Peter Rothpletz writes:

Democrats must not let Jeffrey Epstein die.

They must highlight how this saga exposes the president for who he has always been.

In the decade Teflon Don has spent on the national stage, no scandal has stuck to and haunted him quite so viscerally as the Epstein affair. He’s never before appeared so flustered, forced to answer question after question about the women and girls whose lives were destroyed by his former “best friend”.

The world may never know what is inside the so-called “Epstein files.” What is clear is that the contents are damaging enough for the president and his human flak jackets to call the whole affair a “hoax”, recess Congress to prevent a vote on releasing the materials and send the deputy attorney general to visit Tallahassee, Florida, to speak to the convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who was subsequently moved to a “cushy”, celebrity-riddled minimum security prison in Bryan, Texas.

As the conservative pundit Bill Kristol noted over the weekend: “[Richard Nixon] said of Watergate, ‘I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish.’ Trump may have given us a sword. We should use it.” Kristol is right, to a point. Liberals, progressives and never-Trump Republicans must not let voters forget Trump’s festering, open wound without neglecting the kitchen table, cost-of-living matters that hurt them last fall.

In 2007, a far sharper and far more spry Joe Biden delivered a quip so clever and cutting that it ended another man’s entire political career. Rudy Giuliani was never able to recover after Biden observed how it seemed “there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11”. The line was funny because it was true; it was lethal because it exposed the emptiness behind the former New York City mayor’s tragedy-fueled candidacy.

This is the challenge for Democrats: how do they maintain a spotlight on a scandal that reveals Trump for who he is in a way that finally resonates with his base without appearing to exploit a tragedy , à la Giuliani? They must ground the abstract conspiracy in everyday terms relatable to the average American.

It goes like this: Trump protects elites. [Continue reading…]