by William Skink
This week I’ll be sending in my mail-in ballot for Montana’s Democratic primary. When I darken the bubble for Bernie I’ll be doing so to spite Jon Tester, our folksy farmer who himself beat the establishment odds a decade ago, as Ochenski reminds us in his column today:
Perhaps Tester has forgotten his own underdog primary run for the Senate against John Morrison. In that race, Morrison was the anointed candidate, hand-picked by the D.C. insiders and backed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee prior to the primary vote.
The parallels to the Sanders-Clinton primary are undeniable. Morrison, much like Hillary Clinton, was groomed for the position by long familiarity in political circles. His grandfather was governor of Nebraska, his father a Montana Supreme Court justice, his mother a successful trial lawyer. Having won a statewide race for state auditor, personal wealth and strong connections to the Washington Democrat insiders Morrison was the obvious choice.
Tester, on the other hand, was just a Big Sandy farmer who had risen to become president of the Montana Senate with virtually no statewide name recognition. He was most certainly not the pick of the Demo Party pundits. His personal wealth, like Bernie Sanders, was not significant, and the idea that he would actually run in a primary against Morrison was simply repugnant to the party insiders. After all, the fix was in, so what did the upstart Tester think he was doing?
And much like Sanders, Tester trailed in the media and polls throughout the primary campaign right up until the final weeks when an unfortunate turn of events tripped up Morrison’s campaign with allegations of infidelity and impropriety involving the wife of a man being investigated by Morrison’s office at the time.
I find it disgusting that Jon Tester made the comment he did about this race already being over because it’s not true. Once an outsider, Tester now represents the wishes of the establishment to crown Clinton, but like Morrison, Clinton has the distinct possibility of facing an unfortunate turn of events.
That unfortunate turn has everything to do with Clinton’s reckless handling of her electronic communications. The latest twist? Russia claims to have 20,000 of Hillary’s deleted emails and now officials in the Kremlin are debating whether to release them or not:
Hillary Clinton sits at the center of a raging firestorm concerning her arrangement of a private email account and server set up in her home — from which top secret information may have been deleted. But despite Bernie Sanders’ apparent annoyance with the “damn emails,” the scandal just exponentially intensified, when Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed on Monday that Russia has possession of around 20,000 of Clinton’s emails — leaving open the possibility her deletions might not have been permanent after all.
“There’s a debate going on in the Kremlin between the Foreign Ministry and the Intelligence Services about whether they should release the 20,000 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails that they have hacked into,” Napolitano told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in an interview for The Kelly File.
How sweet would it be for Putin to derail Hillary’s bid to obtain the White House for her and her sexual predator husband. Remember, two years ago Hillary compared Putin’s intervention in Crimea to the actions of Adolf Hitler, a statement she was forced to walk back.
After years of western propaganda demonizing Russia, how will Hillary supporters absorb the fact that Clinton’s likely criminal mishandling of emails has resulted in Russia obtaining the emails Clinton tried to destroy? Will American’s conditioned hatred of Russia rise above the cult-like devotion to Hillary or will she be prematurely absolved by her followers?
And if Russia doesn’t release the emails, but sits on them instead, how can anyone make the argument that it would be a good idea to elect a candidate exposed to potential blackmail from a foreign power.
If the Department of Justice refuses to do its job, and if the FBI doesn’t leak the findings of its investigation before the primary is over (as some politicians have hinted could happen), then I hope Russia takes the initiative to disclose the emails Hillary appears to have broken the law to hide from the public.