I told you so: Anthony Weiner

Anthony Weiner!

My blog post of October 17 began:  

"Can a new scandal sink Hillary???   Could Anthony Weiner hold in his hands the future of the American Republic?   Keep reading"

The post concluded with the statement:

"Imagine this: A statement by Andrew Weiner one way or the other determines the election."

I may have been right, but on the wrong subject:

 The speculation came about because Drudge teed up a supposed explosive announcement in a kind of "Watch this Space" way.

It is this article on the right: 

The Breitbart/Drudge/talk radio news people have kept alive the idea that Hillary Clinton must be evil in some perverted way.  Possibly she is has  lesbian relationships.   There is no evidence for it but it is possible, or has not been proven impossible, and since people have questioned it therefore her sexual behavior is "questionable" by definition.  Questionable makes her already guilty of something: questionable behavior!

A million things can cause a close election to swing.  What if, I wondered, Anthony Weiner claimed Huma Amidin had a lesbian relationship with Hillary.   That  would probably move the polls.  Why might he do this?  It might create leverage in their divorce.  Without some leverage he might face a getting little parenting time or supervised-only parenting.  His silence is a huge bargaining chip.   So, I speculated: Anthony Weiner has the ability to move the election if he were to threaten to say something, whether true or not, that could affect the election.

Now there may be another angle on this:  I may have been right that Anthony Weiner holds in his hands the future of the American Republic and this election, but it may be because of something he already emailed or texted.  The FBI has announced that the new evidence of something--or nothing--comes from one of Weiner's devices.  Who knows what he wrote, or did not write.   I can easily imagine sentences which, if written, regardless of the context, could cause a major swing in the election.   For example:

"Oh, the things I know that I am not supposed to talk about.''  Or,

"Hillary gets a pretty good buzz and blabs about things when she drinks her merlot in the evenings."  Or,

"I knew about the Osama Bin Laden killing a day early." Or, a sexual report of the kind I had earlier considered, thanks to the Breitbart tease,

"Hillary and Huma have their little thing, which is why I text so much."

It is not hard to picture Weiner, presuming himself to be anonymous, bragging and putting himself closer into the middle of power and prestige, in his mental cocoon hoping to impress someone.  What he may have written in that context might be true but it need not be.  It only needs to have been written.   

Indeed, as of this moment, it only needs to have been speculated that it might have been written.   The damage is being done.

The problem for Weiner is that he has no credibility whatever in denying wrongdoing.   He has credibility only in reporting wrongdoing.   If he were to deny the potential classified material meaning of "the things I know that I am not supposed to talk about", saying it related to Huma's troubled childhood or Huma's wearing a padded bra no one would believe him.   

This is lose, lose for Hillary.    

I will say it again:   it is a strange thing to think that the course of this election might rest on the discretion and taste of Anthony Weiner while he sits behind a keyboard and camera.
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Peter Sage and Thad Guyer go back and forth on whether the polls are merely a worrisome trend for Hillary, or a real disaster. Peter says that Trump's Hotel ribbon cutting was a triumph: early and below budget. Thad talks about the models that predicted this was likely to be a good year for the party out of power. And preview of coming attractions: what the losing party needs to do to remake its party.

Click Here for the Podcast: Two Left Eyes, episode #9