There Is No Real Hillary Clinton [View all]

[Purveyor]

People aren't meant to be relaunched as often as phones, but here we are

By Jeb Lund October 8, 2015

In the last day, Hillary Clinton announced her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal that she will likely claim she only championed as part of her duties as secretary of state and that, in reality, she just as likely helped to create. She probably opposes it as strongly as she did NAFTA, which her husband created, and which she and Barack Obama campaigned against in 2008 and then proceeded to do nothing about. This is a habit. She probably is doing this because, in spite of a career in which neoliberalism got her this far, Bernie Sanders is starting to eat her lunch among labor voters, progressives and anyone who is not a big-money donor. You know, the people who vastly outnumber the latter and do things en masse, like vote.

In the last 10 days, once-prospective Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy praised the House Select Committee on Benghazi for doing what it was always — only — ever intended to do. "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?" he told Sean Hannity. "But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping." McCarthy, who possesses both the look and adroitness of a personal injury attorney, accidentally disclosed that the allegedly most vital investigative body in American government is a petty leverage tool as sound as a plastic spork trying to pry open the pull tab on a fruit cup. Telling the truth only cost McCarthy his shot at a job doing the opposite.

But while the former issue addresses an agreement that covers 40 percent of the world's total trade and represents a volte-face by a candidate critics accuse of having zero core beliefs beyond electability, the latter is what will make headlines forever. A trade deal, the future of American labor and the shrinking manufacturing base of this country is something for "unserious" social-democrat whackos like Bernie Sanders to talk about.

When we talk about Benghazi, we're talking about who Hillary Clinton really is. And that's something we'll be forced to talk about until November 2016, with cynical political imprecations like murderer, with sad-sack troll jobs from dead-enders like Rand Paul, and with the inevitable Hillary Clinton response. A new declaration of authenticity — whatever that means, in a contest among people who think it's normal to believe they can and should lead the free world — a new field trip to middle America, maybe a video with grandmothers, as if it say, "I, Hillary Clinton, recognize that those are grandmothers."

This is our debate now.

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