convincing Democrats to stand with the White House in defense of a rotten deal...An Obama administration assessment of the Iran nuclear deal provided to Congress has led a number of lawmakers to conclude the U.S. and world powers will never get to the bottom of the country’s alleged efforts to build an atomic weapon, and that Tehran won’t be pressed to fully explain its past."

This "rotten deal" has been praised as a phenomenal diplomatic breakthrough everywhere, by governments, diplomats and disarmament specialists, except among right wing Americans, and a few pathetic Likud members in Israel who, like the former Republican operative Netanyahu, seem to be more interested in the fate of the Republican party than the security of their own country.

"Details of the report, which haven’t been previously disclosed, indicate the deal reached this month could go ahead even if United Nations inspectors never ascertain conclusively whether Iran pursued a nuclear weapons program—something Tehran has repeatedly denied.

In other words, the administration caved on PMDs and the deal would go into effect without ever forcing Iran to disclose information necessary to conduct adequate inspections. (“Outside nuclear experts said understanding Iran’s past nuclear work was critical to verifying the new agreement because it establishes a baseline for what Tehran has done in the past.”) Democrats who insisted on a credible inspection process and know that it depends on our understanding of Iran’s past nuclear weapons program have a choice: Cave (as the president did, thereby sacrificing their own credibility) or insist the president go back (with additional leverage in the form of new sanctions) to obtain what Kerry once promised he would get"

Of course, it is what happens now and in the future that is important.  What happened in the past was never what these negotiations were about, and will have absolutely nothing to do with whether the negotiations are a success.  Rubin simply invents this meaningless issue, because the truth is, as the whole world knows, that Obama has cooperated with five other countries to pull off an amazing diplomatic agreement, without a shot being fired.

"No wonder the administration is throwing a fit, louder...with each passing day. The president and his advisers desperately want to divert attention from their own grossly defective deal... "

I haven't really noticed the administration "throwing a fit," unless it counts as a fit for Democrats to show any satisfaction in a job well done.  This article is so intemperate, so filled with lies and so vicious that it belongs at Gateway Pundit or Breitbart, not on the pages of what is supposedly one of our top newspapers.  And, of course, we have already illustrated what we're getting from the other one.

Fast on the heels of this comes the news that the supposedly left-wing cable news network MSNBC is replacing Ed Schultz, a reliable liberal, with Chuck Todd, whose only journalistic skill on earth seems to consist in not showing the slightest negative reaction as Republicans come on his show and lie in his face over and over again.

And this is our liberal press.  I'll tell you what: I'm sick of the pundits that (when they rarely seem to notice this malfeasance) blame it on a love of the "horse race," or on their all possessing emotional developments on the level of middle school kids, like Maureen Dowd, or some other psychological defect that results in this sort of coverage.  After decades of this sort of thing, which always, always works to the benefit of Republicans, when will people face the fact that it is the product of a corrupt fifth estate, bought and paid for by the rich, thanks to Reagan era deregulation, and operating exactly as Reagan and his handlers have always intended?

As I have said before, the Democrats could whip the Republicans within an inch of their lives without any problem whatsoever.  What they can't beat is the Republicans and the press working together, which is what we have had in this country for decades now, with the predictable result that our way of life is unraveling with no prospect of things ever getting better.