Yeah, I've Considered the Accusations

One of the things that I hear from time to time on the internet and in face-to-face conversations is that we (you know, "libtards", "Hillbots", "lefties") don't care about the accusations made about Hillary Clinton, or refuse to consider them. On the contrary, what I don't do is accept everything that is thrown at her at face value, without question, what I do is attempt to ascertain the facts whenever possible, to see if there is anything to the accusation. First I look at the accusation itself, is it something that I should care about? We're electing a President, not a church pastor or a Boy Scout leader. Frankly, whether the President of the United States has personal ethics or morality that lines up with mine is really irrelevant to whether they do a decent job leading our nation. Few would argue that President Carter was a fundamentally decent man, but most would agree that he was, at best, ineffective as President. Next, does a particular trait put a candidate outside the norm? For instance, Clinton is widely accused of being a serial liar (although few actual examples can be found) - does anyone truly think that politicians don't lie, at least occasionally? Is the standard being applied to one candidate being universally applied?  Finally, are the accusations actually true? This last one is a little tougher and takes some work, rather than simply relying on internet memes, sound bites, or tweets.

In looking at Secretary Clinton's situation we see the "Where there's smoke there's fire" fallacy. Surely with so many things popping up, it all must be true. But why haven't any of the charges stuck? What about the never-ending Benghazi hearings that produced no evidence of wrongdoing despite admittedly being a tool by the Republicans to discredit her? What about the FBI investigation into the use of the private email server that resulted in no charges being filed? What about the allegations that  the Clinton Foundation gave government access to those who donated large sums of money? None of these allegations went anywhere. Anti-Clinton partisans believe that the lack of any criminal charges shows how untouchable the Clintons are and can get away with any and all illegal activity. Think about that for a minute - Clinton is so powerful that she can deflect any consequences for her actions, but not powerful enough to be able to quash the allegations themselves. Perhaps the explanation is that there's little to nothing there, but opponents just throw as much mud as they can, hoping that something sticks.

So what are the main allegations?

The private email server:
The basic facts are indisputable. Clinton used a private email account, housed on a server located in her home for email correspondence rather than a State Department email account. The big issue here is how you interpret this. Opponents will argue that this put us at risk due to classified security information being hacked. But it wasn't. Lost in all this is the fact that previous Secretaries of State (and surely other cabinet officers) did this as well. Colin Powell is on record as describing how he purposely circumvented security protocols. The FBI Director characterized this as careless. Clinton admits that it was a bad idea and would not do it again knowing what she knows now. An incident of bad judgement, but hardly rising to the level of treason or criminal activity as the "lock her up" crowd believes.

Benghazi:

The reason that anyone even knows about the private email server is the Benghazi hearings. Yes, four people, including the ambassador, were killed during an attack on our embassy in Libya. As terrible as this was, people have been killed in embassy attacks before. Despite multiple Congressional hearings by Republicans whose stated goal was to bring Clinton down, it was determined that no wrongdoing could be laid at Clinton's feet. 

The Clinton Foundation:

The Foundation takes in donations from around the world. The Clintons have been accused of favoring nations that have donated large sums to the foundation, so called pay for play. Plenty of insinuations, but no evidence. At all. Neither Secretary Clinton nor former President Clinton take any salary nor profit personally. 

Clinton cannot be trusted (she lies):

Clinton has been characterized as untrustworthy and dishonest for years. It was only recently that an example could be provided. Clinton had stated on several occasions that she had not sent any classified material through her private email server. FBI Director Comey was asked in a Congressional hearing if the mails contained classified material and had to answer that there were. This was pounced upon by the Republicans and many media outlets as proof that Clinton was lying. What was overlooked was nuance that Comey's answers actually contained. He testified that the emails were not properly marked and a person who’s an “expert at what’s classified and what’s not classified” would reasonably infer “that those three documents were not classified.” So, no, she did not lie. 

Granted, I would have liked to see a candidate who did not have the baggage that Clinton has so that we could focus on the issues, rather than the scandal du jour, but we don't have those other hypothetical candidates. Joe Biden chose not to run, O'Malley dropped out and Sanders did not get enough primary support to beat Clinton. So Clinton is who we have. In my opinion the accusations hurled at her are political, and contain as much fact as any partisan attack, but do not preclude her from being fit to be president of the United States.