photo courtesy of etsy.com

Hypothetically, let’s say you lost the Nevada primary because of your failed efforts to suppress the vote in 2008. Specifically, you attempted to suppress the vote of a particularly powerful union, the Culinary Workers Union,  namely women, minorities, and working people, who caucus on Saturday, on their lunch break, on the Vegas strip, because their jobs do not allow them to go to the polls when everyone else does. Let’s say this union chose to endorse the other fellow, and you filed a lawsuit that amounted to disenfranchisement of their entire population and denial of the validity of their way of life. Let’s say the lawsuit was so abysmally unpopular that you had to politically and personally distance yourself from it, and force a smile when all the Nevada delegates ultimately voted for the other fellow.

This is all hypothetical, of course, unless you are Hillary Clinton. If you are Hillary Clinton, your supporters actually filed that lawsuit. If you are Hillary Clinton, you see Nevada as a giant land mine, and you want the other fellow to step on it first. You might even try to stir up trouble between the other fellow and the particularly powerful union that defied your legal strongarm technique in the last primary. If you are Hillary Clinton, you see trouble ahead in Nevada because of how you treated their people last time, and you want to present yourself, as always, as the least worst choice.

This is ButtonGate. The Culinary Workers Union has said that it will not endorse a candidate this year. There are reports of some people wearing Bernie buttons and also wearing the signature yellow Culinary Workers Union button. These reports come from a single source: Jon Ralston. This is the same Jon Ralston who nailed Harry Reid to the wall for his unsubstantiated claim to have knowledge of Mitt Romney’s tax returns. As far as I can tell, he is a man of principle. He is, however, a single source, and a single source is insufficient for proper journalism, especially when the Culinary Workers Union is already walking back it’s statement from “outrage and disappointment” to “the situation has been resolved.”  

I don’t have any proprietary information. I don’t know, for example, the exact number of FBI agents petitioning the Justice Department to formally charge Hillary Clinton in the matter of classified and above-top-secret material on her unsecured private server. I don’t care to speculate about that. I do, however, recommend caution in all matters of lying, slandering, misinforming, rumor-mongering, and any other dishonest activities on the part of the Clinton Campaign. If it’s a question of honesty, Hillary Clinton is unlikely to be perceived as the least worst option, by anyone, regardless of their political views.