By Joey Kennedy
Alabama Political Reporter
I don’t know how many times since Friday somebody has asked me, or emailed me on my private server at home, or texted me, or called me to ask whether I still believed Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the next president.
That’s because the FBI’s James Comey last Friday informed Congress that there were yet more Clinton emails (maybe) that need to be looked at (perhaps).
My answer: Of course Hillary Clinton is going to win. Probably by a landslide, if not in the popular vote, certainly in the Electoral College. We’ll see how right I am in a few days.
Donald Trump is a loser in so many ways, and this election will be yet another.
This country is not going to elect Republican Trump president. Oh, he’ll get a decent number of votes, many more than he deserves, because of the Angry White Man factor. There are many mostly white voters, mostly men, who are afraid of their waning influence in the United States. By mid-century, they’ll be the minority. That scares some (most?) of them to death.
Alabama Political Reporter’s Josh Moon covered this well on Tuesday, using a letter from US Senator for Life Richard Shelby to Comey to frame a great column on the issue.
Moon writes what Trump’s Angry White Men don’t want to hear: Clinton’s email “scandal” is a “phony scandal.”
Clinton made mistakes, sure, Moon writes, but she didn’t in any way enrich herself by using a private email server, like previous Secretaries of State and other government officials, Republican and Democrat.
Hillary and the emails. OK.
But consider Trump and his business failures, refusal to release his tax returns, stiffing people who do hard work for him, being accused of raping a minor, helping set up a fake university to bilk students out of millions of dollars, etc., etc.
That is scandal. Sorry, those are scandals.
And the Angry White Man supports this, over a highly qualified, perhaps the most-qualified, candidate for President ever: Hillary Clinton.
Look, I know too many people have misgivings about Clinton, including me. But I don’t know if they are honest misgivings – or if I, too, have been thought-shifted by all the investigations into the Clintons. After all, ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton have entered public life, they’ve sparked “scandal,” real and imagined.
Plus, I’m sure there’s some Clinton fatigue working on me.
But the fact is, all the investigations over the years have never found any tangible evidence to bring either of the Clintons to trial.
And really, folks, believing that Hillary Clinton’s mistakes rise to the level of Donald Trump’s? There’s no comparison. As a politician, Trump is, as we say in the South, a hot mess. And as a businessman, he doesn’t look much better.
Clinton has served as First Lady of Arkansas and of the United States, as a US Senator and as Secretary of State. She’s worked hard on children’s issues and helping women, and she gets glowing reviews as a US Senator and Secretary of State.
Ignoring what Clinton has accomplished doesn’t mean she hasn’t accomplished anything.
It just means people who would rather have a racist, misogynist, xenophobic, sexist, blunderbust as President are going to ignore facts.
As we’ve seen in other elections, that’s been done before. It leads us nowhere.
Joey Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes a column every week for Alabama Political Reporter. Email: [email protected].
