Chelsea Manning vs. Ben Cardin: Battle of the sellouts

In case you missed it over the weekend, convicted traitor Chelsea Manning is now running for Senate in Maryland, which is only the fourth or fifth weirdest story of 2018 so far.

Here’s his campaign ad:

In retaliation, the Democrat party is already circling the wagons around incumbent Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. Leftist journalist Glenn Greenwald responds with the headline: “Centrist Dems Launch Smear Campaign Against Young Trans Woman, All to Keep an Old Straight White Man in Power.”

Greenwald blames, as CR’s Jordan Shachtel explains, “Jewish puppet masters” for the defensive play, painting the struggle as one between a noble “whistleblower” and ”icon” of the progressive cause and “one of the Senate’s most reliable and loyal supporters of AIPAC’s agenda and the Israeli government.”

Never mind, after all, that Manning is a convicted traitor who put American lives in jeopardy. Never mind that Manning got an early release from prison so that a Democrat president could raise a solid middle finger to real America on his way out. And never mind that Cardin’s favorable ratings are through the roof among his base.

The question that Greenwald should have asked is why the Democrat party would seek to defend a solid and reliable vote against a convicted felon who is equal parts a notorious traitor to the republic and a national punch line? The answer to that one is clear enough.

This fight, of course, benefits the Republican Party tremendously.

Not only does the GOP get to benefit from a cannibalizing primary that will pit the Democrat party’s establishment wing against the radical identity politics of its more progressive members, the Republicans also get to message hard on national security either way.

The real question in all of this, should they choose to ask it forcefully enough, is which of these two, Chelsea Manning or Ben Cardin, has done more to sell out America’s national security?

Was it:

1) The convicted traitor who was sentenced to years in prison after leaking classified information that did immeasurable damage to American military operations, allies, and diplomatic relationships?

2) One of the co-authors of the legislation that ushered the Iran deal around the Senate’s treaty process — secret side deals and all — to put the Islamist terror-sponsoring regime well on its way to developing its own nuclear weapon?

The argument against having Manning hold a desk in the greatest deliberative body in the history of the world has nothing to do with his gender dysphoria or the sex-change surgery he got at taxpayer expense to address his symptoms.

It has everything to do with that fact that those factors are the primary reason that Manning is making incredibly laughable campaign ads instead of serving his full 35-year sentence in a federal prison cell clad in an orange jumpsuit.

Meanwhile, the argument against keeping Cardin in the same seat has nothing to do with leftist conspiracy theories; quite the contrary. It has to do with the nuclear layup that he helped provide to a sworn enemy of a key U.S. ally, while endangering American interests around the world.

When you put it that way, the choices for Maryland’s Democrats are remarkably unenviable, but such is the life for a party with such a shallow bench.

It's hard to tell which of these arguments and candidates will be deemed to be less a national security sellout, but at least it’ll be fun to watch.

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