Everybody has their breaking point and apparently my breaking point has not yet been reached. I know this because I keep watching other bloggers collapse in a heap of their own former credibility. The rubbernecking is clogging the tubes.
This campaign has, by my count, wiped out or seriously diminished the trustworthiness (or, in some cases, the talent) of most of the established blogs that existed prior to its inception. A few people have apparently lost their sanity.
The latest test is the revelation that Women’s Voices Women’s Vote (WVWV) is now under criminal investigation in North Carolina for making potentially felonious robocalls. This has already set off a firestorm…some out there for all to see, some hidden in the bowels of the secret blogosphere. The problem? This baby has the potential to unravel and make all kinds of people look like paid shills…even some that aren’t paid shills, or were not aware they were paid shills. People are asking who is funded by whom, who knew what, who contributed to this campaign, etc. John Podesta’s money is everywhere.
There is one hysterical faction that stands to get dinged up in this (probably wrongly) that is defending WVWV with everything they’ve got, even though they so far have got very little. And there’s another faction that wants to be respectful of their friends and wait to see what facts might come out. (I’m in this faction). A third faction doesn’t want to hear anything and is full-bore convinced that the Clinton campaign used WVWV as a proxy for voter suppression. When this is all done, no one is going to walk away uninjured.
Non-disclosed funding and relationships are going to come out and people (mostly totally innocent) are going to have a hard time getting people to trust them. People will be shitty to each other, feelings will get hurt. It’s a big mess.
I just want to remind you of a couple of things. Just because someone is only one or two degrees of separation from John Podesta doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with them. The people that work at WVWV are good, idealistic people. Even board members at WVWV that have associations with the Clintons are good people.
But they are all lawyering up now because their organization committed a felony in North Carolina. And all the strings are going to get unraveled. People will insist that nothing untoward happened. Others will insist that is ludicrous (and it is) and it will do nothing but tear us all apart more and make us crazy.
The Panda wants this campaign over. The Panda is wise.
