Once again Saturday night Bernie Sanders was playing his part to enable Hillary Clinton to pretend to be a victim, a strategy that has worked for her in the past.  The newest topic is that she was victimized by Bernie Sanders’ political campaign.  Sanders used the debate on December 19 as an opportunity to apologize to her for alleged abuse of her voter information.

This is very suspicious, since Democrats never admit to anything.  Before both of her Presidential campaigns, for many months Hillary wouldn’t even admit she was running for President.  For Bernie Sanders to admit at a debate venue on national TV that his campaign was engaged in unethical campaign practices is out of step with the Democrats’ characteristic of never admitting to mistakes.

This is not just out of character for Democrats, it follows the comment of Bernie Sanders at the first campaign that he is tired of hearing about Hillary’s “damn” emails.  Hillary’s handling of emails as Secretary of State is a very serious issue.  She violated many Title 18 provisions and committed many federal felonies.  If not for the FOIA requests of Judicial Watch the voting public would not have seen any of her emails.  She did everything possible to cover up her felonious behavior. 

This is typical Clinton strategy: to commit crimes or violate ethical rules, then refuse to cooperate with investigations, delay them for years, then say there’s nothing there, then lie and deny.  Bernie Sanders helped her continue the lying and denying about emails at the first debate, now he’s interjecting a new attempt to rescue her campaign by making her a victim of abuse perpetrated by his campaign. 

This tactic of distraction was also practiced by her husband Bill Clinton, who as President would create faux crises to distract the news media from the ongoing investigations of his unethical behavior.  He would often use foreign issues since he had total control of them, such as the 1998 bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Africa.  That occurred when he was under investigation for his improperly -- and technically illegal -- affair with an intern working at the White House. 

Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky affair was covered up by the left-leaning press, just as Hillary’s emails were.  In both cases it took outside investigators to uncover and publicize the wrongdoing.  Matt Drudge exposed the Lewinsky affair, and Judicial Watch relentlessly sued in Federal Court to force Hillary to turn over emails.  The major news outlets willingly participate in efforts to protect Bill and Hillary, even when they commit crimes.

Now Hillary is enjoying the willing cooperation of Bernie Sanders at televised debates.  Sanders is playing his role as fall guy in order to make Hillary look like a victim.  Hillary could have avoided the email investigation if she had simply followed the well-known rules of handling classified communications at the State Dept. as the lowest paid employees do.   She cannot claim that she is competent and intelligent enough to be President while committing the most obvious and outrageous acts of incompetence and recklessness. 

Bernie Sanders now has two roles to play: his first role is to act as a far Left candidate in order to make Hillary look more middle of the road, and now his second role is to help her play her famous victim card: that she is a poor, helpless victim of the vast right wing conspiracy.  The first topic was the emails; the second topic is that she is the target of Bernie Sanders’ Watergate style campaign interference.  This identification with Watergate enables Hillary to tie into past Republican misdeeds.

As long as the public is gullible enough to buy into this strategy, and even if they don’t, Hillary will continue to set up these sham topics.  She has no choice.  She was not only a failure as a Secretary of State but she seized upon her position in government to enable her husband to make tens of millions in speaker’s fees.  Her emails prove her participation.  So she had to use Bernie Sanders to make the email investigation look like a political tactic.  The only real political tactic here is Bernie Sanders’ behavior.

It will be interesting to see what new topic Bernie will come up with at the next debate.  Hillary has to resort to these tactics to cover up her potential federal felonies in her email scandal and her tenure as Secretary of State.   Lincoln once noted that “you can fool some of the people all of the time.”  Whether this number of people that can be fooled is enough to get Hillary elected is another issue. 

Trump is popular with Republican voters because he is an outsider; he symbolizes a break away from traditional Republican insider politics.  Hillary Clinton is not only an insider -- the quintessential insider – she also represents the worst characteristics of traditional politicians, using her official status to make money, deceive voters, and pursue her self interest. 

If Democrat voters have evolved far enough to see through her act, and that Bernie Sanders is part of her manipulation of her campaign and the public’s perceptions of her campaign, then there’s a chance that real change will happen in Washington.  We can only hope for change. Yes we can.