How Hillary Clinton boosted Tulsi Gabbard
What was Hillary Clinton thinking? The 2016 Democratic nominee, for some reason, felt the need to insert herself into the 2020 race with an attack on Tulsi Gabbard, an oddball Democratic presidential contender who barely registered in polls. The congresswoman from Hawaii is a completely discreditable candidate—more on that in a moment—but Clinton’s accusation that Gabbard is a tool of the Russians was so blunt and clumsy that it has added new life to a primary bid that should never have existed in the first place. Within a day, Gabbard was already fundraising off of it, a development as predictable as a sunrise.
Clinton fired at Gabbard in a recent podcast, during which she made reference to an unnamed Democrat who Clinton believed was readying a third-party challenge. “I’m not making any predictions,” Clinton said, “but I think [the Russians] have got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Clinton then brought up the 2016 candidate Jill Stein, whom Clinton described as “a Russian asset.” Or, more accurately, as also a Russian asset, in addition to the mysterious Democrat canoodling with the Kremlin. When asked if Clinton was referring to Gabbard, the Clinton aide Nick Merrill said, “If the nesting doll fits …”
Even if one shares Clinton’s suspicions of Stein and Gabbard—and, as a longtime observer of Soviet and Russian government, I do—her decision to inject herself into the 2020 election was a mistake. It was exactly the kind of clumsy, self-absorbed move that, despite Clinton’s lifetime in the public eye, revealed a total misunderstanding of how politics work. Far from exposing or thwarting Gabbard, as Clinton loyalists want to believe, the former secretary of state overshot the mark by making an accusation without proof. Gabbard will now dismiss real concerns about her as just so much conspiracy theorizing. [Continue reading…]