Remember Leona Helmsley, the billionaire Queen of Mean, whose infamous attitude of, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes,” presaged Hillary Clinton’s mocking attitude towards national security and classified documents? While the two are similar in other ways, such as being hugely wealthy New Yorkers who were and are snottily rude and abusive to the hired help, including those who protect their lives, it is Clinton’s queenly dismissal of the rules governing the handling of the nation’s secure electronic transmissions that got me to wondering how her Leona-like, I’m-above-the-law behavior might affect her election prospects in 2016 even if the corrupt Obama administration lets her skate on her clearly criminal violations of federal security statutes.
From what I’m hearing, those of us who have served our country in positions requiring us to handle classified documents and transmissions take a much dimmer view of Hillary’s behavior than those who have never borne that responsibility. Perhaps that’s because we have a better understanding of the potentially perilous consequences of her crimes, actions that done by us could have, and sometimes did, imprison we “little people” who dared handle classified materials with the Clinton circle’s cocky contempt. There are many Americans out there whose careers were stunted professionally, if not ended, by mere allegations or suspicions of mishandling of such materials. Some actually have, and still are, serving hard federal time for far less risky behaviors than what we have seen from Hillary Clinton.
The question in my mind is just how many current and former security clearance holders there are in America right now who are following Hillary’s deliberate and intentional treachery and who will be absolutely livid if this Clinton Queen of Mean ultimately pays no price. Determining current numbers is no problem. As reported by defenseone.com approximately 4.5 million Americans held security clearances at the end of 2014. That figure is down significantly from 2013 when it was over 5 million. According to that same article, requests for new background checks is also down but still is 665,000 annually, including first time requests as well as reissuances, which are required every five years for Top Secret and every ten years for Secret. But these numbers only tell us about current holders. How many Americans are out there who like me haven’t held a clearance for decades but who still hold a very healthy and patriotic respect for the process?
Because figures on the Internet vary, even from supposedly authoritative sources, all the figures that follow are approximations. There are roughly twenty-plus million veterans alive today with about two million of those being retirees. Since almost all retirees are senior officers and senior NCOs, you can make a safe estimate that virtually all of them held security clearances and most of those Secret or higher. Also most of those retirees are married to spouses whose lives at times were constrained by the necessities of their mates protecting sensitive, national security information. How many of them heard many times in their lives, “Sorry, Babe, but I can’t talk about it.”? Being more familiar with the need for tight lips and the concept of national security than your average American, most of those marital partners will tend to vote like their spouses.
Now, let’s take a very conservative estimate of fifteen percent of the remaining eighteen million, non-retiree veterans as having held security clearances which gives us another 2.7 million voters. Figure most of those are married to similar-voting spouses and round the figure to four million.
As for retired federal employees and federal contractors who held security clearances, that’s anyone’s guess. The total number has to approximate the military figure but since so many are unionized and thus Democrat voters no matter how corrupt the candidate, I’m only going to take a very cautious figure of one million and double that for spouses. Retired federal contractors who held security clearances is another rough guess, but based on the graph attending the article at defenseone.com, it looks like they are roughly one-quarter of the current active total. Let’s call it one quarter of the combined military retired with spouses and retired federal employees with spouses and when we account for their spouses, we have a figure of 2.5 million contractors.
Now add ‘em up: 4.5 million active security clearance holders, 4.0 million military retirees with spouses, 4.0 million non-retired veterans including spouses, 2.0 million retired federal employees plus spouses and finally, 2.5 million retired contractors and spouses. I get roughly 17.0 million American citizens in the high-voting, senior age category with the potential of becoming single-issue motivated, negative voters if Hillary is allowed to skip on these national security violations.
Even if I’m off by half, this “Classified” voting bloc is still substantially more than the number of votes by which Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012. It’s also more than the entire Jewish population in America and many more times that of the much vaunted “Jewish vote” which the Democrats tend to claim as their own. And if I’m off by only a third, we’re talking possible political disaster numbers somewhere between the Reagan-Carter debacle and the Reagan landslide over Mondale. Were I a Democrat strategist, or more importantly, a party powerbroker or fund-bundler, I’d be taking a hard look at the huge negative consequences to the party if Queen Hillary is allowed to continue to her criminally assisted coronation.
Crossposted at American Thinker
