2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHere's a question re: Hillary timing
Let's say that Hillary asks you to be a member of her cabinet. Or to agree to some other post in her administration.
Would you have ANY inclination to agree considering that she is under investigation by the FBI?
Probably not, unless there were many caveats attached to an agreement.
And suppose, further, that she is indicted but does not step aside. How in the heck could she staff up so that she will be "up and running on day one"?
The possibilities for smooth governance are iffy.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)Why would anyone want to be her running mate?
grasswire
(50,130 posts)and it's even worse.
Onlooker
(5,636 posts)... would his supporters suddenly support Hillary and call for him to step down? Would his supporters expect that no one would want to be in his cabinet? I think your point is just politics. I think as long as Hillary has a lot of supporters, and she probably will even if she's indicted and as long as she gets elected, there will be great people who will join her cabinet. After all, many see the email scandal as nothing but politics as usual. Let's face it, the people who are promoting the email scandal are her political enemies. Many Bernie supporters are hoping she gets indicted because Bernie's hopes of winning the nomination at this point are probably contingent on something going very wrong for Hillary.
highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)be like supporting John Edwards after the scandal began to gain solid legs. If I did continue to support, because the evidence seemed slim, I would still participate with questions about his candidacy. I would probably even bring some up, as the news warranted.
One thing I wouldn't do is hide my head in the sand about it.
Bad strategy.
Onlooker
(5,636 posts)Let's say Bernie was indicted for an email scandal, your trust in him would vanish? You might be more hesitant because you'd be afraid he could no longer win the election, but would you really turn against him? With Hillary, they'be been going after her for years. Hell, they even accused her of murdering Vince Foster. Why trust them now, other than out of political necessity for Bernie?
highprincipleswork
(3,111 posts)indictment or not is unclear, and certainly Hillary has all the insider status that would tend to keep her personally out of trouble. But if it sounds like there are legitimate grounds to doubt her judgment and her actions here, and I think that if there are more than enough concerns there even for me, then I am sure there is a good percentage of the American people who will feel likewise.
So, yes, even though I am completely against Hillary's cozy relationship with Republican-lite ideas and policies that might affect my Social Security, my Medicare, etc., I additionally think this issue will not go away entirely and will very possibly substantially weaken her candidacy if nominated.
I'm not saying "send her to jail", but I am saying, think seriously about this issue as well, if you think she is such a strong candidate.
sofa king
(10,857 posts)The next President is going to have the responsibility of either prosecuting or not prosecuting the Bush Administration for its grand-scale felonious violation of the Presidential Records Act, in which millions of official government emails were illegally sent through the RNC email servers for years, then destroyed. To this day it is claimed that the emails are "lost," but I guarantee you that NSA, the Russians, and the Chinese all have 'em, because the RNC didn't protect those emails as well as they should have.
We are talking about a conspiracy conducted at every level of the executive branch for years, involving thousands of people, all of whom are looking at seven years in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for failing to document their work as our public servants.
That is what the Hillary Clinton email scandal is about: the crimes of the Bush Administration.
Are you horrified that Hillary wanted her own personal Blackberry? Here is Karl Rove rapping and showing off his:
Now you can be horrified.
Since the Bush people walked away with a couple of trillion dollars while committing thousands of jailable crimes, those emails can never come to light. So they've spent a considerable portion of their ill-gotten gains to thump this, the only scandal they've been able to make stick to Mrs. Clinton in her decade of public service in this century. So they're dragging around the red herring like it's a Monty Python skit, like their freedom depends upon it, because it does.
The threat is that if Hillary Clinton permits prosecution of the GOP for their six orders of magnitude larger email scandal (or forces NSA to produce the "lost" emails, or if the Russians or Chinese stole them and find it expedient to manipulate American foreign policy by coercing Republican politicians with them....), the next Republican President will see to it that Mrs Clinton gets prosecuted for hers. If there ever is one, that is.
That's what this is all about. Yes, there is "something to this scandal." It's that it is being held up for silent comparison against a gargantuan criminal operation that involved discussions of 9/11, anthrax, the manipulation of oil prices, the crash of the housing market, the results of the Ohio election in '04 which were passed through the RNC-controlled servers, and on and on and on. The cover-up of the "lost" Bush administration emails, risking a thousand years of prison time, conceals larger crimes. That is a logical certainty.
And to her great credit, Mrs. Clinton is moving forward, not giving an inch on this, and yes, possibly putting herself at risk of being, someday, indicted for it. She is acting with a confidence that suggests either 1) there is another shoe to drop in this story which exonerates or mollifies the allegations against her, or 2) she's guilty as hell and knows she is going to go Scot free because if the conservatives keep harping on it, she'll bust the entire goddamned Bush Administration before she goes down and negotiate her own freedom, or 3) she is confident that the established precedent of not prosecuting Presidential candidates in election seasons (see Romney, Christie, Perry, Bush I, II and III, etc.) will continue to hold, and is willing to deal with the consequences later.
Whatever the case, the reason this scandal exists today is because of the crimes of the Republican Party, not Mrs. Clinton. She's not bending on it, suggesting that Republicans have a damned good reason to be afraid, too. I am sure some of you will try to paint Mrs. Clinton with the same criminal brush which drips from the entire Republican Party, but that is a fallacious comparison and that should be totally obvious, because were it true we would never have heard of this story.
Onlooker
(5,636 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)I see that you are okay with a nominee for president of the USA being indicted. What does it say about party faithful who are willing to overlook this situation?
Oh, I know how you rationalize it. It's all a right wing attack.
As evidence gets leaked (and it will), you will find less and less support for your position.
Everett
(2 posts)It depends on how much I would have to contribute to the Clinton Foundation!
John Poet
(2,510 posts)and in what quantities?
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)LexVegas
(6,005 posts)Time for change
(13,714 posts)I thought I had the capability to be in such a position AND
If she agreed that I would do my job independently, meaning that if she told me to do something that I was against I would resign rather than do it. AND
if I thought I could make a positive contribution.