Three Weeks That Might Have Cost Hillary The Presidency

If Donald Trump wins the Presidency, we will likely look back at the roughly three week period between late August and September 11th as the reason why. As you will see, a confluence of bad reporting and tactical decisions by both candidates conspired to change a race that was heading in the direction of a Clinton landslide to a coin toss proposition.

The weeks following both parties’ conventions were not good to Donald Trump. His was a four-day spectacle of oddballs and charlatans and party officials conspicuous by their absence. Her’s was a murderer’s row of validators along with ordinary Americans who testified to Hillary’s compassion, hard work, and decency. What had been a neck-and-neck race before the two conventions quickly turned in Hillary’s favor and she opened large leads in national polls and battleground states while edging within the margin of error in reliably red states like Arizona and Georgia. On August 19th, Trump’s campaign chairman was pushed out after revelations about millions in off book payments he received from the pro-Putin former President of Ukraine became public and in his place Trump promoted a pollster named Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager and the editor of the alt-right website Breitbart.com, Steve Bannon, as his campaign “CEO.” This was the second major shake up of Trump’s campaign in just a few months. His chances of winning the Presidency hovered in the 10-15 percent range on Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com website.

But then the worm started to turn. On August 23th, the Associated Press published a “bombshell” report about the number of donors to the Clinton Foundation who were able to get meetings with Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State. Never mind that the headline was slanted, the data cherry picked, and some of those donors included Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus and U2 singer Bono, this story dominated cable news for days. When emails showed Clinton Foundation staffer Doug Band trying to get various “favors” from the State Department (all of which were denied), the story crystallized - somehow a Foundation getting HIV drugs to poor people in Africa, clean water to Haitians and myriad other philanthropic efforts was being portrayed as some sort of sleazy pay-to-play machine for rich people trying to curry favor with the federal government. 

It would take members of the media a week or more to unwind and fact check these salacious headlines (the AP’s false tweet touting the story was quietly deleted some two weeks later), including one that had to do with Band trying to expedite diplomatic passports for Foundation staffers trying to travel with President Clinton to North Korea to help extricate two Americans being held there. But the damage was already done. Hillary’s schedule was fundraiser-heavy and while she was doing some public events and one-on-one interviews, as the wave of Foundation stories was cresting, reporters started ginning up stories about how long it had been since she had a “formal” press conference. At the exact time the media horde was doubling down on stories that “raised questions” about Hillary’s conduct in public life, she and her team chose not to aggressively knock down the stories. This would prove to be a big mistake.

On the Friday before Labor Day, the FBI released dozens of pages of notes on their interview with Mrs. Clinton regarding her email server. This continued with their highly irregular actions with regard to this investigation that began with a public statement by FBI Director Comey just before the Fourth of July holiday that Clinton would not be prosecuted, but criticizing her actions. Of course, typical procedure is that people who are not indicted for crimes are not publicly excoriated by the FBI, much less have the notes of their interview released publicly, but hey, Hillary, am I right? Another predictable round of media hand wringing ensued and again, she and her team were not nearly as aggressive as they should have been in response. 

The capstone to this was the one-two punch of Hillary calling half of Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables” followed two days later by her getting dehydrated and having to be helped to her vehicle at a 9/11 ceremony, resulting in her disclosure that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia a few days earlier. More “questions were raised” about her secretiveness and her alleged “insult” of Trump supporters (never mind that it was arguably a factual statement but at worst a poor choice of words - “half” as opposed to “some” or “many”). The pneumonia story in particular was too perfect for reporters - it reinforced their belief that she is too secretive (because she did not disclose the illness) and the cell phone video of her wobbling was replayed incessantly on cable news channels. 

While all this was happening, Trump was quietly (for him) retooling his message. Luckily for him, a credulous press corps was ready to throw his insults to a Gold Star family, John McCain, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, all Mexicans, all non-American Muslims, and of course, his birtherism down the memory hole because he decided to do some African-American “outreach” in a largely white suburb of Milwaukee. Trump then made a last-minute visit to Mexico City where because he did not throw up on his shoes at a brief media availability with Mexican President Pena Nieto, the press deemed a success (even “Presidential.”) The “basket of deplorables” comment gave Trump the opportunity to feign outrage at an insult to his supporters and after questioning Hillary’s health in the preceding weeks, the video footage of her stumbling into her motorcade needed no embellishment. 

While there was some investigative reporting being done about Trump and his business dealings, the coverage was dwarfed by the tsunami of coverage given to the Clinton Foundation, the FBI notes, and Hillary coming down with pneumonia. To take the most glaring example, while there was no proof the Clinton Foundation engaged in any illegal (or even unethical) conduct, the Trump Foundation was found to have violated federal law by giving $25,000 to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi - they even paid a fine! But for some reason, this very apparent act of influence peddling (Bondi’s office dropped an investigation into Trump University several days after the donation was received) was not given nearly the attention paid to the Clinton Foundation, where no quid or quo was even remotely shown. Similarly, Trump continued getting a pass on releasing his tax returns, his health records, or information on his Foundation even as the media portrayed Clinton, who had released 40 years of tax returns, the names of all donors to the Clinton Foundation, had 30,000 emails made public, and released detailed medical information, as the one with the transparency problem. 

How did all of this end up impacting the race? Bigly, as Trump might say. On August 25th, Clinton was leading Trump nationally by amounts ranging from four points (right-leaning Rasmussen) to seven points (Reuters-Ipsos) to ten points (Quinnipiac). Six days later, Hillary’s lead had been cut to one in the Reuters poll and the following day, Rasmussen had Trump ahead by one. On August 29th, Nate Silver gave Trump a 19 percent chance of winning. Today, Trump is a slight underdog at 40 percent. In state polls, Trump has gone from high single digit deficits in places like Florida and Ohio to small single digit leads and he has solidified his standing in those red states that just a month ago appeared to be slipping from his grasp.

The after action report of this time period will be interesting. Much of the hysterical reporting on the Clinton Foundation ended up being much ado about nothing, but it allowed the media to reinforce its preferred narrative - that Hillary is untrustworthy, even though she did nothing wrong. They “Swift Boated” a charitable organization and Hillary erred in the same way John Kerry did when the same thing happened to him in 2004 - she did not respond. Of course, in his case, the attacks were coming from the Republicans. Hillary got done by the very media that is supposed to objectively report on the candidates. At the same time, Trump’s mouth was (mostly) under control and because he continues to refuse to release any information about his business dealings, reporters are left to public records requests to try and piece together how he operates. 

These are not small points, particularly because many in the media refuse to take ownership for their part in normalizing Trump, failing to hold him to the same standard they do Clinton (some reporters do not even bother pretending the two candidates are held to the same standard - they readily admit the two are not), or admitting they do much to drive certain stereotypes that are not actually based in fact. This would not be a big deal but for the fact this is happening in a situation where we are picking the person who will take on the most important job in the world.

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Hillary Clinton Is Not The Lesser Of Two Evils

Of the most frustrating caricatures of Hillary Clinton, the idea that progressives should vote for her simply because she is the “lesser of two evils” is among the most disappointing (and inaccurate). The vast right-wing conspiracy has effectively portrayed her as Machiavelli in heels for more than 25 years, but anyone who has been watching, really watching the Democratic National Convention, much less taken the time to look into the work Hillary has done on behalf of others for the past 40 years, should know better.

During the DNC, I have been particularly struck by the testimonials provided by Anastasia Somoza and Ryan Moore, two Americans with disabilities. Each spoke of meeting Hillary as children and at events that many politicians simply use as photo ops to make them look good. But not Hillary. She befriended these young people whose struggles are far greater than most of us can imagine, not because it helped her politically, but because she cared. Hillary’s work to pass legislation to help children secure health care, traveling to poor areas to fight housing discrimination, and tireless advocacy for women’s rights are foursquare with progressive ideals that many of us share. 

Hillary does not have her husband’s natural political gifts or President Obama’s unparalleled ability to lift people through his words, but instead of lauding her for the strengths she possesses – of inclusion, collaboration, and yes, listening – the media focus invariably lands on the skills she does not have, not the ones she does. Make no mistake, this has been an editorial decision that dates back decades to when she had the temerity to defend her right to have a career and not be a homemaker and has carried on from one generation of reporters to the next, who lean into the idea that she is an insular paranoid distrusted by Americans. 

That she now has to “reintroduce” herself to a populace the media claims does not know the “real” Hillary is an indictment of their choices from 1991 to the present. Her biography has been out there for any reporter interested in learning it. Her speeches as First Lady show a woman who was well ahead of her time in advocating for causes that are now considered mainstream. Her time as Secretary of State is now chronicled in the release of more than 30,000 emails that show her granular level concern for everything from delivering clean water to tiny African villages to getting an Illinois small business’s gefilte fish delivered to Israel. 

For the media to portray a vote for Hillary as some sort of hold-your-nose moment for Democrats, Sanders supporters or anyone else insults her decades-long commitment to others. She is a hard-working woman who has spent the better part of her adult life advocating on behalf of many whose voices are rarely heard in our democracy. That her work has often been behind the scenes and she has not tried to brag about her accomplishments shows a humility and selflessness journalists claim they want in politicians but penalize them for showing. The person she is running against is a know-nothing charlatan who has spent much of his adult life using others for his personal gain. There are clear differences between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but the lesser of two evils is not one of them.

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Bernie Goes Bust

While his colleagues in the Senate were dominating the news cycle with a poignant and powerful filibuster in support of strong gun control measures, Bernie Sanders was holed up in Vermont, polishing remarks he delivered to supporters on Thursday night. The speech itself was familiar. A greatest hits of Bernie’s preferred policy positions and a call to arms for his people to get involved in the political process at every level of government. But for a guy who boasted of his online fundraising prowess and unexpected success during the primaries, his 23-minute speech landed with a thud. Although more than one million people registered for the online stream, at its peak, a mere 218,000 people viewed it and cable news quickly cut away as it became clear he was giving a glorified stump speech lacking a concession to Hillary Clinton.

The past few weeks have been unkind to the 74-year old democratic socialist. After camping out in California for weeks on end in the hope of winning that state’s primary, he got stomped, book ending a day that began with a 30-point blowout in New Jersey and the media’s designation of Clinton as the party’s presumptive nominee. Since then, Sanders has been further marginalized. A meeting with President Obama was quickly overshadowed by the President, Vice President, and Senator Warren’s endorsement of Clinton. As the nation reeled over the mass murder in Orlando, Sanders chose that time to issue his set of demands to the Democrats, including the removal of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Instead of supporting his “fellow” Democrats during the aforementioned filibuster, Sanders skipped it. And through it all, he has refused to concede even as the few supporters he had in Congress abandoned ship.

All of these events would have been enough to shrink whatever leverage Sanders had before his crushing loss in California, but Donald Trump’s implosion has worsened his situation. As Trump has become unmoored – lashing out at a federal judge, claiming the President was somehow complicit in the Orlando attack, accusing soldiers of theft in Iraq – and polling shows a consolidation of Democratic support for Clinton and a steady erosion of Republican support for Trump, it is becoming clear that Sanders’s blessing is not nearly as important as it looked to be just a few weeks ago. Clinton now has a posse that includes a fired up (and very popular) Barack Obama, working class hero Joe Biden, progressive champion Elizabeth Warren, her husband (and still-popular ex-President) Bill Clinton, and whoever she selects as her running mate to eviscerate Trump and rally Democrats, Independents and sane Republicans. Bernie’s support would be helpful, but no longer appears necessary.

Sanders played a weak hand hoping to maximize his return, but he pushed too hard. Instead of quitting while he was ahead, he went all in and lost. Voting ended in California 10 days ago (no mention of Bernie’s 60 point loss in Washington, D.C. earlier this week is needed) and Sanders has shown no sign of getting with the program. He could have giving a gracious concession speech, pledged his full support to Clinton and called on his voters to do the same, all of which would have enhanced his standing in the party. But he did nothing of the sort.

This is telling. For whatever lip service Sanders pays to being a Democrat, his actions tell a much different story. He has now spoken publicly, and with meaningful media attention, three times without so much as gracious and heartfelt congratulations to Clinton or an acknowledgment that the campaign is over. On the most important topic of the day, when his voice could have added weight to Senator Chris Murphy’s filibuster, Sanders was AWOL. What we have seen instead is a refusal to admit defeat, a self-righteousness bordering on narcissism, and a delusional belief that a guy who registered as a Democrat for political expediency now thinks he can tell his newfound party what to do.

When Sanders does not get all he wants, or is denied things he thinks he is owed, do not be surprised when he takes his toys and goes home, which is fine by me. His allegiance to the party was only as strong as his potential to win the nomination. With that gone, and with his endorsers abandoning him, I fully expect Sanders to revert back to being an independent – which is what he has been in his heart the whole time.

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Hillary's Veepstakes

Now that Hillary has wrapped up the Democratic nomination for President, all eyes are turning toward who she will pick to run with her. The candidate herself has been circumspect about the kind of person she is looking for with one important caveat - that the person she picks will be qualified to be President if anything happens to her. While this may sound like typical political pablum, this might be called the “Palin Bar” because the erstwhile Alaska Governor failed to clear that basic threshold. So, with that said, let’s look at the contenders: 

The Progressive Wet Dream

The name on everyone’s lips right now is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She is a firebrand who has shown a real zeal for attacking Donald Trump, a hero to the progressive left who was calling out the big banks for years, came up with what would become the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and would join what would be the first-ever all-female Presidential ticket. These are not small things and, in its way, would emphasize a strength Clinton already has while checking the progressive box the media thinks Hillary needs to mollify the Sanders wing of the party. With that said, I do not think she will get the nod because most Democrats will “come home” to Clinton without her needing to spend political capital on her VP selection and the wonky succession rules if Clinton/Warren did win is a gamble Democrats may not want to take (though I do love the idea of John Kerry going back to the Senate in the special election that would be called within 160 days of Warren’s notice of resignation). 

Vice President White Guy

There is a strain of thought that Hillary should just grab a moderate white guy to stick on the ticket and help cut her deficit with male voters. Both Virginia Senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, hurdle the Palin Bar as former Governors of the Commonwealth and Senators of some standing (Warner is also an independently wealthy former businessman and Kaine was the chair of the Democratic National Committee). They also hail from a swing state that if Hillary can lock down, would make Trump’s already improbable path to victory that much narrower. Either of these guys is a safe option though unlikely to set progressive hearts on fire. 

The Next Generation

If Hillary is looking for sizzle, New Jersey’s junior Senator Cory Booker or former Mayor of San Antonio and current Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro are both tempting options. Either would appeal to a constituency that Hillary will need in November (Booker is African-American, Castro is Hispanic-American), both are incredibly telegenic and charismatic and both are in their 40s, which would give a nice generational boost to the ticket. But here is the thing, Castro will be 42 in November and Booker will be 47 and each has only been on the national stage for less than four years. While I have no doubt both are smarter than Sarah Palin (both went to Stanford, Booker has a law degree from Yale and was a Rhodes Scholar; Castro has a law degree from Harvard) neither has spent enough time under the hot lights. 

Bernie Lite

Anyone who thinks Hillary will pick Bernie Sanders as her running mate has spent too much time sampling legalized weed in Colorado. Instead, attention has focused on Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. Brown would be a sop to progressives and comes from another swing state that while not essential to Hillary’s electoral college map, would, like Virginia, limit Trump’s paths to victory if she did win it. Brown is also experienced, having served in Congress since 1993 and in the Senate since 2007. One downside? Vice President Brown’s successor would be chosen by Republican Governor John Kasich, who is under no obligation to fill the seat with another Democrat. This may be subtraction by addition when every vote in the Senate will be needed in 2017. 

The Sisterhood

There are two female Senators, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill and Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who have also garnered attention.  Klobuchar in particular has strong progressive credentials but also had a stellar record as the District Attorney of the largest county in Minnesota. McCaskill has won statewide races in a place where Democrats do not do well and each is excellent on the mic. On the other hand, if Clinton wants to put a well-qualified woman on the ticket, why not pick Warren?

The Finalists

For my money, Clinton’s choice will come down to California Congressman Xavier Beccera and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Beccera is Chair of the House Democratic Caucus (4th in the leadership structure) and has served in Congress for more than 20 years. He would be very helpful in moving legislation and would be the first Hispanic-American Vice President. He is also a progressive, which would help corral Sanders’s voters. Patrick has deep ties to the Clintons from his time as head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in the 1990s and he was a two-term Governor. He also has experience in the corporate world (which might work against him in today’s Democratic Party) and delivered one of the stand-out speeches at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. The national stage would not be too big for either of these men, they both add balance and value, pass the Palin Bar and would energize key Democratic constituencies. While I think a compelling case can be made for either man, Patrick’s history with the Clintons, his great oratorical chops, and governing experience give him the advantage. 

My prediction: Clinton/Patrick 2016. 

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Media Fail: California Edition

In a primary season littered with bad journalism, the California primary may take the cake. To recap: Bernie Sanders basically moved to the Golden State, campaigned there non-stop, received his typical fawning coverage based on campaign rallies he held almost exclusively on college campuses, benefitted from hours of TV time where pundits suggested he could win the state, and STILL lost to Hillary Clinton by 13 points. The morning after the election, you would barely know that the media had spent the preceding three weeks hyping his prospects or that he lost in a landslide.

Although awful, the media fail is of a piece with how they have covered the Clinton/Sanders primary race. Clinton fought Sanders with one hand tied behind her back while he swung away with both fists. Other than her (accurate) attacks on Sanders’s position on gun manufacturer liability, the Clinton team spent little time on negative campaigning against him; her Super PAC literally spent no money going after Sanders. Meanwhile, he dug in with gusto against her until the final day of the campaign.

The conventional wisdom was that Clinton supporters were not as enthusiastic as Sanders supporters. Not only was that demonstrably false, but in the place enthusiasm actually matters – the polling booth – her final margin of victory will end up being close to 4 million votes, a massive victory. That Hillary won 8 of the last 11 primaries and caucuses and 14 of the last 20 would suggest she has plenty of momentum and enthusiasm, but most of the coverage leading into California speculated about how damaging a loss there would be. When the media could not find any equivalency in delegates or votes, they tried to lean on “states won” – as if the Utah caucus was the same as prevailing in Pennsylvania, Florida or Texas – but even there, the Sanders team came up woefully short.

The kid gloves Sanders was treated with by Clinton were largely shared by a media horde that consistently drooled over his rallies but did little probing of his actual policies. What little negative press he received was of his own making – an awful editorial board meeting with the New York Daily News and his claim that Clinton was unqualified to be President – stemmed from his own lack of preparedness and tin ear. Meanwhile, in the run up to both the New York and California primaries, his campaign received oceans of positive coverage based on the size of his crowds, but when he lost each, there was little after action reporting on why that excitement did not translate into wins.

Bernie’s appeal was always based more on myth than fact. Of the 10 most populous states in the nation, Sanders only won one, and by less than two percent (Michigan). Clinton beat Sanders by more than 100,000 votes 15 times, while Sanders only bested Clinton by that margin once. Clinton’s domination was so complete there were some counties where she outpolled Sanders by a greater margin than entire states he won. In New Jersey, her margin of victory in Essex County (47,622 votes) was greater than Sanders’s victory margins in all but four states (one of which was Vermont).

But for all of this, Bernie Sanders is still getting the softball treatment. The editorial board of the New York Times thinks Hillary has to convince Bernie’s supporters she did not cheat to win and everyone in the press corps is in agreement that he deserves a wide berth to nurse his wounds even as he stubbornly claims he will soldier on, notwithstanding the clear defeat he suffered. It is fitting that the media is giving him one last parting gift – on a night when he could have shown statesmanship by conceding to Clinton, urging his supporters to vote for her, or even simply acknowledging the historic nature of her being the first woman to clinch a major party’s nomination for President, he was defiant and refused to shush his supporters who booed her name, not that you will hear much about this in the press, they are too busy hand wringing over the additional concessions that must be made to soothe his wounded ego. 

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Trump Has A SINO Problem

I will never be mistaken for President of the Chuck Todd Fan Club, but I will give the host of Meet The Press his due. Politics has a lexicon all its own and Todd recently created a worthy new entrant to that nomenclature: “SINO” – a “Supporter In Name Only” of Donald Trump. The SINO phenomenon has been seen with regularity among Washington’s political class: tepid endorsements, the he-who-must-not-be-named treatment by people like Mitch McConnell, and twisted-into-a-pretzel justifications being used by those who once deemed him a “cancer” or a “con man” for their change of heart.

But the problem with SINOs is that they are sort of like the sell swords on Game of Thrones – they have no loyalty to you and as soon as the worm turns, they run away. As Trump’s attacks on people based on their religion, ethnicity, and gender have intensified, he is in danger of becoming a man without a country. The SINOs who grudgingly siddled up to him are now distancing themselves.  

Consider the reaction to Trump’s inflammatory comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Not only is no one in Trump’s own party rising to his defense, they are stepping over each other to criticize the real estate mogul’s comments. When Hillary Clinton dropped a foreign policy speech that peeled the paint off Trump’s spray tanned façade, no one in the Republican Party rushed to his defense – there was no rapid response, no surrogates parachuting onto cable television to defend him, no point-by-point rebuttal, just Trump and a few lame tweets.  

This should surprise no one. Politicians are, if nothing else, pragmatists. As Trump’s star fades, Republicans will continue distancing themselves from him. After all, why should they lose their cushy jobs and stellar perks for a guy who will not be remembered one second after the polls close on November 8^th? More importantly, why should they risk the future of their party by being associated with a man who is single-handedly alienating every voting group critical to its future; they are doing a good enough job of that without Trump’s help.

But political survival is one thing, upholding the tenets you claim to revere is another. If SINOs truly valued country over party, they would do more than issue hyperbolic press releases denouncing their own standard bearer – they would come out and renounce their support of him and confess a dirty little secret many of them have long known: far from being a Rush Limbaugh-tarred-Femi-Nazi, Hillary Clinton is a roll-up-her-sleeves policy wonk who likes to get things done. In the Senate, she helped pass bi-partisan legislation and as Secretary of State, she took an active interest in the smallest of issues, like a gefilte fish company in a Republican Congressman’s district that was having trouble getting its shipment to Israel.

Of course, the problem in admitting this fact is the electoral support that has sustained many members of Congress and the ocean of money that has flowed into political consultants’ coffers for the past 25 years would dry up immediately and the bald-faced lies that sustain the vast right-wing conspiracy against Hillary would be exposed. Instead, SINOs will retreat from the dumpster fire in order to protect themselves and prepare for battle with another President Clinton.

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Everything You Wanted To Know About Hillary’s Email That The Media Refuses To Tell You

Official Washington loves few things more than a heavily annotated investigative report and it is even better when there is a political slant to it. The recently released report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of State meets both criteria. At 83 pages, it appears to have heft (even though the report itself is only 42 pages, the rest is an appendix of old memos and guidance documents) and its tsk-tsking of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server fits with the media’s narrative that she is untrustworthy. 

The breathless reporting portrayed Clinton as a rogue actor, flagrantly violating the law while dissembling in her after-the-fact excuses. But if you read the report and ignore the political spin, you find a much more nuanced story. For example, a former Secretary of State connected a private laptop to a private Internet connection to conduct government business and never attempted to store or retrieve the emails sent that way, but that person was Colin Powell, not Hillary Clinton. The archiving rule at the center of one of the two complaints against Clinton could have been levied at dozens of other people who failed to print out every email they sent or received and store the paper copies (the so-called “print and file” system.)  

For all the sturm und drang, the OIG criticizes Secretary Clinton for two things - first, for failing to comply with the ridiculous “print and file” archiving requirement that OIG itself admits few people follow; and second, conducting government business on private email connected to a personal server. What the report reveals however, (and what was unreported in the press) is that Secretary Clinton was hardly alone in these supposed “violations.” The IG notes that nearly 90 senior aides to Secretaries Powell and Rice used personal email. (IG report at 20). Secretary Powell himself not only used a personal email account, he connected a private laptop to the Internet through a “private” connection in his office, sidestepping the State Department’s portal (which was itself a violation of State Department rules). (IG report at 3, 21, 31). And when contacted by the IG during the pendency of their investigation, Powell, along with aides to Rice, ignored the IG’s entreaties to determine whether the email they sent via personal email could be retrieved. (IG report at 21-23). 

The IG concluded that “Secretary Powell did not comply with Department policies that were implemented in accordance with the Federal Records Act.” (IG report at 22). The IG made the same finding with regard to Secretary Clinton with one important caveat: her submission of 55,000 pages of emails “mitigated her failure to properly preserve emails …” (IG report at 23, emphasis added). Powell not only failed to comply at the time, but snubbed a request from the Department that he contact his ISP to determine if his records were retrievable. (IG report at 22). Even so, the “file and print” requirement is only followed “sporadically.” The Department’s internal guidelines contain “no explicit penalties for lack of compliance” and the Department “has never proposed discipline against an employee [for failing to comply.]” (IG report at 14). 

Ironically, had Hillary done as those 90 staffers and Secretary Powell had done and simply used a personal email account instead of her own server, it is unlikely any of her records could be retrieved. Instead, the State Department (and ultimately the world) got to pour through 55,000 pages of email, the vast majority of which was the boring work of government with some cherry picked threads of gossip and other click bait ephemera the media loves to focus on. Conversely, email Powell and his and Rice’s aides sent while we were at war in two countries and attacked on September 11th, 2001 are lost to history. 

So, on the first point - failing to properly archive her records, no one has ever been punished for not following the rules and Hillary complied after the fact. But what about the dreaded private server? Well, the server is really a red herring. The issue here is corresponding over a system without proper security features - whether that is done using a gmail account or your own private server is incidental. But here’s the thing: not only was using personal email not prohibited when Clinton was Secretary, it still is not prohibited. While the federal record keeping law was amended in 2014, it did not prohibit the use of private email for official purposes, it simply required that a person who did so copy her official email account or forward a copy of the email to that account within 20 days. (IG report at 9). And the Department’s most recent guidance, issued in 2015, says that the use of personal email is “discouraged” except “in very limited circumstances.” The Department does not articulate what those circumstances might be. (IG report at 32). 

Oddly, the conclusory nature of the IG’s findings (and those most heavily reported by the media) contain no substantiation. For a report with an average of four footnotes per page, the determination that Secretary Clinton had “an obligation” to discuss her email use is simply stated as fact without citing to any internal guidance, regulation or law. It is curious that such a finding was made, particularly since the report itself acknowledges that personal email use was not then and is not now, prohibited. 

Surely, if Secretary Clinton ran afoul of Department guidelines, so too did the 90 staff members who worked for Secretaries Powell and Rice, along with what I have to assume are many other anonymous employees in a Department of thousands who probably use their personal email accounts from time to time. And the concern over the security of Clinton’s server is a fortiori for servers run by Google, Microsoft, and ISPs that are targets of daily hacking attempts. And it is not like government servers are bastions of security. The Office of Personnel Management was hacked last year, resulting in the theft of more than 10 million social security numbers of current and former federal employees dating back to 2000.

If you want to point a finger, look at the records management at the State Department - it is a total shit show. Some archived email cannot be retrieved because much of it is corrupted, password protected or contains no information (IG report at 15), the integrated archiving system did not come online until this year (IG report at 15), and the Department broke its own rules by failing to archive the email of 50 top political appointees (IG report at 16). Even if the Department wanted to determine the frequency or volume of personal email use by its employees, it “currently lacks the resources” to do so. (IG report at 19).

This is another tempest in a teapot that ignored context such as the fact that close to 100 former senior officials were also known to have used private email and that many senior officials under prior Secretaries of State (and Secretary Powell himself) ignored requests to turn over their records. The archiving rule Clinton supposedly violated was also violated by Secretary Powell, is without sanction and has never been used to discipline anyone. Unlike Secretary Powell, Secretary Clinton complied with this rule after the fact. Hardly the crime of the century, but an easy way for a media hell bent on reinforcing its preferred narrative that Hillary thinks the rules do not apply to her.

If you want to read the report for yourself, it can be found here:

https://oig.state.gov/system/files/esp-16-03.pdf

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Tough Talk

News of the downing of EgyptAir Flight 804 had barely crossed the wire before Donald Trump hopped on Twitter to declare the incident an act of terrorism. The strong man routine fits his profile, after all, his “foreign policy” includes “knocking the hell” out of ISIS, which is an applause line, not a strategy. The media is quick to bolster his tough guy image but we have seen this movie before and the bark is always worse than the bite.

In Nixon’s time, it was called the “madman” strategy – Nixon wanted his adversaries in China and North Vietnam to think he was such a loose cannon, he might unleash nuclear weapons to settle the Vietnam War. The only people who suffered were the innocent Vietnamese people, who were subject to a bombing campaign unseen in the history of war, and the soldiers on both sides who died in the jungles of Southeast Asia. When the bombs failed to work, “peace with honor” and “Vietnamization” became a rebranding effort for admitting a victory could not be won. For all his bluster, the peace treaty Nixon agreed to in 1973 was no better a deal than had been offered five years previously.

Less than a decade later, another swaggering cowboy named Ronald Reagan rode into Washington, D.C. promising to stand tall against the Commies. After-the-fact mythologizing claims the Iranians so feared Reagan they released our hostages the day he was sworn in, but in reality, the deal had been cut weeks before, the hostages were held until Carter left office as a final humiliation to the one-term President not because the mullahs were afraid of Reagan. 

Indeed, just a few years later Reagan was selling arms to the Iranians to get hostages freed in Lebanon; this, after tucking tail and running from Beirut after our embassy was bombed in 1983. As detailed in Rachel Maddow’s book Drift, Reagan’s team could not even invade Grenada properly. The mission was bungled so badly, dozens of soldiers died. 

And if the old saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” applies, it is uncertain what happens when we are fooled a third time, but that is exactly what happened when George W. Bush came into office. An Ivy-League educated son of privilege, “W” packaged himself as a Texas cowboy who loved nothing more than spending his down time (which was considerable) clearing brush at his ranch. Of course, he and his aides ignored warnings about Al Qaeda and even after September 11^th, standing amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, his chesty proclamations would end up being largely hollow. Well before Iraq turned into a quagmire, he had failed to capture or kill the perpetrator of 9/11. Ultimately, he slinked out of office with record low approval ratings, the country trillions in debt and scarred by his actions.

Now, here comes Trump. A man who avoided serving in the Vietnam War and whose knowledge of the military could fit comfortably in a thimble. His rhetoric makes Bush’s “dead or alive” threats to Bin Laden and “axis of evil” non-sense look both sober and tame in comparison. Will Americans fall for the tough guy routine again?

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Failing Upward

It does not suck to be Paul Ryan. He leads the largest Republican caucus in the House of Representatives since 1928 and come January, he will either be ramming through a legislative agenda at the behest of an inexperienced President Donald Trump or leading the opposition to anything President Hillary Clinton proposes while becoming the de facto leader in the clubhouse to run against her in 2020. It is a remarkable thing, made less so by the fawning and credulous coverage he receives by a DC media that frames him as both a serious policy wonk and someone unconcerned with political machinations. 

The former is perverse and the latter is baffling. A supposed budget hawk, Ryan has been in Congress for almost half his life and in that time voted for all the stuff that has increased our borrowing (wars, Medicare D expansion, tax cuts, etc.) and against all the stuff that reduces deficits and debt (tax hikes, Obamacare). A budget “framework” he introduced as chairman of that committee was so austere and crippling to the Social Security and Medicare safety net his own party refused to support it. As Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, Ryan was reduced to playing the overeager student in a starched white shirt and striped rep tie while his own policy positions were shunted off to the side for fear of ostracizing moderate voters who like knowing they will have medical coverage in their golden years along with a check from Uncle Sam. 

You would think such a record would relegate Ryan to the dustbin of political history; instead, he became the Speaker of the House largely by not campaigning for the job after a rump group within his own caucus brought down John Boehner. With the rise of Donald Trump, the media have rekindled their romance with the P90X devotee. Back are the stories of him as a chart-loving nerd who cares passionately about the future of our country. Nowhere are the stories of how what he proposes is deeply unpopular and that his own votes in Congress have helped lead to the very problem he says he wants to solve. His tepid response to Trump is seen as principled, not political, with no evidence other than his own self-serving claims to that effect. 

Of course, things have worked out well for Ryan thus far even though his ideas are widely unpopular and given a national platform four years ago he barely made a ripple. Today, he has become the de facto leader of the Republican Party and a media darling who portray him as the last honest man in Washington. At this rate, Ryan may fail his way all the way to the White House. 

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State of the Race: Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday is in the books. What happened and where do the two parties stand on the way to the White House? Republicans handed Donald Trump wins in blood red states like Alabama and Arkansas and deep blue states like Vermont and Massachusetts. He also won Virginia, which is a swing state in the general election, along with several other contests. Ted Cruz triumphed in his home state of Texas, next door neighbor Oklahoma, and the lightly contested Alaska caucus. Marco Rubio finally got on the board with a win in Minnesota, but had a string of third-place finishes except a strong showing in Virginia, where he placed second. No one is dropping out and there are winner-take-all primaries in Ohio and Florida in two weeks. 

In the last week or so, the full weight of whatever is left of the Republican establishment has coalesced around the idea that Donald Trump must be stopped at all costs. The only problem is that the party itself - the actual voters who are going out and casting ballots - disagree. It is not a small thing that Trump is winning contests across the board. He is not, like Ted Cruz, a seemingly regional candidate nor is he someone who is only garnering support from a small segment of the electorate, like Marco Rubio. Any other front-runner who was getting the votes of conservatives and moderates, the rich and poor, in regions throughout the country, would be spoken of as the presumptive nominee, but Trump is no ordinary candidate. His comments and statements are considered poison by Republican elites and they fear he will lead them to electoral disaster. 

If there is a silver lining, albeit a slim one, for those in the Dump Trump orbit, it is that Trump did not sweep Super Tuesday, as some predicted. There may be just enough of a gap in his support to deny him the nomination outright, but the idea that his supporters will accept having the nomination go to someone else is as unlikely as Trump himself accepting such a result. Then again, the next two weeks will be critical - every resource remaining will be deployed to beat Trump in Ohio, Florida, or both. At the same time, Trump will need to put real time, energy (and money) into combating this strategy. If he is successful, he wins the nomination. If he is not, get ready for every political reporters wet dream - a contested part convention.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton swept the south by huge margins and narrowly won in Massachusetts. Bernie Sanders won in his home state of Vermont and took caucus wins in Colorado, Minnesota and a primary win in Oklahoma. Mrs. Clinton won the majority of delegates awarded, but Sanders collected a nice haul as well. He has the money and desire to continue the race even as his path to ultimate victory appears to be nearly shut. Hillary Clinton has amassed an insurmountable lead over Bernie Sanders when her pledged super delegates are factored in, but because the states apportion delegates to the convention proportionally, it is unlikely she can win the nomination based on the primaries and caucuses alone but Sanders cannot catch her either. He can stay in the race and continue accumulating delegates but will fall well short of victory. He is in the same position Secretary Clinton was in back in 2008 and while he has every right to continue his campaign until the end (as she did), he has lost. Were Sanders a member in good standing of the Democratic party, he might be open to a discussion with party elders about bowing out gracefully, content with the knowledge that his presence in the race has brought the issues he cares about to the fore, but he is not and has no stake in the party, which he has simply rented for the purpose of running for President. 

Of course, this did not hurt the Democrats in 2008. While Hillary and President Obama competed until the end, she pivoted quickly and gave the then-Senator a full-throated endorsement and campaigned aggressively for him throughout the general election. Will the same be true of Sanders? Again, were he a card-carrying member of the party, I would feel more sanguine, but the reality is that he is not and he owes no loyalty to the Democrats to advance his career. At best, he has one more election in 2018 for another six-year term in the Senate which he should win easily regardless of how he handles his loss for the nomination. If anything, he could become a nuisance and not an ally if a hypothetical President Clinton is not sufficiently progressive on the issues that matter most to him. 

For Republicans, their options are a Trump nomination or using party rules to deny him that honor. Either way, the party will be deeply split and weak going into the general election. For Democrats, it is simply a question of how Sanders wants to lose - with dignity and class, or swinging, bleeding Clinton of money and resources she will need to win in November. 

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State of the Race: And Then There Were Five

What was once described as the “deepest” bench of Republican candidates for President has been winnowed down to two political neophytes, two first-term U.S. Senators, and a two-term governor with almost no chance of winning. 

Eight months ago Donald Trump entered the race for President as a laughingstock and is now the odds-on favorite to win the nomination. In just the past week, he insulted the most recent Republican ex-President in front of more than 10 million debate viewers using talking points that sounded like they came from Moveon.org or Code Pink, got skewered by the Pope, and dismissed out of hand any changes to Social Security or Medicare. The end result? He won the South Carolina primary going away. The breadth and depth of Trump’s win was across the board - he won moderates and fought Ted Cruz to a tie among evangelicals. He also won the military vote even as he had questioned whether the Bush Administration had lied about WMD in Iraq.

Meanwhile, his closest two competitors are the most hated man in the Senate (Ted Cruz) and one of his colleagues (Marco Rubio) who has a penchant for giving victory speeches when he loses and had arguably the single worst debate meltdown since Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle he was no Jack Kennedy. Lagging behind those two men are Ben Carson, whose entire campaign appears to have been an elaborate direct order mail fundraising scheme that collected money to pay for more direct mail fundraising (there is a less polite name for it, but I won’t go there), and John Kasich, the two-term Ohio Governor and former U.S. Congressman who had a brief moment in the New Hampshire sun (2nd place) that now seems like a hundred years ago. 

Where do we go from here? The Nevada caucuses are in two days and then seven days after that the so-called “SEC Primary” will hand out nearly a quarter of all primary delegates. Polling has been spotty in most places, but most show Trump ahead, with a few exceptions (Texas, where Cruz is narrowly winning and Minnesota, the one state Rubio may actually be able to win). Jeb Bush’s scant support can now be distributed, though polling suggests the impact will be negligible other than in the race for donor dollars (which have not moved the needle against Trump). 

In fact, while the conventional wisdom is that most deep-pocketed donors will move from Bush to Rubio based on amorphous “electability,” I would not be surprised if Kasich gets a second look, especially if Bush endorses him. While Rubio projects youth and vigor, he has also shown that when pressed, he will fold, not a comforting thought if Trump trains his rhetorical sights on the Florida Senator. Chris Christie’s exposure of Rubio’s soft underbelly would trouble me if I were a Republican bigwig, whereas Kasich’s blue collar roots, lengthy resume and residency in the Ohio Governor’s mansion would seem like the safer bet. Cruz is radioactive to D.C. Republicans and has not shown he can expand his base beyond very conservative and/or highly religious voters. 

Ultimately, it may not matter. Trump has a solid core of support that cannot be moved and the idea that as more people drop out their supporters will coalesce around a single alternative like Rubio is dubious. The key for Trump is whether he can continue “telling it like it is” while refining his message enough to give comfort that if he wins the nomination he will not blow up the country. The reality is that if anyone besides Trump had performed so strongly in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and likely Nevada, no one would question whether that person would win the nomination; but because Trump’s candidacy is so outside the box of conventional Beltway thinking, they *still* cannot get their heads around that idea. 

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Leave Bernie Alone (& Let The Media Do Its Job)

If you are a Democrat of a certain age, that is, if you grew up before social media consumed our lives and the 24-hour news cycle, you have to feel for Hillary Clinton. Valedictorian at Wellesley, law degree from Yale, campaign staffer for George McGovern, staff attorney for the Watergate Committee, child and women’s rights advocate, First Lady of Arkansas and the United States, United States Senator, and Secretary of State, Hillary was Tracy Flick before anyone knew who that was. She has been a trailblazer and a pioneer, someone who was speaking truth to power on topics that are now de rigueur long before it was popular to do so.

But a funny thing happened on the way to an expected addition to her already pages-long CV – that of the first woman to ever receive a major party’s nomination for President of the United States – a self-proclaimed democratic socialist from Vermont has electrified a party he did not belong to a year ago and is threatening to snuff out Mrs. Clinton’s long-held dream of being the first woman President.

If you believe the media, there is no shortage of blame to go around, starting with (naturally) the candidate herself, but trickling down to her surrogates, campaign staff, message, questions about her honesty and trustworthiness, and on and on. That the media treats her differently is something they no longer deny and kvelling about “Hillary Fatigue” was openly spoken about in November … of 2014!

And it seems that the harder Clinton and her team push to “vet’ Senator Sanders, whether it is questioning how he will convince Congress to pass his agenda or what he knows (and does not know) about foreign policy, the more the media blanches at her tactics and the firmer his support among his true believers becomes. This is unsurprising both because of the aforementioned bias the media has for her and the fact that like Donald Trump, Sanders’s supporters are hard core – no amount of logic will get them to change their minds.

So what should Clinton do? Walk away. Cease and desist from going after Bernie Sanders - attacking the underdog, the authentic hippie from Vermont who wants nothing more than a socialist paradise is a losing argument because his supporters will not listen and the media will make you look bad for doing it. Flush all your opposition research down the toilet and focus solely on your own message. You have an amazing story to tell about what you have done and intend to do to help the American people fulfill their hopes and dreams. You served as our nation’s top diplomat for four years, traveling the globe to meet, build bonds and negotiate with almost every world leader. You served in the U.S. Senate for eight years and forged bipartisan agreement on key issues. You have survived every sling and arrow shot your way for 25 years, you do not have to apologize for who you are and what you have done.

By doing so, you will put your best, and most optimistic foot forward. Leave it to the media to do what it is paid to do – vet the candidate. Let the media pour over Sanders’s record in Congress, question him about his lack of foreign policy experience (not to mention advisors), ask him to explain how he will get Congress to work with him, who he would select for key roles, whether he supported a primary challenger to President Obama in 2012, why it is that he just became a Democrat, and all the other completely reasonable questions they have not (to date) bothered to delve as deeply into as whether you tipped properly at a Chipotle restaurant. To be sure, it is a leap of faith. In 1992, James Carville famously said that “speed kills” – the Clinton campaign’s rapid response steamrolled President George H.W. Bush’s slow moving operation and ushered in the modern political campaign apparatus that now dominates our Presidential races, but that playbook is no longer working.

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The State of the Race For President

With one caucus and one primary under their collective belts, the Democrats and Republicans head west and south to Nevada and South Carolina before a spate of contests on March 1^st dubbed the “SEC Primary.” So, where are we in the race to succeed President Obama?

 

The Democrats: What was already a small field is now down to two competitors – former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Clinton eked out a win in Iowa while Sanders romped in New Hampshire. While the delegate count from those two contests is close, Clinton also has more than 300 committed “super delegates” in her corner, while Sanders has fewer than ten. The conventional wisdom is that Clinton is failing to connect with the voters in the way Sanders is, and in particular, with young voters, who went for Sanders by massive margins in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Moreover, Sanders has mobilized a huge small donor fundraising effort that will allow him to match (if not exceed) Clinton’s advertising and other campaign outreach.

 

Analysis: Sanders’s popularity in two states with very liberal, almost exclusively white populations will be tested starting with Nevada and South Carolina and then, far more substantially throughout the Sun and Rust Belts. He has the benefit of making arguments for policies that promise things people like but have absolutely no chance of ever being enacted, while she is left with the pragmatic/practical argument of incremental change. In other words, he wants you to have your dessert before dinner, and she is telling you to eat your vegetables. In the debates, he is clearly out of his depth on foreign policy but the media has done little vetting of his policy positions, voting record, or anything else that ordinarily attends the coverage of a major party candidate for President – let’s hope that changes. In the meantime, Hillary would be best served by avoiding attacking him, the media clearly does not like it and it is not her best look. Better to focus on her lengthy record of achievement and advocacy and let that speak for itself. She is battling Sanders, Republicans, and the media, so she is best served by focusing on a positive message about herself because she is held, as none other than Mark Halperin has admitted, to a different standard than other candidates.

 

The Likely Outcome: Clinton rallies slowly in Nevada and South Carolina before winning decisive victories on March 1^st and 15^th that may not secure the nomination, but will make the math inevitable.

 

The Wild Card: Pent up frustration over Obama’s inability to pass progressive legislation (e.g., single payer health care), the media’s not-so-veiled loathing of Clinton, and a massive surge of young voters create a tsunami wave that crushes her and delivers the Democratic nomination to a 74 year old socialist who was not even a registered member of the party a year ago.

 

The Republicans: Allow me to pause and chuckle at the idea that when this cycle started the media claimed the Republicans boasted the “deepest field” in their history. The current front runner is a reality TV star and the guy running right behind him is the most hated man in Congress. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush has spent $100 million to finish sixth in Iowa and fourth in New Hampshire and former “it” candidates Scott Walker and Chris Christie barely registered before bowing out.

 

Anyway, with that off my chest, we are down to five contenders – Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush. History tells us that in the modern era, the Republicans have picked the winner of either Iowa or New Hampshire, which would reduce the options to Trump or Cruz, but perhaps this year is the exception that proves the rule.

 

Analysis: The outsider/batshit crazy wing of the Republican Party commanded a majority of the vote in Iowa and New Hampshire (if you dump in the Fiorina and Carson crumbs), so the only hope for someone other than Trump or Cruz would be to get in a three way race (worst threesome ever?) where those two would split the “anti-establishment” vote and the rest of the party coalesced around this third person. The only problem? Well, two actually: first, there is no guarantee that such a coalescing would occur. Trump’s protectionist message may sell very well in Ohio or Michigan, so even if Kasich was left standing as the alternative to him and Cruz, there is no guarantee he would win that vote; second, if the Kasich/Bush/Rubio clustering continues, they may all stay in the race, leaving Trump or Cruz to rack up wins by collecting somewhere between 25-35 percent of the vote in each state.

 

The Likely Outcome: Again, history shows that even with all this uncertainty, the likelihood is that a winner will emerge and right now, that guy looks to be Donald J. Trump. That a political novice showed a better fingertip feel for the electorate than competitors with decades more experience and millions in consultants as well as the entire political journalist class is pretty remarkable. Cruz could try to monopolize the evangelical vote and win a narrow majority of delegates, but if the race is down to him and Trump, I suspect the powers that be will hold their nose and go with the businessman who does deals, not the kamikaze pilot who everyone hates.

 

The Wild Card: Trump melts down, Bush, Rubio or Kasich emerge as a consensus “establishment” pick and the party happily steps over Cruz’s political carcass as the GOP eyes a return to the White House in a race against a 74 year old socialist from Vermont.

The Rank Hypocrisy of Lindsey Graham

Irrelevant Republican candidate for President Lindsey Graham may not be able to attract more than 1 percent in national polls, but he can always be assured of fawning coverage from the Beltway media. Earlier this week, Graham delivered a speech to a group called the Republican Jewish Congress, laying into his competition for their hard right positions on immigration and “hateful rhetoric” directed at minority groups in America. 

Graham’s speech occurred on the heels of a quote he gave to the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin, who dutifully transcribed Graham’s comments into a lengthier story on the GOP’s fear of a Trump nomination. According to Graham:

Of course, the DC media *loves* this type of alleged honesty from the political spawn of the original straight talker, John McCain, but a funny thing happened yesterday just hours after Graham’s polemic against wedge politics. The Senate took up a bill via reconciliation, a strategy they bemoaned when they were in the minority as undemocratic, that would defund Planned Parenthood and repeal Obamacare, you know, that law that millions of people, many of whom are African American, Hispanic, or Latino, and who Graham claimed - earlier that day - his party needed to bring into their tent. Graham voted in favor of that bill, not only making him a hypocrite of the first degree, but he may have also redefined a term the people at the RJC are very familiar with - chutzpah.

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Trump and Truthiness

The media has taken a brief pause from scaring the living shit out of Americans with hyperbolic reporting on terrorism to return to their political bête noire - the debunking of whatever slur-du-jour uttered by Donald Trump. Two recent examples illustrate the power of "truthiness" - the Stephen Colbert dubbed term generally defined as an idea having the "feeling" of truth, evidence to the contrary. 

The first had to do with Trump's re-tweeting of a debunked statistic regarding murder in America:

While the numbers were well off the mark, there was a patina of "truthiness" embedded in the bogus graph. To wit, it is not true that 97% of African-Americans are killed by other African-Americans, but according to PolitiFact, that figure is around 90%. [1] Everything else in the graph is way off base, [2] but if you are a Trump supporter who thinks the Black Lives Matter movement is undermining law enforcement or fails to focus on the pandemic of black-on-black violence, the inaccuracies are less important than that kernel of truth.

The media has also freaked out about Trump's statement that "thousands" of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey celebrated on 9/11. Again, this idea has been widely debunked but Trump has clung to a Washington Post article from a week after the attacks that talked about the FBI investigating claims that a couple of people had engaged in such behavior. Here again, the "truthiness" of Trump's claim is more important than whether what he said was literally true. If you are a Trump supporter suspicious of Muslims and fearful of terrorism, whether Muslims celebrated in Jersey City, Paterson, or the West Bank (where they actually *did* celebrate) is less important than the fact that some people cheered the fact that we were the victims of a terrorist attack. Arguing over the number of people who celebrated or where is not nearly as important to Trump supporters as whether it happened or not. 

And the media scrutiny is also curious. Most cable and Sunday talk shows are content to simply allow politicians and their surrogates to spout easily debunk-able talking points without pushing them to defend their statements. Indeed, while Chuck Todd cross-examined Trump on his 9/11 claims, he blithely allowed panelist Hugh Hewitt to repeat lies about Planned Parenthood selling "baby parts" later in the same episode. [3] More generally, there are gaffes and policy claims that go largely unreported, from the tax plans that tilt heavily to the wealthy to Marco Rubio's off-handed comment that the Paris terrorist attack was "good" for his campaign. This is not to say that the media should let Trump off the hook, but rather, why it is that they are not holding other candidates to the same standard.

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Notes

1. http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2015/may/21/updated-look-statistics-black-black-murders/

2. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/23/donald-trump/trump-tweet-blacks-white-homicide-victims/

3. http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-november-29-2015-n470871. Hewitt appears to conflate "baby parts" with "fetal tissue." A lengthy exegesis can be found here: http://www.snopes.com/pp-baby-parts-sale/