Even in politics, the rich get richer.💙𓂃 Take President Trump.
Fresh off a big victory with the House passage of an ObamaCare repeal, Trump is also getting lucky again in his enemies. Hillary Clinton is baaack and ready to rum𓄧ble.
she is launching a new ♕group to raise money for the resistance to T💃rump’s presidency. The group will be called Onward Together, and Clinton is said to be meeting with donors to form a board of directors.
Her cadre of unemployed hangers-on must b🤪e thrilled to have a new slush fund, but most Dems are probably thinking, “Haven’t we suffered enough?”
With the party demoralized and divided, and holding the fewest number of elected seats in a century, Clinton’s return will likely prolong the misery. While she’s a media magnet, she’s also a political dead end, ha🔜ving lost t𒈔wo presidential runs and ceded the future to the Bernie Sanders socialist wing.
It’s hard to imagine her as the party’s savior, yet, instead of going away quietly, she’ll be competing 🏅with its candidates for money and attention. Anything she gets will come at the expense of new leaders and ideas.
On ꦜthe other hand, what’s bad for Dems is great for Trump. Clinton’s decision to jump back into partisan politics is a gift to the president.
With p🅰olls showing little buyer’s remorse over the election, any cont🅰rast between the sitting president and his defeated opponent favors him. Especially because Clinton is stuck in the same tiresome blame game that helped cost her the election.
After weeks of inching her way back, she gave an interview last week at a Women for Women event. Her explana💜tion for why she lost shows that the new Hillary is the same as the💮 old Hillary.
Full of finger-pointing and excuses, she was, as usual, devoid of any concession about her own shortcom🎶ings.
She has shifted the entire email scandal, which she created by 🍒deciding to use a private server and lying abo🥃ut it to the public, to the shoulders of Russian hackers and FBI Director Jim Comey. To hear her tell it, she was an innocent victim of their skulduggery.
“If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” she said, insisting that Comey’s Oct. 28 letter reopening the probe ཧinto her handling of classified material “raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and got scared off.”
While Clinton said she accepted “absolute personal responsibility” for the defeat, it certainly didn’tౠ sound as if she meant it.
She refused to second-guess her strategy or mess💙age, didn’t talk about her flaws as a candidate, didn’t explain why she never got what was bugging working-class voters or why she assumed black voters would turn out for her the same way they turned out for Barack Obama.
Instead, she added “miso𝄹gyny” and the mediไa to her list of scapegoats. And of course she trotted out the unproven Trump-Putin connection.
None of her spiel is new or different, and it leads me to conclude she has an unhealthy fixation on an election do-over. As iꦯmprobable as it seems, I believe she wants to co-opt the Trump resistance and make it her base for a pote⛎ntial 2020 run.
Look at it this way: Wha🦩t are the chances Clinton is going back to battle to help elect Cory Booker or Andrew Cuomo in 2020? Zero and none.
Raising and controlling money is Step One to her comeback, a step the Clintons have mastered. A Democratic operative once🤪 described them th💞is way: “Fish gotta swim, and the Clintons gotta raise money.”
That was after they had rented out the 🐓Lincoln Bedroom, allegedly sold presidential pardons an♔d turned the family foundation into a money-printing press.
The Onward Together venture would♓ fit the pattern, with self-promotion and private-jet perks guaranteed. By vacuuming up bags of cash and deciding who is👍 worthy of it, she would be in a strong position to control the party.
It’s a bold move, but it could retard Dems’ 🔴rebuilding efforts. For one thing, there is no obvious space for her, with Sanders still active and with Obama heir Tom Perez running the national committee.
Even a Clinton funding success could spell trouble. She would be a juicy target for Republicans in the 2018 midterms, forcing Dem candi🍌dates to run from her in swing districts where she remains a pariah.
Thღere also will be inevitable temptations with her new group. Like her family foundation, Onward Together probably will ✃be free of donor and spending limits.
That could make it ripe for a repe💃at of the foundation’s sordid side. Amid its stench from selling access and favors, insider emails showed the foundation served as a front for “Bill Clinton Inc.,” with the former president using it to set up lucrative speaking and consultant gigs that brought him tens of millions of dollars.
Still, the foundation had some charity works, which Hillary cited during the campaign to turn away criticism. But now that she’s free to spend her time on them, she’s focusing on a cause closer to her heart: a ඣthird race for the White House.
You gotta be kidding
A George Mason University study finds that late-night comics have told more jokes about Presi꧋dent Trump than any other recent president.
This is news? They needed a stu🍒dy to 💯prove it? Watch a minute of those shows and you’ll know it all.
You’ll also know most of the jokes aren’🀅t jokes. Like Stephen Colbert’s rant, they’𓄧re just nasty.
Blasio’s hard cell
Another great week in New York under Mayor Putz.
With myriad problems at Rikers Island, de Blasio’s picked a st🃏range fight in protecting his correction commissioner from disciplinary action.
The Department of Investigation found that Joseph Ponte used his city car to drive 18,500 miles out-of-state over 90 days, mostly to Maine. The Post reports that 35 of thos🎀e days fell during the workweek.
Yet de Blasio is blasé, saying thಞe probers lacked “a perfect vantage point.”
Perfection, by implication, is his domain, for no one can argue wi𝄹th the mayor about understanding wrongdoing. He’s a proven expert.
After all, he did the bidding of donors, and prosecutors didn’t char🌠ge him because he didn’t put the money into 𒉰his pocket.
So naturally he’s sympathetic to Pont♏e. Birds of a feather and all that.
All wet at the Oculus
Friday’s roof leaks at the $4 billion Oc꧑ulus train station and shopping mall in lower Manhattan unleashed an ol🃏d-fashioned mop-and-bucket brigade — and a torrent of bureaucratiﷺc mush.
“World Trade Center staff has identified the specific areas where the leaks occurred and will take steps to mitigate future pro♋blems,” the Port Authority said.
Mitigate? D✤oes that mean they’ll fix the damn roof, or just use more mops and buc🍒kets after the next downpour?