Paul Manafort’s resignation from his brand-new and useless role in the flagging Trump campaign is possibly a relief for the rowers still in the lifeboat. They think.
Trump himself set Manafort gingerly on the dock with a cheery sendoff: Manafort had gotten the campaign to the point "where they are today.” That’s called damning with faint praise.
The Trump campaign may think that it's out of the woods, but to further burden the metaphor, they're just crossing a firebreak.
Since Trump wrong-headedly seems to think of a political campaign as a business deal, he hired Manafort as someone he knew to be just like him, possessing situational morality, understanding some of the methods necessary to do international business and, as a bonus, running foreign political campaigns for despots. As a result, knowingly or unknowingly, Trump ill-advisedly hired someone with significant baggage that happened to be much like Trump’s.
Though Manafort is history, the barely-contained stench of the Russian-connection remains a noxious ticking time bomb for Trump. His Putin relationship, whatever it may be, his daughter’s Putin connection with Putin’s mistress, whatever that may be, beg clear and thorough explanation. And if no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming, there needs to be satisfactory investigation.
Perhaps the New YorkTimes, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post are already all over the story. In any event, having the facts in this critical matter in the public domain before the first upcoming debate would be useful for voters who demand to know for whom, and for what, they are about to vote.