As these hugely damaging words, which Clinton has hidden from the voters for over a year now, were finally exposed, and she was asked by Trump to explain them at the "debate," her answer was to ignore the question and to divert attention instead to the unproven allegation by Obama administration sources that the evil Russians had hacked Democratic Party emails and to claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "trying to influence the outcome" of the US election in favor of Trump.
Clinton also lamely tried to pretend her talk in one secret speech about having both "public and private" positions on issues was a specific reference to Abraham Lincoln's having turned to a one-time political opponent to help him pass a specific piece of legislation. This was clearly not true, and of course the only way for her to prove that would have been to release the entirety of her private paid speech -- something she will not do.
Trump's riposte that she was shamelessly trying to compare herself to "Honest Abe" was on the mark and, one of his better lines of the night, elicited loud laughs and guffaws that had to be quieted by moderator Cooper. (Trump missed his best moment, though, when he could have said, "Honest Abe wasn't a friend of mine, but I do know a bit about him, and you, Madam Clinton, are not Abraham Lincoln.")
Now of course virtually all politicians lie, and we all know that politicians during campaigns say one thing and then often, once elected, do the opposite. But many of those who are planning to vote for Hillary Clinton are deluding themselves by believing that her promises to help them are real. Clearly, as she has told her big banker bankrollers, they are not. She has no intention of seriously reining in the too-big-to-fail banks, and equally clearly, she was not some innocent internet naà ¯f when she had the private server she used illegally during her years as secretary of state erased and "bleached" so her email messages during that period -- a time when she and her husband became fabulously wealthy, clearly through influence peddling -- could never be recovered and read.
On balance, it was a bad night for Clinton, who thanks to Wikileaks and her own stumbling and dissembling on stage stands exposed as a crooked politician whose words on the campaign trail cannot be believed, and whose actions show that she considers herself to be above the law.
Voters may conclude from this campaign that Donald Trump cannot be trusted, whether it's promising to "make America great again," or to "end poverty" in America's inner cities, or claiming he actually pays taxes. They may believe too that the sexual predator of 2005 is still alive and abusing and debasing women in 2016. But after Sunday's pitiful performance, surely no one can any longer pretend that Hillary Clinton is in any way a progressive candidate or a person of any integrity or credibility.
The real losers though, were the American public, who continue to be deprived of a real debate in this election by the corrupt exclusion of third-party candidates from these fraudulent presidential debates. As Jill Stein, presidential candidate of the Green Party -- blacked out of this election by the corporate media, told Democracy Now! in that program's offering of a kind of three-way debate following the Trump-Clinton televised show, observed:
"The American people have very serious issues before us, and we need to get past this debate over whether Hillary or Donald is more corrupt, who has the more offensive history.
"Let me, you know, just say, there are critical issues before us. The American people have really had it economically. This recovery has been a recovery at the top, despite some minor--minor suggestions that income is rising. Indeed, this is only a small amount among lower- and middle-income families...An entire generation is locked in debt. Black lives are struggling for safety, walking down the street or driving down the street. Millions of immigrants are living in fear of deportation. Donald Trump has shown that the Republicans are the party of hate and fearmongering, but the Democrats are the party of deportation, detentions and night raids.
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