The run-out-the-clock strategy for dealing with the Clinton Foundation and email problems that the Hillary camp leaked to Politico absolutely depends on an uninformed electorate dismissing the charges without any investigation.  They must, in other words, accept that this entire imbroglio is nothing but right-wing extremism and brush it aside as unworthy of further attention.  That is what Hillary has consistently done, lying at each step.

A supportive media is essential to the success of this strategy, of course.  Serious consideration must be ghettoized in media that can be dismissed as conservative, and therefore stupid, paranoid, racist, and…well…conservative.

That’s why an article by Jeff Stein appearing in Vox is so threatening.  Vox aspires to “explain” to its presumably young liberal readership what the news is all about.  And Vox is telling its readers that there may well be some fire associated with all that smoke around the Clinton Foundation.

There is not much that would surprise a high-information conservative, but the fact that Vox says there’s a problem is a big problem for Hillary.  After adopting the pro-Hillary contention that (so far) there is no quid pro quo established, Stein writes:

… if there was no quid pro quo, does that mean Clinton's conduct was aboveboard? I interviewed four experts this week — and their answer was that the Clinton really did risk dramatically escalating an already serious problem with money’s influence in politics.

The key to understanding why good government advocates are upset about the new revelations is to first get past the argument that Clinton Foundation donors were transactionally rewarded for their gifts.

This is not what my sources argued. Instead, the heart of their complaint was that the foundation’s contributors appear to have gained a greater ability to make their voices heard by Clinton’s State Department by virtue of donating to her husband’s private foundation.

This is why they see the new email disclosures as such a big deal. Talking with top government officials obviously isn’t the same as getting them to do your bidding, but doing so can help structure how they think, whom they turn to for advice, and, ultimately, what they decide to do. And the emails at least strongly suggest that foundation donors had a better opportunity to mold the secretary of state’s worldview than they would have otherwise.

This all but concedes my position and that of many other critics: access, getting heard, is itself a thing of value.

As this realization seeps into the leftist media, trouble lies ahead for Hillary.