In response to Clinton Kicks Obama to Curb over Taliban Deal:
It’s not just Madame Hillary, either. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Intelligence Committee, also turned on Obama – she said he was “totally not following the law!” – and was immediately attacked by Harry Reid this morning.
Obama’s gambit to distract America from the VA scandal is turning into the most devastating scandal of his crime-riddled presidency, its mega-tonnage amplified by the way it’s causing Democrats to turn on each other. I think we’ll see more of that over the next couple of days, as the implosion effect of this nuclear scandal blast sucks Obama’s party into a blue-on-blue bloodbath.
A big part of the reason is the looming shadow of the 2014 elections, of course. Terrified Democrats have already been trying to distance themselves from Obama. They can’t get away from him on the VA or Bergdahl stories, not without denouncing him in terms that will drive his popularity even lower… which will in turn make him an even heavier weight around their necks. As Ben Domenech observed at The Federalist today, part of the problem is that Obama’s scandals keep dragging the 2014 election spotlight back to the national level, while shaky purple-state Dems desperately want to keep it at the local level. It’s hard to sell voters on your big plans to bring back Washington pork for a couple of new bus stations when everyone wants to talk about Obama unleashing five Taliban killers in trade for a deserter.
Their only play here is to throw in with Hillary and effectively declare the end of the Obama presidency (perhaps literally, if impeachment gathers steam, but that’s still a very long shot – the only reason I wouldn’t dismiss it entirely is that it’s hard to take what Feinstein is saying seriously, without proceeding to impeachment as the only possible remedy.) I suspect Hillary’s camp will begin quietly suggesting that strategy to the midterm Democrats – declare Obama over and start working toward the “bright new dawn” of putting a Clinton back in the White House.
There’s also the matter of Obama’s cratering poll numbers, which were hitting historic lows before the Bergdahl scandal exploded. I’ve heard the observation made today that Obama can no longer reach 50 percent approval on any issue – which means he’s got nothing to use as an anchor against the undertow of his scandals. His Party’s candidates have nothing they can single out as a place where they agree with the President, no matter how awful he is on everything else. That’s a tough place to be strategically, and it means more strident condemnation is necessary to escape from the White House black hole.
The Bergdahl scandal ties directly into the VA scandal, a narrative the White House and its Pajama Boy army in the blogosphere is firming up by attacking the veterans who served with, and searched for, Bergdahl. White House aides actually accused these veterans of “swiftboating” the deserter today, which was an incandescently stupid blunder, guaranteed to stoke the anger of military families. Every Democrat candidate in America is now running as an active enemy of America’s veterans and their families, unless they take extremely strong action to distance themselves from the flailing White House and its loyalists… and every endangered Dem who takes such measures is going to be brutally attacked by the loyalists.
Finally, there’s the way the Bergdahl scandal dynamites so many of Obama’s political narratives, which Democrats were supposed to run on coast-to-coast. War on Women? Obama just sent five deadly field commanders in the real War on Women back to the front lines – men who murder girls just for going to school. Respect for international law? Obama just freed at least two Taliban designated as war criminals by the United Nations. Smart power? The entire world interprets the Bergdahl trade as a huge Taliban victory over the United States, the kind of lopsided deal only the losers in a conflict would agree to. Every bad guy in the world is salivating for the chance to make a deal with the man who gave away the Taliban Five. The best reason to hope the Five won’t immediately reappear in the Afghan theater and resume killing Americans – they sure as hell aren’t under any kind of “monitoring,” as the government of Qatar made abundantly clear today – is that they know it would topple the Obama presidency, and they don’t want him toppled.
For those reasons, I suspect the Democrat civil war Obama just touched off is likely to grow more intense in the run-up to the midterm elections. Hillary’s the first, and she plans to be the leader of the rest.
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