The Torricelli Solution to the Coming Clinton Implosion

Andrew C. McCarthy:

Last week’s shattering report by the State Department’s inspector general drew the conclusion that several of us at National Review have been urging for over a year: Hillary Clinton’s systematic conduct of government business over a homebrew e-mail system resulted in serious violations of federal law.

Mrs. Clinton’s withheld tens of thousands of government records (the e-mails) for nearly two years after she departed the State Department. She failed to return all government-related e-mails upon demand. She destroyed (or at least attempted to destroy) tens of thousands of e-mails without consultation with the State Department. And she did it all malevolently: for the manifest purpose of shielding her communications from the statutory file-keeping and disclosure requirements.

The inspector general euphemistically couches these violations as transgressions against “policies” and “procedures.” Yet his report also acknowledges that these policies and procedures were expressly made pursuant to, and are expressly designed to enforce compliance with, federal law. The State Department still strains to avoid stating the obvious: Mrs. Clinton is a law-breaker.

In an excellent column following release of the inspector general’s report, National Review’s John Fund envisioned the increasingly plausible implosion of Clinton’s candidacy — i.e., a scenario in which Democrats dump her owing to her metastasizing legal woes, coupled with her extraordinarily high negatives (general disapproval, untrustworthiness, unlikability, etc.). The latter are set in stone after a quarter-century’s antics.

Relatedly, on Twitter, I floated the possibility that Democrats could resort to the “Torricelli Solution.”

In October 2002, seeking reelection while beset by an indefensible corruption investigation, Senator Robert Torricelli was badly trailing his Republican rival, Doug Forrester, as the race came down to the wire — no small thing in the blue Garden State. At the eleventh hour (actually, more like after the twelfth hour), Democrats persuaded “the Torch” to step aside. Into his place they slid 78-year-old Frank Lautenberg, a reliably partisan former senator.

The lateness of the switcheroo denied Republicans a meaningful opportunity to campaign against Lautenberg, in violation of state election laws. But New Jersey’s solidly Democratic judiciary predictably looked the other way. Overnight, the polls flipped and Lautenberg won going away.

The point of my tweet was to poll the Twitterverse about who might play Lautenberg to Hillary’s Torricelli. The consensus choice was Vice President Joe Biden, who appeared poised to enter the race months back and seems to have been chomping at the bit ever since.

There was also a common inkling that Elizabeth Warren would be chosen as veep and heiress apparent. The hard-left senator is a natural choice: She would appease not only lefty women dismayed by Hillary’s implosion but also socialist Bernie Sanders supporters, who are the energy in the party at the moment.

This is the very ticket that John’s column foreshadows. He is probably right that Democrats would make the switch in the next few weeks rather than at the last minute. Mounting a national presidential campaign is much more complicated business than a compressed Senate race in a single state. Indeed, that is why it would take a well-known national figure like Biden to pull it off.

As a practical matter, though, the later the trade could be made, the better for the Dems. The longer Hillary perseveres (and Donald Trump expends time and energy campaigning against her), the more Democrats would be energized, when she finally pulled out, by their relief at being rid of the Clinton baggage once and for all.

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