Facing the quarter century Democratic Party disaster

Sam Smith – Buried in the second to last paragraph of a Washington Post story on its new poll with ABC that found Trump having only a 42% approval rating, was one of the most stunning survey results seen in years: The new survey finds 46 percent saying they voted for Clinton and 43 percent …

Why the Democratic establishment should dump Clinton

Sam Smith - Based on reality rather than preferences, the establishment backing Hillary Clinton seems to have picked the wrong candidate. Here are a few reasons why: She's not making new friends. In fact support for her has dropped during the campaign. For example, last July CNN reported that "Looking ahead to the general election, …

The making of Bill Clinton

Sam Smith Shadows of Hope 1994 When millions of Americans first saw Bill Clinton on television, he bored them. While nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention, Clinton talked so long the crowd started interrupting, yelling "We want Mike." According to biographers Charles Allen and Jonathan Portis, "It was clear to television viewers that …

The cost of Democratic denials

Sam Smith - For more than thirty years, one of the least noted aspects of the Democratic Party has been its tendency to deny its own realities - the corruption of some of its politicians, its growing rejection of New Deal and Great Society programs and values, its failure to come up with alternatives,  and …

The scary uncertainties of Hillary Clinton’s campaign

Sam Smith - The campaign to put Hillary Clinton in the White House is one of the oddest ones in American history. Although her actual prospects are still far from clear, there are a number of curious considerations: It is strange to have a candidate so popular in her own party yet so controversial not …

Why is Hillary Clinton in so much trouble?

Sam Smith – I confess I’ve been a bit startled by all the trouble that Hillary Clinton has found herself in more than a year before she’s due to be nominated at her party convention. Even the stupid Republican stuff – like the Benghazi incident – has gained a prominence you wouldn’t have expected if …

How the Koch brothers helped dismantle the Democratic Party

Sam Smith For over 20 years I have reported on the mostly unnoted role played by the Democratic Leadership Council dismantling the Democratic Party, disconnecting it from its New Deal and Great Society past and turning it into Republican Lite. For example, in a 1992 book on Clinton, I wrote: In 1988, the 1992 play …

Emergency room politics

Sam Smith So now we face the prospect of the sleaziest, least competent, and most politically repugnant Republicans of all time running against a Democrat who is corrupt, dishonest, had three of her closest business partners go to prison along with nine of her major backers, designed rotten healthcare legislation that fortunately didn’t pass, made …

How Mad Men control politics

  Sam Smith At the presidential level at least, politics as we were taught to understand and admire it is dead. A major cause, of course, has been the financial assault on democracy best characterized by the Citizens United decision. But there is another factor: the replacement of a candidate’s record, history and positions with …

Hillary Clinton: Thriving in the gap between criminal law and political integrity

Sam Smith - A key point being missed in the latest Clinton scandal is the difference between criminal law and political integrity. In recent decades, beginning with Watergate, we have increasingly favored the former as the standard for the latter, a trend the Clintons have repeatedly used to their advantage. Thus, since Bill Clinton was …

Hillary Clinton: the post modern and the real

Sam Smith More than a few of Hillary Clinton’s supporters remind me of Mormons or Scientologists in that their faith is considered infinitely more important than any facts. And if you sully that faith with facts, then – just as the way critics of Israel are so quickly dubbed anti-Semitic – you become a “Clinton …

Enjoy Obama while you can

Sam Smith – I’m feeling better about Barack Obama these days. He still misleads mispromises, misstates and mistakes more than is healthy for anyone, particularly a president, but he has one big thing going for him: he’s not Hillary Clinton True, he’s boring, he lectures audiences like they were his freshman class, his lack of …

The secret they won’t tell you

Sam Smith  The CIA’s criminal and anti-American torture activities is far from the only secret Washington has kept from the rest of the country. One of the biggest  is that the dismantling of New Deal and Great Society politics by GOP Lite Democrats such as Clinton and Obama has been disaster. The Republicans won’t tell …

When the Hillary Clinton story changes

Sam Smith A couple of decades of reporting on the real Clintons has taught me that Democrats and liberals are deeply indifferent to how they have been misled. Like victims of abuse, they have been trained to accept the word of their abusers. The Clintons, who are about the most effective political con artists I’ve …

Hillary Clinton by the numbers

CLINTON FOUNDATION Amount the country run by the Sultan of Brunei, who wants to stone gays to death, has given to the Clinton Foundation: $1-5 million Amount the Clinton Foundation spent on travel over the period 2003-2013: $50 million Amount spent in 2011 alone: $12.1 million Number if $1000 air tickets that would buy: 12,000 …