Doesn’t Clinton Embarrass Democrats? In polite media society only Republicans are supposed to feel bad about their candidate.By James Freeman
http://www.wsj.com/articles/doesnt-clinton-embarrass-democrats-1477611135
Donald Trump wears his character flaws on his sleeve. Hillary Clinton seeks to prevent documentation of hers, even when the law requires it. Yet despite her best efforts, facts about Mrs. Clinton that are now public should trouble voters more than any of Mr. Trump’s remarks.
Not that it’s easy for Republicans to appear on a ballot with Mr. Trump, especially since media folk spend days after each controversial remark demanding responses from other GOP candidates. The objective is to force them to endorse or condemn Mr. Trump and suffer the consequences.
Fair enough, but reporters don’t force down-ballot Democrats to take a position on each new Clinton email revelation. The result is wall-to-wall media coverage focused on whether GOP voters can possibly support their candidate. But why should Republicans have all the fun? Democratic voters have every right to be ashamed of their nominee.
We’ll review some of the reasons in a moment, but first let’s consider the importance of party loyalty in this year’s presidential election. In recent polls, Mr. Trump often leads among independents. But he generally trails overall because Mrs. Clinton enjoys stronger support among Democrats than Mr. Trump does among Republicans—or because pollsters don’t believe Republicans will turn out and therefore include many more Democrats than Republicans in their survey samples.
Clearly Mr. Trump needs more Republicans to support him. This could happen if holdout Republicans break his way or if some Democrats decide they can’t stomach another era of Clinton scandals.
History says it will probably have to be the former. Bill Clinton rallied his party and survived an impeachment vote in the 1990s not by disproving the charges against him, but by dedicating himself to partisan goals. Once he agreed to abandon entitlement reform, Democratic support in the Senate was rock solid.
Similarly, at the final debate last week Mrs. Clinton made no effort to embrace centrist policies. She called for higher taxes, expanded entitlements and an activist Supreme Court to impose strict limits on liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Mrs. Clinton is speaking exclusively to the left wing of her party. Mr. Trump, for his part, deviates from many Republicans on trade and immigration but has otherwise embraced a growth agenda of lower taxes and regulatory relief for an economy that sorely needs it.
Beyond policy considerations, voters across the political spectrum should consider what it would mean to ratify Mrs. Clinton’s institutionalization of political corruption. We now know from emails published by WikiLeaks that before Mrs. Clinton formally launched her campaign, she arranged for the king of Morocco to donate $12 million to Clinton Foundation programs.
What’s significant about the Morocco case is that for years the Clintons peddled the fiction that donors write checks simply to support wondrous acts of Clintonian charity. But that cover story isn’t available here. Mrs. Clinton’s trusted aide Huma Abedin put it in writing: The Moroccans agreed to the deal on the condition that Mrs. Clinton would participate at a conference in their country.
Panicked Clinton-campaign aides persuaded Mrs. Clinton to avoid such a trip before launching her candidacy—and the foundation got the king to settle for Bill and Chelsea Clinton. But the record is clear. The king wanted the access, influence and prestige that all strongmen crave from legitimate democracies.
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