Self-Admission not equivalent to Allegations
One thread common in political conversation today is to attempt to deflect criticism of the president by alleging that HRC is also a criminal.

Conservative columnist Steve Chapman reminds us that nearly all the knocks against the president are based on his own admissions. This is not even remotely comparable to the knocks against HRC, which are a mixture of fabrications, exaggerations, and minor errors common to just about every public figure. And unlike the president, HRC does not proudly admit to these accusations.

But conversations are like deep trenches now. Each side repeating rehearsed scripts from within their own movie, lobbing assaults from one trench to another like a tourist on a bus travelling through a strange neighborhood and pointing out... suffice to say no listening, only hardened positions.

Eugene Robinson builds on this partisan flight from reality and concludes that we are closer to the edge, closer to banana republic instability and autocracy, than we are willing to admit.