Hunter-killer

The White House's effort to smear Joe Biden, despite its mind-blowing hypocrisy, has brought an issue front and center that the Democrats need to step up and address head on.  Notwithstanding Trump's flagrant abuse of his office for his and his family's personal gain, his focus on Hunter Biden highlights the appallingly corrupt but widely accepted nature of America politics. Did Hunter Biden act unethically? It's hard to say without answers to more specific questions. Did he advocate to his father for any of the organizations he was involved with while his father was in power? Did he pass any private information or insights gained through conversations with his father to those organizations that might have been helpful to them.

Biden Jr. is quite right when he notes this was poor judgment on his part, but arguably he is right for the wrong reasons.  He implied in an interview with Amy Robach, excerpts of which were screened this morning, that his mistake was not appreciating how it might interfere with his father's political campaign. But that's a paradigmatic concern, not an admission that in principle such behavior is intrinsically problematic. Of course, he (and the many other's in his position) will argue that the prevailing view in the circles in which he moved was that there was nothing wrong with cashing in on a famous family name, so long as there was no explicit connection between the actions of their powerful relatives and the interests of those he associated with professionally. But that's the same line of reasoning as the #MeToo perpetrators use to defend themselves: "those were different times and the norms were different then". They were, but that's no excuse.

The Democrats need a #MeToo moment when it comes to political influence and the appearance of corruption. As uncomfortable as it will be as skeletons in the closet are discovered, if they are to regain the moral high-ground they will have to confront the way business gets done in Washington and make some concrete and far-reaching proposals to clean up the town. They will need to make the case to the American electorate that they are not going to be part of the problem that alienates the political elites from the voters, that puts personal interests and campaign donor's interests ahead of those of the electorate.  Trump was right about the swamp and while he's clearly part of the problem, unless the Democrats take a clear stand against a system that works for rich  interest groups, voters will remain rightly cynical about the motives of our elected officials.