Just a shade over 24 hours after 129 people were slaughtered in Paris by terrorists, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took the debate stage in Iowa and utterly disgraced herself in a way that would have been shocking were it not so utterly mundane a phenomenon in modern US politics.
One of her opponents, Bernie Sanders, tagged her with the millions of dollars in campaign contributions she has received from the very Wall Street financial firms that burned down the US economy some years ago. Sanders essentially said those firms expect a return on their investment, and he was exactly right.
Secretary Clinton bristled. “Wait a minute,” she replied, “he has basically used his answer to impugn my integrity. Let’s be frank here.” Rather than be frank, however, Clinton went completely sideways and claimed that she takes barrels of corrupt Wall Street cash because 9/11 happened, or something.
I’ve been watching political debates of all kinds since God wore short pants, and this ranked right up there with the most vile, disingenuous, sneaky, low-road slippery debate statements I have ever heard.