Hot Mail — Thinking Comes Later

The great thing about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal is that it really perfectly showcases so many of the reasons why I don’t like Hillary Clinton. It’s more than just her chummy connection with Wall Street, or the fact that her husband was already president, or the fact that she isn’t Elizabeth Warren. I’ve come to accept that just about any politician this big is going to be kind of a corrupt shitbag – I don’t like Hillary Clinton because she’s not even trying to pretend that she isn’t, and she gets awfully testy whenever somebody points out that she is.

This much was clear in her press conference at the United Nations last week, where she tersely explained to a group of reporters that the reason she conducted all of her State Department business through a private email account on a private web domain stored on a server in her own home was simply because that was "more convenient" than carrying a second Blackberry. That’s a laughable excuse on its own; nevermind the fact she told a crowd she has two iPads and two phones less than a month ago.

But Hillary Clinton doesn’t care that her explanation sucks, because she doesn’t seem to believe that she even owes us one. It’s like she’s angryat the press for not believing her unbelievable story, or for questioning the questionable method by which she determined that half of her emails could be deleted before handing them over to the State Department. It’s not enough for her to be wealthy and powerful – she thinks she’s above suspicion.

But despite what a nasty and generally untrustworthy person she is, Hillary Clinton is still going to be president. Her entire career has been pointing to this moment, and if anything is going to derail all of that momentum (and money), it’s not going to be a flap over her email. And it’s certainly not going to be whoever winds up running against her.

There’s a full clown car-load of Republicans posturing for a presidential run, basking in the spotlight as every media outlet makes a big show of talking each one up like he (or she, but in most cases "he") could be our next president. The reality is that each one of these clowns is less electable than the clown who came before him, and all of them are wayless electable than Hillary Clinton.

Chris Christie is ass-deep in scandals, and for a scandal to fully submerge that man’s ass it has to be a lot larger than 30,000 deleted emails. Rick Perry isn’t very smart and America has at last figured that out. (He's also currently under indictment on felony charges.) Wisconsin governor Scott Walker talks a good game about stimulating the economy by cutting everybody’s pension, but the math doesn’t back him up. Dr. Ben Carson has made a habit of saying a new stupid thing about gay people every March for the past three years.

Now, these clowns might perform well with the extremely conservative primary voters in Iowa and South Carolina who choose which Republican gets the party’s nomination. The problem for them is that after getting the party’s nomination they then have to act sane enough to get moderate independent voters in Ohio and Virginia to vote for them in the general election, which Mitt Romney discovered is not easy to do after spending several months pandering to the nuttiest reactionaries in the country.

Jeb Bush, the most electable clown in the car, is attempting to navigate those waters right now, trying to be just anti-immigration and anti-Common Core enough for his party’s wingnuts to nominate him. And whether or not he can successfully walk that tightrope, he’s still going to have to answer for his role in the Terri Schiavo case when he was governor of Florida ten years ago. The Cliff’s Notes version is that Governor Bush bullied judges, passed unconstitutional bills in emergency legislative sessions, and eventually called in a favor from his brother in the White House all to try and prevent a man from removing his braindead wife’s feeding tube.

When you want to talk about government overreach, it doesn’t get much more egregious than a sitting governor trying to supersede the court system in order to gain legal authority over a man’s bedridden wife. Bush’s actions were unpopular then, but today, when people all over the political spectrum are up in arms about the ways the government intrudes into their day-to-day lives, they’re a serious liability. Terri Schiavo is going to hurt Jeb Bush one hell of a lot more than Hillary Clinton’s emails are going to hurt her.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how shady and secretive Hillary Clinton is, no matter how much crony capitalism she engages in, no matter how downright nasty she is, she’s still the most credible candidate with the best chance of winning. If the election happened today, she’d win it. When the election happens next November, barring some sort of catastrophic meltdown, she’s going to win it.

I don’t have a lot of faith in Hillary Clinton to seriously tackle income inequality, run a transparent and accountable White House, or heal any partisan divides in this country. Regardless, I’m probably going to wind up voting for her anyway because she’ll nominate pro-choice Supreme Court justices and won’t try to fuck with the federal program that lets me buy cheap health insurance. That's more than I can say for anybody else who's running.

Hillary Clinton is a corrupt D.C. shitbag, but unfortunately she’s currently the least dangerous shitbag gunning for the presidency. Maybe that’s really what’s got her pissed off – she knows that, emails or no emails, she’s still the safest choice for president. She’s probably just wondering when the rest of us are going to get used to that, quit asking questions, and fall in line.