It will be a very slow and painful process for them, but the historic remnant of honest Democrats is coming to terms with the realization that serious, genuine corruption is at the heart of the production and use of the phony Steele dossier. Whether or not they realize that the dossier was the key to spying on the Trump campaign – used to justify unmasking campaign members whose electronic communications were intercepted by NSA monitoring, as Clarice Feldman explains today – they can smell the implausibility of Hillary’s denial of any knowledge of the dossier that cost her campaign and party millions of dollars.

Two elder statesmen of the Democratic Party are publicly chastising Hillary Clinton, drawing on their combined many decades of experience with campaigns at high levels.  Doug Schoen and Andrew Stein write:

When asked if Hillary Clinton was aware of the dossier and its financing, former campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN, “She may have known, but the degree of exactly what she knew is beyond my knowledge.”

When asked to clarify, Fallon waffled, saying that Clinton “may or may not have been aware.”

Former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she, too, was “not aware of anything related to this research arrangement.”

Yet it’s clear that the senior-most officials in the Clinton campaign and the DNC were aware of the dossier. After all, public FEC filings show that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Perkins Coie a combined $12.4 million. (snip)

With both of us having extensive experience in campaign budgetary decision making, the suggestion that top officials in the Clinton campaign, including Clinton herself, and the DNC weren’t fully aware of the research that their general counsel was commissioning strains credulity.

With more than 380 payments from the Clinton campaign and the DNC being made to Perkins Coie, it is seemingly impossible that the candidate herself would not have direct knowledge of the purpose of those payments or any earmarks being made, especially those for Fusion GPS.

Again, we have both operated in campaign settings of this nature before as strategists and as candidates, and for this significant amount of money, the candidate would fully understand its use and must authorize its purpose.

It is important to note that this op-ed was published by the New York Post, not the New York Times, which remains committed to Team Hillary to the exclusion of dissident Democrat voices.  Both men have long been fixtures on the Gray Lady’s pages, with Stein’s last political office being president of the New York City Council.

Now that President Trump has invoked the Watergate comparison, it is appropriate to note that President Nixon’s departure from office was in response to criticism from Republicans, who came to believe he had engaged in a cover-up of a third-rate burglary. When Republican Minority Leader Senator Hugh Scott told him that he should resign, he did so promptly.

 Hillary is covering up a far larger, far more disturbing program of spying on its electoral opponent. One that corrupts the most fearsome spying apparatus in the world, the NSA’s ability to monitor all electronic communications.

Now that two senior and well-respected Democrats are calling BS on Hillary, a crack (albeit still small) has appeared in the dam. When the FBI’s informant finally speaks publicly to Congress, there will more cracks, especially if he brings hard evidence in the form of recordings and documents.

To my eyes, the picture accompanying Schoen and Stein’s op-ed tells us a lot about Hillary’s mental state:

She has put on a lot of weight, and even expensive custom-tailored clothing can’t disguise the fact. She’s openly joking about her drinking, which is a very bad sign. All her adult life, she has demonstrated the capacity to live with stress levels that would wither the strongest personalities. But there has never been as strong a prospect for a personal reckoning.