Kevin D. Williamson:
Accountability is for peons. Barack Obama can lie about health care or Benghazi, Hillary Rodham Clinton can intentionally mishandle top-secret information in a way that potentially exposes U.S. intelligence assets, Lois Lerner can weaponize the IRS at the behest of Democratic grandees in the Senate — and nothing happens.
If you think Debbie Wasserman Schultz has finally received her long-awaited and well-deserved comeuppance, you’ve got another thing coming.
Wasserman Schultz, the political stinkbomb from Florida who is a serious contender for dumbest person in American politics (in a world in which Donald Trump exists) was point person for a Democratic National Committee effort to use the machinery of the party — which is supposed to, in theory, treat candidates equally — to undermine the presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders (S., Further) in favor of Herself.
The DNC pulled some pretty ugly stuff in the service of burying the honking pinko from Brooklyn, including scheming to use his religious views against him. Sanders, a son of Jewish refugees from Poland, is a pretty secular fellow, and they figured that gap-toothed Democratic primary voters who couldn’t be counted on to hate him for being Jewish might hate him for being an atheist: Damned if you Jew and damned if you don’t, the Democrats’ theory goes.
Nobody is coming out of this looking good. The e-mails contain tales of “planting stories,” and Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel apparently entered into an agreement with the DNC to permit them to review an article of his prior to publication, a journalistic no-no of the first order. The article’s subject? Political corruption.
Ho, ho!
Wasserman Schultz is very bright, in the sense that the very bottom of Carlsbad Caverns is bright, and very sharp, in the sense that a brass doorknob or a stick of warm butter is sharp. Her greatest hits are the stuff of legend: Chris Matthews asked her to explain the difference between being a Democrat and a socialist (such as Bernie Sanders) and she was lost as last year’s Easter eggs. She has suggested that Republicans want to deport all women from the United States. She tried to use House rules to keep members of Congress from calling Obamacare “Obamacare.” Like Joe Biden, she literally does not know what “literally” means. She complains that if Republicans who opposed the GM bailout had their way “we would be driving foreign cars.” Her Infiniti SUV was made in Tochigi, Japan. (Nissan is not a suburb of Detroit.) Etc., etc., etc.
Misusing the DNC is not exactly the same as misusing a government agency, inasmuch as the DNC is a private entity that can operate under any laws it chooses. But its actions here — pretending to be neutral for the benefit of donors and patrons while acting in effect as an arm of the Clinton campaign — is nonetheless an act of political corruption. It may have been illegal, too, especially if there was coordination with the Clinton campaign, as seems likely. (Mrs. Clinton disclaims any knowledge of DNC shenanigans; she also says that her covert toilet e-mail server was there to handle yoga appointments.) But Wasserman Schultz’s actions were corruption even if they weren’t illegal. Like Lois Lerner at the IRS, she was entrusted with certain powers and misused them to benefit her political patrons.
And her new employer: Not more than a few hours after she announced her intention to resign as chairman of the DNC, Wasserman Schultz had a new gig: with the Clinton campaign, as an honorary chairman. Nobody ever really gets fired in Washington — they just make lateral moves. Politics is one of the few professions where you can get fired without taking a pay cut.