By JOE RONCA
Staff Writer
Just a few nights ago, the first Democratic Party presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle took place in Las Vegas.
Before it even happened the debate was mired in controversy, as an internal battle took place within the Democratic Party over the Democratic National Committee’s decision to hold only six debates this cycle instead of the twenty-six held during the 2008 primaries.
Many Democrats have opposed this arrangement, with the most prominent being Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, both of whom are seeking their party’s nomination for the presidency.
The two candidates allege, rightly so in my mind, that the Democratic Party leadership has limited the number of debates so that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would face as few challenges as possible on her road to the nomination. Of course this was what the Democratic leadership, led by DNC chair and Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was thinking when they scheduled a minimal number of debates.
Before the stunning summertime rise of Sanders, Clinton faced no significant opposition whatsoever for the Democratic nomination.
To this day she has no significant opponent besides Sanders. O’Malley has failed to distinguish himself in any meaningful way, former Virginia senator Jim Webb seems to just complain to the media about the lack of focus on his campaign, and most amusingly, former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee promises to make converting the United States to the metric system one of his top priorities if elected.
However irrelevant the opposition beyond Sanders has been, the super-PAC-rejecting socialist firebrand from Vermont is still a major threat to Clinton’s campaign. That’s not even mentioning the possibility that Vice President Joe Biden will hop into the race with Senator Elizabeth Warren at his side.
Mind you, Hillary’s not in any real danger of losing the nomination unless Biden joins the race, and she still very well could win even if he does tag in.
Sanders is still a significant thorn in her side, but the surge of support by swarms of millennials chanting “Feel the Bern” that brought him to the forefront of the national news this summer has been dissipating fast in the past few weeks. The man is plain and simple showing that he just cannot fundraise on the same level as Clinton without accepting money from super-PACs.
It is distressing, but true. Unless Sanders gets another wave of grassroots fundraising support like he did in July and August, he simply will not be able to match the waves of currency pouring out of the hands of super-rich Democratic donors and into Clinton’s campaign accounts.
It is sad in a way that Sanders, who has immense grassroots support, will lose in the end to Clinton, who has little appeal to actual American voters, but is strongly backed by the Democratic Party machine and the donors. So, I guess Clinton will have her coronation after all next July in Philadelphia.
In many ways, the actual course of Tuesday night’s debate mirrored the Democratic race for the nomination as a whole.
Clinton came out strong and forceful, blasting Sanders from the left on gun control, and from the right due to his harsh critiques of capitalism and his open embrace of socialism.
She came out as the clear winner at the end of the night, as she appeared likable and connected, both traits which she failed to cultivate during the summer. Sanders did well enough, but he stumbled, especially when he cited Denmark as an example for the type of society America should try to morph itself into and when moderator Anderson Cooper brought up the fact that the senator had honeymooned in the Soviet Union.
Sanders could not successfully extricate himself from either situation and ended up looking a bit too radical for most voters.
Again, as during the race so far, O’Malley, Chafee and especially Webb seemed to just blend into the carpet. Overall, Clinton dominated the debate, just as she has dominated the race for the nomination so far.
The most interesting moment of the night occurred in response to a question about the controversy over Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State.
In response to the question, Sanders directly addressed Clinton, saying, “I think the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!” The crowd roared at this thunderous denouncement of a significant scandal.
Clinton herself looked like she was validated by her opponent’s choice to not focus on the issue. Sanders himself took a huge boost from the remark, as his campaign received a much-needed boost in terms of fundraising.
The only issue is that his remark was dead wrong. The American people are not sick and tired of hearing about Hillary’s emails.
A certain group of Americans, I believe they call themselves the FBI now that I think about it, are certainly not done with Clinton’s emails. In fact, the FBI has been poring over the contents of the server for months, looking for any signs that Clinton improperly stored classified information.
The FBI itself is saying that investigators so far have not found any signs of wrongdoing that would merit prosecuting Secretary Clinton, but there are a lot of emails they have not looked at yet.
Compounding this is the fact the Clinton and her aides made the decision as to what emails were personal or work-related when they handed the contents of the server over to the State Department.
They then wiped the several thousand “personal” emails from the server completely. Now the FBI says they might be able to restore some of the deleted files on the server, but that’s going to take a lot of computer magic and it might not even work.
Also, storing potentially-classified work-related data on a private server is a violation of the State Department’s own guidelines related to potential Freedom of Information Act requests in the future.
Another factor is the fact that certain government information is automatically classified under secrecy laws and it is a federal crime to send classified information over potentially unsecure non-government computer networks.
Thus if Clinton sent anything classified via email, which most likely occurred as she was Secretary of State, she committed a felony. If convicted, she could go to prison. I mean, look at what happened to David Petraeus.He was a four-star Army General who led the troop surge that stabilized the situation on the ground during the late stages of the War in Iraq and then went on to head the CIA.
He was America’s first bona fide heroic military leader since Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf in the early 1990s.
Petraeus almost went to prison because he disclosed classified information to his mistress and stored more in a notebook that was locked in a desk in his heavily-guarded home. Yet, he’s not a Clinton, so I guess that explains why a war hero almost goes to Leavenworth while a serial liar and self-serving politician gets a crack at the presidency.
So no, Senator, we’re not tired of hearing about Secretary Clinton’s emails. In fact, I’m waiting on the FBI report on her emails like an eight-year-old is waiting for Christmas to roll around.
