While it might be a stretch to label Hillary's "Get Out of Jail Free" card issued yesterday by FBI director James Comey a "Nixonian" moment, that is what it feels like to me. Certainly the powerless public is used to seeing the powerful skate. After all, how many times have we reminded ourselves that none of the "Masters of the Universe" behind the 2008 global economic meltdown spent time behind bars?
The difference here is that we were never asked to vote for Dick Fuld or Angelo Mozilo, at least not directly, as we are now being asked to vote for Hillary.
Nixon resigned in disgrace and was spared criminal prosecution, in what was almost assuredly a quid pro quo, thanks to a presidential pardon handed down by a successor Nixon himself selected. The public was enraged for a while, and it no doubt cost Gerald Ford a close election against Jimmy Carter in 1976, but it turned out that the whole Watergate Nixon resignation was a handy Judas goat scenario which allowed voters to think that the "good guys won" and the body politic had been healed.
Clinton is not going to bow out, and voters no longer believe that "good guys" serve in government. There is no wiggle room left, not anywhere near the space available to present-day elites as was nearby for those present at the creation of neoliberalism in the Carter years.
I say it feels like a Nixonian moment because we are at the threshold of the mausoleum. The mausoleum is the Hillary White House. Once we pass through it we will be in a different world.
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