Hillary Clinton and the Art of the Smear

In the face of brutal attacks from Bernie Sanders about her use of Wall Street firms as her personal piggybank, Hillary Clinton hits back calling it an "artful smear." Hillary knows a thing or two about smears having engaged in a few of her own along the way. Knowing that a forceful rebuttal is required, Hillary's team  comes up with "artful smear." Not just a run-of-the-mill smear, mind you, an "artful" smear. Someone at Team Hillary will get something extra in their paycheck this week for that one. Even Geraldo Rivera was using it in her defense. 

Which leads us to ask Democrats the following: how would you characterize the attacks on Mitt Romney four years ago? Romney is a church elder, a tither, charity patron, successful businessman, a model husband and father. Dems made him out to be a rapacious capitalist whose business practices killed people. Harry Reid said on the Senate floor that he had it on good knowledge that Romney had not paid taxes for ten years. Now those are "artful smears."


Rolling
The evidence continues to roll in: Broad increases in the minimum wage destroy jobs and hurt the working-class Americans that they are supposed to help. The latest evidence is an announcement that Wal-Mart, America’s largest employer, will close more than 150 U.S. stores, a move that will affect 10,000 employees. (Andy Puzder, Wall Street Journal, 2/6/2016)

Liberals will probably criticize Wal-Mart for closing stores and laying off people. 

The same Liberals who complain when Wal-Mart opens a store. 

The same Liberals who complain that Wal-Mart does not pay its employees enough.  


Programmed
Hillary Clinton’s older feminist supporters have a message for young women who are not backing her candidacy: Shame on you. ...Two feminist icons of Mrs. Clinton’s generation made their frustration known over the weekend, calling on young women who view Mr. Sanders as their candidate to essentially grow up and get with the program. (New York Times, 2/7/2016)

So young females should support Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. Just as all blacks are supposed to support Barack Obama. Funny that no one is saying that blacks should support Ben Carson or Hispanics should support Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. For that matter, what about Carly Fiorina? She fits the criteria. But Carly Fiorina does not run as a woman. Ben Carson does not run as a black candidate. Ted Cruz does not run as a Hispanic. The difference, of course, is that with Democrats it is all about identity politics. So Hillary Clinton runs as a woman. (Also a grandmother!) That is the Democrat "program." 


Whistle Stop
There were reports of secret waiting lists to hide long delays in care. Whistle-blowers said as many as 40 veterans had died waiting for appointments. And Congress was demanding answers.

Despite mounting evidence of trouble at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Senator Bernie Sanders, then the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, initially regarded the complaints as overblown, and as a play by conservatives to weaken one of the country’s largest social welfare institutions.

“There is, right now, as we speak, a concerted effort to undermine the V.A.,” Mr. Sanders said in May 2014, two weeks after the story was picked up by national news organizations. “You have folks out there now — Koch brothers and others — who want to radically change the nature of society, and either make major cuts in all of these institutions, or maybe do away with them entirely.” (New York Times, 2/7/2016)

The New York Times largely ignored the VA scandal when it was uncovered for several reasons. Most importantly. it could not be pinned on Republicans. A Democrat, Bernie Sanders was in charge of Senate oversight for the VA. Furthermore, the VA is the Democrat model for single payer, government run, health care. How would it look to expose any of that?

Now, of course, it is convenient for the Times to bring it up in order to check Sanders in the face of his challenge against their favored candidate.