June 11, 2016
Hillary Clinton was in big trouble. The Inspector General stated she skirted the law by using her private server for classified information. Polls showed Trump was beating her by anywhere from two to five points. The number of new jobs created in our supposedly-improving economy was an abysmal 38,000. Sanders had pulled into a statistical dead heat in California. But the big blow was an article in The Wall Street Journal by Douglas E. Schoen raising the possibility that Clinton would be denied the nomination in favor of a stronger candidate.
Who is Douglas E. Schoen? A hard-core Sanderista? No. Mr. Schoen is the consummate Democratic insider. Not only does he have degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he has a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. An award-winning pollster, his New York City-based consulting firm has been advising national Democrats for over thirty years – Bill Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Evan Bayh and President Obama. His international clients included former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and three Israeli Prime Ministers.
So why would Mr. Schoen go after Hillary Clinton? It is because the Democrats know that the presidency is the Big Enchilada. Nothing else matters. With the presidency, their agenda can be foisted on the American public without democratic process. Through judicial, Federal Reserve and bureaucratic appointments, the government can legalize trans gender bathrooms, gay marriage, abortion and porous borders while using the IRS and Attorney General’s office to harass political opponents. They can keep the crony corporate capitalists and Wall Street Welfare State happy. There was no way this article was placed in The Wall Street Journal without President Obama’s approval.
Clinton read this article and rose to the task. She attacked Trump on several fronts while Trump failed to use this time period, when he had the nomination secured, to run attack ads in swing states and put Hillary further behind in the polls. Instead he attacked the Mexican heritage of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a fraud case involving Trump University. Trump has been pilloried by the establishment of both political parties for doing so. More damaging to Trump is he is giving Republican party insiders the impression he does not know what he is doing. Clinton now has a slight lead in most polls.
What everyone is missing in this fiasco is that Judge Curiel gave Trump a very favorable ruling. He set the trial date for November 28, well after the presidential election is over. So why would Trump attack him? It makes no sense.
Even more mind boggling was that Trump had the opportunity to debate Bernie Sanders. This would have been a fantastic forum for both men to bash Hillary Clinton. It would have drawn a huge audience, even if it were Pay-Per-View. Sanders may have won California furthering Democratic disunity. Again, this makes no sense.
Maybe Trump’s detractors are right; he is a loose cannon who doesn’t know what he is doing. But there is another possibility. Trump undoubtedly read Mr. Schoen’s article too. He knows the Democratic nominating system is a rigged game with the super delegates calling the shots. Perhaps he concluded that if he buried Clinton now, the Democratic Party insiders would jettison her in favor of Joe Biden or the dream Democratic candidate, Elizabeth Warren, the popular senator from Massachusetts. This is exactly what Mr. Schoen’s article threatened.
Warren has been publically attacking Trump and is obviously waiting in the wings should Clinton falter. She was reportedly President Obama’s first choice to be the nominee. She carries little political baggage, no criminal baggage and her liberal policies along with her anti-Wall Street rhetoric would quickly unite the Democratic establishment with the Sanderistas. She would be a much tougher candidate than Clinton. Perhaps Trump saw this and knew exactly what he is doing.