The Clintons Feel the Heat

The heat wave has broken, but New York politics has become enveloped in its own heat wave: the Weiner-Clinton saga. It’s not just the Weiners and the Clintons who are keeping the scandal in the news. Anthony Weiner’s inamorata, aptly named Sydney Leathers has been enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame.

For those who want a full accounting of the details, the London Daily Mail has become a go-to source.

Now the Clintons are beginning to sweat.

Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin have been doing their best Bill and Hillary Clinton impersonations, but, for now it is not helping Weiner at the polls. For the Clintons it is a nightmare; it has thrown unwanted attention on the Clinton scandals.

Fred Dicker reported in the New York Post this morning:

Worried about the potential impact on Hillary’s likely run for president in 2016, the political power couple has begun aggressively distancing itself from the crippled mayoral contender, according to sources.

Doubtless, Anthony and Huma feel betrayed. The Clintons had been treating them as their protégés. After all, Bill Clinton officiated at their wedding and Hillary treated Huma Abedin like family.

Weiner and Abedin have not hidden the fact that they are just following the Clinton playbook in dealing with the scandal.

Feeling the heat, the Clintons are beginning to use anonymous surrogates to do damage control.

Dicker explains:

Bill and Hillary Clinton are angry with efforts by mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner and his campaign to compare his Internet sexcapades — and his wife Huma Abedin’s incredible forgiveness — to the Clintons’ notorious White House saga, The Post has learned.

“The Clintons are upset with the comparisons that the Weiners seem to be encouraging — that Huma is ‘standing by her man’ the way Hillary did with Bill, which is not what she in fact did,’’ said a top state Democrat.

Weiner and his campaign aides have explicitly referred to the Clintons as they privately seek to convince skeptical Democrats that voters can back Weiner despite his online sexual antics — just as they supported then-President Bill Clinton in the face of repeated allegations of marital betrayals.

“The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner’s campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,’’ said the source. “How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state.”

For some reason this Democratic operative seems to feel offended that anyone would compare Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton. After all, Abedin was not the first lady, was not a senator and was not secretary of state.

Sorry to have to say it, but that is not an argument. After all, people naturally tend to emulate their betters. Who else but the Clintons would Anthony and Weiner choose to emulate?.

If the tactic worked for the Clintons, why wouldn’t it work for the Weiners?

The notion that Huma Abedin is not first lady is no more an argument than Hillary Clinton’s mindless effort to distance herself from the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi.

Remember her immortal words: What difference, at this point, does it make? By this principle, we would never investigate any crimes and would never retaliate after being attacked.

The reasoning is astonishingly bad. Naturally, no one in the mainstream media will call her out on it.

Efforts to distance the Clintons from the Weiner scandal began last week with Michael Tomasky. Now, the Clintons have upped the ante. Soon, Dicker says, someone closely associated with the them, a Dede Meyers, will call for Weiner to drop out of the race.

In the meantime, New York Republicans are nowhere to be seen or heard.