Charles P. Pierce Pierced James Comey's "Integritude" Re Hillary

Captions: 1. A cardboard cut-out of Donald Trump with cloven hooves on the Cedar Valley Trail on the Fools' Ride between Brandon and LaPorte City a couple of years ago. 2. A cardboard cut-out of Hillary Clinton with her head ripped off by low-lifes in the area; my husband, who caucused for Hillary in 2008 and 2016, found Hillary's head and held it over her neck so I could take Hillary's photo.

Henry P. Pierce, who writes for Esquire magazine, wrote a scathing review of James Comey's new book, pompously titled, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership." I loved the part where Pierce refers to Comey's "Integritude," a mocking reference to Comey's alleged integrity. Pierce said, "...[and] who knows, [Comey] may get better at explaining his ham-handed intrusions into the 2016 presidential campaign, during which he tried to be as apolitical as possible even though everything he did—and didn’t do—worked to sabotage the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. As much as he tap-dances, Comey can’t get around the simple fact that both campaigns were under FBI investigation, and that he went out of his way to tell the country only about the one against which the allegations were spectacularly trivial."

I love that commentary. It's so true and so beautifully stated. In my opinion, James Comey is remarkably unself-aware about his own motivations, both in his book and in his National Public Radio interview with Terry Gross on "Fresh Air." He said he felt absolutely "morally" bound to interject his criticisms of Hillary October 28th, 10 or 11 days before the 2016 presidential election while he knew that Trump's misconduct was 20 times worse and he, too, was under FBI investigation. He probably cost Hillary the election.

James Comey, while at times an honorable Republican, is sometimes a dishonorable Republican who just can't help sticking a partisan stick in a neo-liberal woman's wheel. But he won't admit to that. No, he felt honor bound to do what he did and tilt the election because all the polls, he said, indicated that she would win. Did he want her to win? Did the Russians? Did the Bernie Bros.? Did misogynists everywhere want her to win? Did people who had legitimate concerns about Hillary's relationship to Wall Street want her to win?

I really think that if our republic survives Trump and Trumpism, which is still a question at this point, it'll be a good thing that Hillary didn't win, because she would have continued the assault on Main Street that her husband Bill and Barack Obama had waged on behalf of Wall Street. The Democratic Party would have continued to be the party of the elite, the party of Wall Street and Martha's Vineyard, not the party of the people that it purports to be.

The neo-liberals couldn't continue the carry the mantle of the Democrats. They were alienating Main Street to the point where "the basket of deplorables" fell for a phony populist rather than vote for a woman (no woman has ever been elected president in the U.S. and only 22 have been elected to the U.S. Senate) whose speeches to Wall Street commanded large fees. Hillary never articulated a clear message. She kept saying, "look at my website." Hardly a stump speech. She was too cautious, too ambitious by half. If she hadn't been so ambitious she wouldn't have been so cautious. If she had cared more about the working class and the underprivileged than she did about her own success, she might have won. Her campaign was lackluster. I can admit that now.