I just can’t figure out how anybody can make sense of the Democrat Party messaging this campaign season. Hillary extols Obama’s rescuing of the economy; that he brought us back from the brink of catastrophe and created millions of jobs. And in the next breath, she laments how unfair the economic recovery has been for so many. Too many out of work, too many underpaid; too many worried about their future and the financial future of their kids. Now shouldn’t somebody say “which is it?” How can you credit the President for an economic recovery that has seen wages fall, manufacturing jobs wither, and the exponential growth of people living below the poverty line, subsisting on food stamps? And then she says she wants to continue this economic policy and record for a third term. My goodness, what is anyone to make of such contradiction. Yet it seems to only garner polite applause.

On Health Care, she again lauds the President for his heroic accomplishment in getting the Affordable Care Act passed, and chides Bernie Sanders for his plan to broaden the mandate too quickly with his Medicare-for-All pitch. That, she says, would be a step backward. Then she posits, as she did in their second debate, that there is so much more to do, citing 20 million Americans still without coverage. Didn’t the President enact Obamacare because we had 30 million Americans without coverage? Wasn’t that the figure he used? Shouldn’t somebody say, “Hey wait a minute. How could we have spent $834 million (HHS numbers, not mine) on a website to facilitate the enrollment (mind you, we’re talking the enrollment, not the medical treatment) of only 10 million people?” Or is it that the uninsured grew by 20 million post-legislation? If we still have 20 million without healthcare, as Hillary contends, then the legacy of the ACA will be its unaffordable, unsustainable bureaucracy and its open-ended financial liability that knows no ceiling. Yet the party’s pundits and its media operatives seem fine with the numbers.

Then she’ll pivot back to jobs, espousing the need for investment in infrastructure, education, roads and bridges, and so forth. All of which will naturally create good-paying jobs that will elevate single moms out of poverty and into prosperity, or some such thing. It all sounds very “shovel-ready” to me; wasn’t it only six years ago that the President passed his $900 billion stimulus bill to do just these things? The federal government has collected 18 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in this country since 1993. Its purported purpose: why, bridges and roads of course. So with all these sources of revenue, how in the world can we still have a crumbling infrastructure in this country? Why doesn’t anyone point this out to her?

Maybe because it is said her true calling lies in foreign policy. President Obama will point to the winding down of two wars, (including the demise of Osama bin Laden), the nuclear arms deal with Iran, and his noble pursuit of climate change initiatives as his greatest diplomatic achievements over the course of his two terms. Hillary contends she has been every bit the active partner of the President in these successes.

Now, taking the wind-downs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as “wins” at this stage is like the New England Patriots claiming they were “winding down” two football seasons with the New York Giants. If the jury is still out on anything, it is out on how these two theaters of war will ultimately play out. Hillary is quick to point out that the President demurred of her wise counsel concerning intervention in Syria; believing that the President should have acted sooner, armed rebel groups faster, and taken a tougher stance against Bashar “the true statesman” al Assar (her 2009 quote, not mine). And although she might have known better, she pursued the President’s policies as best she could.

Her real pickle is her stalwart support for the Iran Nuclear Deal which seems to be unraveling before our eyes. She actually points to her backing of this not-really-a-treaty Treaty as a testament of her acumen in foreign affairs. This, as the State Department is now reeling from the conspiratorial editing of the video record from a press conference in which the Iran Deal was revealed to have been well underway before a purported “diplomatic breakthrough” borne of “new leadership in Tehran” supposedly “opened the door”. Guffaws all around.

And this comes in the wake of top White House advisor Ben Rhodes unmasking the media “echo chamber” that was concocted to sell the deal to the public. Hillary still tells us in her straight-faced way that this is a good deal for America, to be heralded as a diplomatic accomplishment. And George Stephanopoulos bobs his head, Mika Brzezinski nods that she gets it, and Rachel Maddow, for once, has no rebuttal. With the way Democrats readily smear Republicans as intolerant mongers of fear and hate, how in the world can they abide the anti-woman, anti-Semite, anti-gay Iranians?

Can’t dwell too long on the matter of where she stands on climate change. I think she’ll pander to it, give Obama an “atta boy” on that one, though I doubt she’ll pick up the mantle and run with it. And so do you.

How is it that so many can dismiss her egregious conduct while in office? Her email scandal is a big deal, not because whether she did or didn’t compromise classified information, but because it was inspired by her obsession with secrecy and her overblown sense of entitlement that she be the sole arbiter of what comes to light and what doesn’t during her tenure. And she talks about Trump’s temperament; this is a serious and chronic character flaw dating back decades. Her utter failure when “the 3 AM call came” from Benghazi is further demonstration of her penchant to dismiss critics, blame others, dissemble on the facts and dodge responsibility.

I don’t see how the party can sit by as she attacks Trump University knowing the Clinton Foundation to be the largest glass house from which to throw stones. She is under investigation, dogged by scandal; a flawed candidate with high negatives who could not convincingly put away a rather lightweight primary opponent.

Recent developments suggest ISIS is under siege on three fronts from three different opponents, all receiving US military support and none reliant upon US ground forces.

The Iraqi military, supported by US airstrikes (and so far without assistance from the Shia-militias), have entered southern Fallujah and appear to be pushing forward despite ISIS counter-attacks that previously resulted in full-out retreat.  The Kurdish Peshmerga, in concert with US Special Forces, has overtaken strategic positions in the north and appears poised to move on Mosul.  It even appears that the US has been able to muster and lead a disparate group of Syrian rebels to battle ISIS in and around their de facto capital Raqqa.  Sensing an opening, and playing the percentages, Turkey has posited the notion of a joint military campaign with the US to finally seize this ISIS stronghold, at long last.

Adding to the Islamic State’s woes, what serves as a semblance of government in Libya has made military gains against the nascent ISIS forces in that country.  As the US-led coalition begins to imperil ISIS territorial occupation in Iraq, Syria and Libya, what had emerged as the Islamic State now more closely resembles heavily-armed, homicidal looters on the run.   They remain a lethal threat to the civilian population in all these places.  Worldwide, their global jihad against the West appears no less potent as a result of these setbacks.  But, what fed their mystique, what gave them legitimacy, and what propelled them to the global threat they still are, was the taking, holding, and governance of territory.   That chapter is apparently on the wane.

Flashback to September 2014 when President Obama was promising action in a White House address to degrade and destroy ISIL.  Fast forward to December 2015 when the President sought to reassure the country post- San Bernandino that there was a strategy in place that would ultimately prevail.  Prior to, and In between those speeches, the administration floated a slew of faltering, contradictory, half-measures that inflamed critics and sowed doubt among the hopeful.  This conflict looked unwinnable, largely due to Obama’s unwillingness to call the enemy what it was, militarily interdict the ISIS’ flow of oil and revenue, loosen its restrictive rules of engagement for airstrikes, and commit the needed troop levels to dislodge ISIS from its occupied territories.  He espoused what detractors called an imaginary coalition of Arab and western partners.

Well now.  Look what we have here.  Could it be that the President stoically weathered the piled-on denunciation of his “inaction”, worked tirelessly behind the scenes with disciplined discretion to forge workable alliances, and has prevailed in his ambition to at least degrade, and is perhaps on his way to destroying, this regional blight, all without the deployment of the 35,000 US troops some political opponents insisted had to happen?

Or did he just get lucky that ISIS wore out its welcome, was never built for the long-term, that other countries came around to seeing their national interest served in the destruction of this regional cancer, and decided to up their game while the US could still be counted on for support?

It’s probably somewhere in the middle.  But what is fortunate is that the tide is turning with minimal US casualties.  Granted, the civilian death toll and atrocities are reprehensible, but sadly, that is commonplace in regions where Sharia Law is implemented by religious fanatics.

That more Americans are not among the lives lost is a blessing.  And the credit for that may indeed belong at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.