Cheatin' Ain't Cool!

Bad news for the Clinton campaign if this newfound respect for rules and honest competition carries over from Olympic playing fields to ongoing political campaigns:

Where once there was polite, if sometimes awkward, silence, there is now direct confrontation. Much of it is along old political fault lines from the Cold War as, coincidentally or not, athletes from the West go after once-barred athletes from Russia and China.


“Antidoping is all about trust: trusting your competitors, trusting the drug testers, trusting the sports admin types,” said Richard Ings, a former antidoping official from Australia.

“What I believe you are witnessing is evaporated trust. Remember, nearly 100 positives have now been found at the Beijing and London Games. Sochi was corrupted. Russia had state-sponsored doping, and the International Olympic Committee caved in, unlike the International Paralympic Committee.”
...
The friction has been most pronounced at the swimming competition, where Yulia Efimova of Russia and Sun Yang of China, who have served suspensions for doping, have been vilified by rivals.

Whether it is antidoping activism by athletes who do not trust the Olympic committee or vigilantism, the denouncements have created plenty of awkwardness, overshadowing some of the athletic performances.
...
“They don’t belong in a sport,” Camille Lacourt, a star French swimmer, said Monday night in comments reported by the French newspaper L’Équipe.

“They should make up their federation of dopers and have fun among themselves. It disgusts me to see people who’ve cheated standing on podiums. Sun Yang, in the 200 free, he pees purple.”
...
“I’m just happy I’m here and racing,” said Efimova, who looked miserable. She appealed to people “to try to understand me,” but (her competitor Lilly) King, who sat stone-faced through Efimova’s answers, did not appear moved.

At one point, Efimova switched from English to Russian. The moderator nudged a pair of headphones toward King and told her she could use them to listen to the English translation. King declined...

What is striking is that the antidoping chorus in Rio has consisted of newcomers and veterans alike...

“I think what you’re seeing is the desire of Olympic athletes to uphold the values of the Olympic Games without exception,” said Adam Nelson, an American shot-putter and athlete-rights activist.

Nelson was named the winner of the 2004 Olympic shot-put competition eight years after it was contested when the original champion, Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine, retroactively tested positive for a banned substance.

“These athletes know, when an athlete cheats, he or she will experience a residual physical benefit for many years,” Nelson added. “But there’s also a residual sentiment that negatively impacts the sport moving forward.

"The clouds of suspicion that linger over doped athletes who return to competition continue to take a toll on the value of the clean athlete.”

Substitute establishment politician for athlete and I think you'll understand why so many establishment Republicans are busy lining up behind the ongoing Clinton campaign.

Today's establishment Journ-O-lists* too don't seem to be hedging their bets: they are so convinced that cheaters will win that they don't know how to cover an honest horserace anymore.
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*

"Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too. ... I've been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It's harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist was wrong."

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Don't look now, but... there they go again! Personally, I think their persuasion skills have gone soft though; they're better at convincing each other than they are the American people of their spin/propaganda.