As all the world knows now “Shattered,” a new book about the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, revealed a lot about why Donald Trump is now president of the United States. Between the incompetence, back biting, back stabbing, and self-delusion on the part of the candidate and her cronies, the second attempt at a Clinton restoration was doomed from the start. Now, according to the New York Post, Clinton staffers have launched a Mole Hunt to find out who talked so that they can be punished. Some suspicion has fixed on Huma Abedin, Clinton’s right-hand woman.
The idea that Abedin blabbed to a couple of reporters dirt on her benefactor seems unlikely. She and Hillary are still close and, besides, if she wanted to air some dirty laundry she would have saved it for her memoirs now being shopped around.
The finger pointing and blame placing were inevitable, and a quality of Team Hillary described in loving detail in the book. Members of the Clinton campaign were doubtless scoping out office space in the White House and divvying up plum positions in the government. Now they have to go back to their law firms, consulting companies, and think tanks to spend at least four years in the wilderness and pray that 2020 will be better.
The upshot is, as the Powerline blog suggests, that Trump did America a great service by denying Hillary Clinton the presidency.
Imagine, since her campaign was a dumpster fire tumbling down a cliff, what a second Clinton administration would have been like. Trump has stumbled in a couple of instances, but that can be ascribed to an otherwise competent man learning how to perform in his new position. Trump had had more wins than losses thus far, the successful confirmation of Neil Gorsuch being a prime example.
Considering the various world crises cropping up, from Syria to North Korea, the world is lucky that the Hillary Clinton described in “Shattered” is not in charge of dealing with them. The United States would have been far more likely to lose a west coast city to a nuclear strike had Clinton applied her undoubted talent for creating disaster than it does now.
Team Hillary would better spend its time figuring out why it lost and developing ways to correct the reasons than going on a hunt for traitors in their midst. The former would set up victories that might be won in the future. The latter is an entertaining exercise but is ultimately a waste of time that will only further bruise egos and alienate potential friends and allies.