To the best of my knowledge, the 2016 election is long over and like it or not Donald J. Trump became the President. Somehow, Mr. Trump and many of his supporters in Congress are still agitating against Hillary Clinton, as if the election took place yesterday. It’s time for the winners to stop being sore winners.
I understand the word “fixation.” Many of my friends over the years have had a hang up about an old girlfriend. Down South, many of the old timers are still arguing about the Civil War. If you go to Richmond, Virginia, you can buy Civil War books and memorabilia. For some people it is an unending war. Some of my friends who were Brooklyn Dodger fans have never forgiven them for moving to Los Angeles.
But why President Trump finds time to tweet each day about Hillary Clinton is either a sickness or the fact that talking about Hillary avoids talking about the first six months of White House failures. For the record, Mr. Trump beat Mrs. Clinton in the Electoral College. The fact that she trounced him in the popular vote has caused him to go ballistic every waking hour of the day.
It’s bad enough that Mr. Trump can’t get Hillary out of his thoughts; there is more than a handful of members of Congress who want to reopen the email investigation and cross-examine the former Attorney General Loretta Lynch over her airport conversation with President Clinton. Six months of accomplishing nothing should be a good reason for Republicans to try to pass a real healthcare bill. Instead, all some of them want to talk about is how to torture Hillary Clinton.
To the chagrin of many Democrats and independents, Mrs. Clinton was defeated last November. She was beaten by a reality television star. She ran a terrible campaign and somehow was never able to articulate a reason for the voters to embrace her and not candidate Trump. If you are interested in the inside story of a failed campaign, the book Shattered by Jonathan Allen and Aimee Parnes is good summer reading.
This book is chock full of details as to how the campaign fell apart. Besides being unable to get a winning message across to the majority of the voters, the campaign suffered from infighting and lack of cohesion. Failing to campaign aggressively in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania was fatal to the struggling effort and for a Democrat is unforgivable.
But enough is enough. It’s time for the president and some of the Congressional nut jobs to leave Mrs. Clinton alone. Her years of dedicated service to America have earned her the right to privacy and a chance to move in a new direction. This country has so many critical challenges and all of its elected officials should get back to performing the job that the voters sent them to Washington to do.
Former State Assemblyman Jerry Kremer is a partner at Ruskin Moscou Faltischek in Uniondale. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the publisher or Anton Media Group.
