THE PARAGRAPHS OF THE DAY

Today’s paragraphs come from Steve Almond, who writes for the hard-left salon.com.

Poor Steve supports Bernie Sanders, but will enthusiastically support Hillary Clinton if she is the nominee…but is horrified by what he considers the fact that Ms. Clinton will be unfairly, but successfully set upon by the Republican candidate, especially if it turns out to be Donald Trump.

Want to see his lament?  Ok, here it is:

I myself was a Hillary supporter until Sanders entered the race. (More precisely, until I read his policy positions.)

Second, I will enthusiastically support Hillary when and if she is nominated. Years ago, I interviewed the secretary and I say now what I said then: She is a brilliant and compassionate public servant. If presidential elections in this country were based on policy positions and moral intention, on how each candidate hopes to solve common crises of state, Clinton would win going away.

Alas, the reality is that Hillary is among the most hated politicians in America. There is, to begin with, her dismal favorability rating, which stands at 53 percent, with a net negative of 12 percent. (Sanders has a net positive of 12 percent.)

But even more important is the intensity of the animus against her, and the sad mountain of baggage she carries with her as a candidate.

No matter who the GOP nominee is, the battle plan against Hillary will be the same: a tawdry and unrelenting relitigation of all the phony scandals cooked up by the “vast, right-wing conspiracy” that she identified nearly two decades ago.

Cue up the Pearl Jam, folks, because we’re going all the way back to the ’90s: Whitewater, Travelgate, Troopergate, Lewinskygate, with a little Vince Foster Murdergate, for a dash of blood. But wait – those are just the golden oldies! You’ll also be hearing about the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Pardons. Of course, what respectable slander campaign would be complete without the new material? Benghazi, the private email server, the Wall Street speeches?

The dark corporate money and talented propagandists aligned against Hillary will make the Swift Boat Veterans look like toy soldiers.

And because our Fourth Estate is driven at this point almost entirely by the desperate promotion of scandal narratives and conflict, every one of these paid attacks will be amplified by so-called free media, or what us starry-eyed hippies used to call journalism.

Omigod.  Hillary Clinton is likely to be nailed for all the things that mainstream media have protected and insulated her from all these years – and media might even report about it.

To the Steve Almonds of the world – and you can be sure there are plenty of them – none of these scandals ever existed.  Hillary told only the truth about all of them, and they’re all part of what she correctly identified as a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

To the rest of us, she’s a corrupt, serial liar who has gotten away with it all these years, in no small part due to media bias.  And, if nominated, those same media will do their level best to see that she gets away with it; at least through election day.

Steve Almond wins Paragraphs Of The Day honors for providing as entertaining a whine-fest about unfair media treatment of Hillary Clinton as you are likely to see.  There were other competitors, but Steve beat them out…because I’m a sucker for fantasies.