If you feel contempt for Huma Abedin — and you should — you should feel far more contempt for Hillary Clinton. She did the same thing, but far, far worse — for the same reason: cynical, pathetic careerism.
As a foil for this argument, let’s examine some nonsense from hack extraordinaire Eleanor Clift:
This strategy worked for the Clintons politically. But after this latest press conference, I’m pretty sure that Abedin has stretched the Hillary mantle past the breaking point.
The essential problem is that the circumstances are very different for Weiner and Abedin than they were for the Clintons.
I’ll say!
Back in the late 1990s, the country’s stability, along with the future of the Democratic Party, hung in the balance. Even in 1992, when Hillary went on 60 Minutes to quell the controversy over Gennifer Flowers, many voters already saw her husband as a potentially transformative political figure, and plenty of them were therefore willing to overlook his transgressions. Weiner, by contrast, is running for mayor of New York City, not president of the United States, and based on his performance in public office so far, he’s not really worth the rest of us trying to forgive or forget what we know of his private behavior.
So if he were running for President of the United States, Democrats like Eleanor Clift would be supporting Weiner, not trashing him? (Answer: absolutely.) But because Weiner is just running for mayor, screw him. That seems to be Clift’s bizarre argument.
I noticed . . . different points of contrast between the two situations. Namely:
- We have no evidence that Weiner got a blowjob from any of the women with whom he sexted.
- Weiner did not have a supervisory position over any of the women with whom he had sexual (albeit perhaps just virtual) interaction, as far as we know.
- Weiner did not lie under oath to a grand jury about this.
- Weiner did not try to destroy the women who have emerged by calling them liars or sluts.
This is not to excuse Anthony Weiner, a pathological liar who conspired with his wife to lie to America about how he had changed. Here is the point I am making: Bill Clinton did all this and more. And Hillary Clinton supported him publicly, every step of the way.
Hillary and Huma: Standing by (and lying to the public about) their man.
In the 1990s, if you were a sucker, you might have been fooled into thinking that Hillary actually cared about her marriage. With hindsight, it is clear that she was a careerist. Nothing more.
Just like Huma, but way worse.
If you feel contempt for Huma, you should feel ten times the contempt for Hillary Clinton.
It’s important to understand that the reason any prominent Democrat is throwing Weiner under the bus at this point is because it endangers Hillary’s bid for the Presidency in 2016. The similarity of this situation to her own craven support of a soulless horndog is obvious, and her personal connection to Abedin makes it less likely that journalists will miss the angle. Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton just wants the Anthony Weiner scandal to go away. Because it’s obvious that Huma is trying to follow in Hillary’s footsteps.
