In 2007 Joe Biden, an esteemed senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted in favor of Bush's vanity war in Iraq. It was a craven vote for a transparently corrupt war intended, ironically, to safeguard his future electoral viability. To their credit, Democratic primary voters remembered that vote and denied Joe Biden the presidency. Votes have consequences. Americans do not favor giving pusillanimous politicians the keys to the White House. Does anyone doubt that Biden would have sailed to the nomination and the Presidency is he had only asked, "What's the REAL reason for this war?" and then voted as his heart and head both advised him? Instead, he (and Jeb Bush) are the only American politicians to ever pay a price for that war, and that price was astonishingly small compared to the price Iraqis continue to pay.
Between 2001 and last spring, Bill and Hillary Clinton were paid $153 million for speeches delivered to a range of oligarchs and big banks, including Goldman Sachs, the very company that profited so wildly from pushing the country to the brink of economic ruin. Like the Iraq war vote, these speaking fees are an affront to decency and common sense that Democratic primary voters appear unwilling to forgive. No US bankers have been jailed for their crimes against this country. For their outright attack on our economy that wiped out retirement accounts and life saving, they only got bonuses. Hillary Clinton may now be the only person in the upper reaches of power to pay a price for the reckless criminality of the US financial industry.
Is that fair? I don't know. But there is a heart beating within the US electorate and that heart years for the scales of justice to somehow be set right.
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