It’d be great for our nominee to hit John McCain on his refusal to release his taxes, but, oh, that’s right, we can’t because Hillary is doing the McSame old thing.

Hillary likes to tell us that she’s been “fully vetted” before, so there will be no more surprises if she becomes our nominee. Really? Putting aside her husband for a moment, let’s talk about her taxes. Hillary and McCain are both refusing to release their tax returns. (Obama released his returns last April, 2007.) Hillary says she’ll release hers once she becomes the nominee. And McCain won’t make any promises at all.

What is Hillary afraid that we’ll find in her returns?

The candidates preceding Hillary released their returns before they were the nominee. According to the Washington Post, “Sen. John F. Kerry released his returns in December 2003, long before winning the nomination; Vice President Al Gore’s returns, of course, were already public.” And Kucinich, Dean, Clark, Gephardt, and even evil Joe Lieberman released his returns.

Then there’s Bill Clinton. In 1992, Bill Clinton made his tax returns public during the primaries. But, there was a catch. He didn’t release his 1979 and 1978 tax returns. Those were the returns showing that Hillary had made a 10,000% cattle-futures profit that raised a few eyebrows.

So is that why Hillary isn’t releasing her returns? Because she knows that sometimes tax returns hide things that might appear (or be) scandalous? But even that argument doesn’t make sense since Hillary has promised to release her returns AFTER she becomes the nominee. That means that she has no privacy interest in her tax returns, she’s going to let the public see them soon anyway, but she simply doesn’t want Democratic voters to get the chance to have her tax returns inform their vote during the primaries.

See, here’s how it works. Hillary’s tax returns could have something foul-smelling in them, like her 10,000% profit on the cattle-futures. If she releases her returns now, it gives you and me and every other Democratic voter the chance to judge her on what’s in her returns, and vote accordingly. But if she waits until after she becomes the nominee, she knows she has us by the, uh, cattle-futures. As a Democrat, I might not vote for Hillary in the primary if I see something fishy in her tax returns. But in the general election, of course I’m going to vote for Hillary, regardless of what’s in her returns. At that point, only Republicans will hold Hillary accountable for something fishy in her returns so she mitigates the damage by releasing them later rather than sooner.

So in a nutshell, Hillary says she’s been fully vetted, that there are no more surprises in her life. But Hillary doesn’t want you to know what surprises might be in her tax returns, lest it influence your vote. But she doesn’t care if you see her tax returns a few months from now, when it’s too late to influence your vote. That means that privacy isn’t Hillary’s concern here, since she’s pledged to release the returns eventually. Her concern is that she hasn’t yet been fully vetted, and she wants to keep it that way until it’s too late for us to get buyer’s remorse, or at least act on such remorse if we get it. There may be another cattle-futures type scandal in her current returns, for all we know. And were she to release her tax returns now, Democratic primary voters and super delegates might not like what they find, and vote accordingly. And we can’t have that.

People with nothing to hide don’t usually hide.