Ukraine v Russia

There are few things more annoying that the permanent effort to litigate Hillary Clinton's campaign. Worse, as the only sense in which it arises is, "Hillary did it, too!" and "Why aren't you mad at her, you hypocrite?" Lots of things are characterized as the last refuge of scoundrels but this has to be the worst. It suggests the comparison of a person who is probably the best human ever to run for president to an uneducated tyrant who disgusts every decent human being in the country. It is truly grotesque.

It also demands a comparison between the two campaigns. One that was carefully and successfully executed in a way that should make any American proud. If you read the extensively prepared positions, look at the immense and carefully organized operational structure or listened to her speeches, you will see a sound candidate running an amazing and effective campaign. Look at Trump's campaign and you find a disorganized nightmare of ad hoc racism, hatred and appeal to the worst instincts of our fellow citizens. Also, grotesque.

But the suggestion that we compare the horrific collusion with Russia shown by Junior's emails with the gathering of evidence about Manafort's connections to Ukraine is the worst yet, only understandable as the last refuge or Clinton haters and Trump apologists. It is unfair and silly.

The biggest reason is that the Clinton campaign is no longer relevant. Turn it around. When the Republicans started their jihad about email servers, nobody cared, not one tiny whit, that they were completely uninterested in the exact same behavior by people on their side. There was the real, legitimate fact of the precedent but everyone, news organization and Congressional committees alike, treated Hillary's servers as de novo, asserting that it was important because she was an important person who was expected to wield national power some day. Trump's collusion with Russia is important because he is president. He wields national power this day.

Had Hillary sent Chelsea to meet with the government of Ukraine to encourage them to bring the power of their government to bear on defeating her opponent as quid pro quo on relieving sanctions, it would still be completely irrelevant. She lost. There is no possibility that she will put Ukranian interests above America's. There is no possibility that the Ukrainians will have leverage over the government to force foreign policy decisions that help them achieve their goals over ours because she is not president.

Of course, the Clinton campaign did nothing like that at . What actually happened is that someone heard that Manafort had improper ties to the Ukrainian government and, before accusing him publicly, went to ask the Ukrainians if it was true. The people with whom she met did not subsequently release a ton of stolen emails in a careful pattern to damage the opposition  or hack into the computers of dozens of strategically chosen voting authorities around the country. The Ukrainians at the meetings, as far as anyone can tell, were not lawyers with a brief to work on sanctions or anything else that would represent a potential corrupt 'ask'. 

Even more, nobody from the campaign management was involved in any way. The person involved was not in any way a representative of Hillary Clinton. Don Trump Jr can't say the same about his dad. Nor Manafort, Sessions or the rest.

The demand for equal consideration of these things is the epitome of false equivalence, fabricated, fictitious and dangerous to the republic. That Trump is a bad person and dangerous is obvious to anyone that is not a dumb partisan. That he very well may be a Mancurian Candidate, secretly working in favor of foreign powers from within the White House is a real possibility. Even setting aside that  he explicitly called for them, it is now all but certain that he and his campaign encouraged illegal acts by the Russians to interfere with the election in his favor and probably in return for his repeated interest in lessening sanctions. That the Trump people uniformly "forgot" to mention the meetings until they were found out by the media confirms the stench of corruption.

The Clinton family has been harassed for twenty five years, charged with fake crimes and abused with the misuse of government resources from Whitewater to Vince Foster to Benghazi to Email Servers and a thousand steps in between. Hillary, far from being corrupt, is probably the cleanest, least corrupt politician in history as demonstrated by the horrific abuse and endless investigation that has failed for decades to turn up any important dirt. Comparing her to the thug in the White House with his practice of ripping off vendors, blatant lies, and obvious, proven corruptions of character too numerous and disgusting to list, is egregious. 

Demanding equal time for a minor conversation by a peripheral Hillary staffer as we do for the proven truth that the Trump management team met with Russians and concealed the meetings is a ridiculous obfuscation. It is one thing to spend all these years abusing Hillary for sheer political gain. It is quite another to keep talking about her in a way that obscures discussion of the real corruption and real national danger represented by this corrupt president.