Barring some new revelation it looks to me as though the Hillary Clinton email story is dying down. There’ll be a Congressional investigation, of course, and I would predict that, unless the Republicans are most careful than we’ve seen lately, they’ll fare worse from them than Sec. Clinton will.
As I have said before, I believe that just about everybody has made up their minds one way or another about Sec. Clinton and aren’t likely to change them at this point. That implies that, should she actually run for president as just about everybody assumes she will, whether she is elected will depend more on convincing voters that support her to turn out and vote than it does on convincing people that she’d make a good president.
I would like to ask Clinton supporters a question. Do you believe that the email story will induce more of Sec. Clinton’s supporters to turn out and vote, will induce more of Sec. Clinton’s opponents to turn out and vote, or will have no effect?
Said another way, at this point what difference does it make?
The real question is: Why would anyone on either side bother to vote in a country with such a miserable political climate as the USSA has? Economists have already convinced me that it’s not worth my while to vote, regardless of the quality of competing candidates.
I disagree that this is all going to blow over. I think there will be more shoes to drop (probably mostly related to the Clinton Foundation) and that one or more other democrat candidates will decide to enter the race because she is weakened.
The email scandal may not have legs but it has cankles. (Sorry, that was I characteristically mean of me but I couldn’t resist.)
I think that most of those in the media are strongly predisposed for it to blow over which means that, barring some new revelation, it will and hereafter be thought of as one of the “phony scandals” which the Clintons and their surrogates will refer to as “old news”.
I don’t disagree that there will be a steady barrage of revelations and outrages, feigned or real. I’m speaking of this email matter which I think is actually quite serious from a national security standpoint.
Anyone who believes,properly, and with contempt, that Bush was key in destroying Libya, but who would vote for Clinton, key in destroying Libya is either a feminazi or a wuss.
Corr.
Bush…key in destroying Iraq.
I get the impression that most of the MSM have fallen out of love with the Clintons. They are still feared but not loved, and if the revelations reach a critical mass then the fear factor will dissipate.
GOP would have to run Cruz or Palin or Carson or Bachmann to get me to vote for her. That said, I think the GOP has cried wolf so much that most people won’t take this very seriously unless they find something bad in the deleted emails.
Steve
Dems will continue to support Hillary as long as there are no other viable candidates on the horizon. However, it’s the indies who are concerning for her electability, as they are not as ideologically tied to candidates, and actually do consider personal ethics/actions and policies more than party affiliation.
Nonetheless, Hillary doesn’t have the natural charisma like Obama and Bill have — something that seems to attract the MSM’s loyalty no matter how scandalous the scandal is. So, should another “darling dem” come on the scene, she may suffer another 2nd fiddle scenario like what happened in ’08.
I think that’s backwards, jan. There are no viable Democratic candidates as long as Hillary Clinton is running not the other way around.
IMO there are dozens of prospective Democratic presidential candidates who would be viable and run good, competitive contests against whoever the Republican candidate for president ends up being but Hillary Clinton sucks all the air out of them room.
Heh. Accusations of crying wolf are the easy and handy dismissal. There is only one plausible explanation for the pattern of her actions: to hide obfuscate.
But I suppose an alternative is possible. After all, it’s not like the Clinton’s have been mystified by the meaning of the word “is” in a deposition or an inconveniently stained blue dress planted by a vast right wing conspiracy or some crazy thing.
Sometimes these things serve as IQ tests.
Steve, pray tell how anyone can know if there’s anything scandalous in DELETED email? Which is rather the point.
But it’s good to know that we no longer hold our leaders to the standard that they should avoid the appearance of impropriety, if possible. No we expect them to court the appearance of impropriety, I guess.
…
And Steve, you forgot Jeb in your list.
Drew, IQ test or bullshit detector? They’re related, but not exactly the same thing.
“IMO there are dozens of prospective Democratic presidential candidates who would be viable and run good, competitive contests . . .”
IMHO there may be five at most for the Dems and ten at most for Republicans.
For the Dems, their VP is an “old hand” that was never meant to run for a third-term and won’t. He’ll be older than Reagan was when starting his second term. (I never thought we would elect a pre-Boomer again)
The Democratic governorships and Senate seats have eroded over the last several years, leaving the active bench in strong Democratic states that may not have as broad appeal.
Besides numbers, one of the issues Democrats face that Republicans don’t is how to serve an Obama third-term, i.e. promises of change in the context of continuity. Even if Clinton didn’t run and the bench was even btw/ Rs and Ds, I think a lot of Ds might sit the third-term out.
Anyone else see the stories about the current trend in undergarments on Wall Street? Apparently they’re all putting on their extra-absorbent pantaloons because Aunt Janet may drop one word from the Fed outlook summary this week. That word? “Patient.”
Good times!
“Steve, pray tell how anyone can know if there’s anything scandalous in DELETED email?”
It’s always recoverable. While I would vote for Hillary over Cruz or Palin, if she runs against Jeb I just won’t vote.
Steve
Dave, I agree that HRC’s candidacy does take all the oxygen out of the room, with regards to anyone attempting to go against the Clinton machine until she has fully made up her mind. The fact of the matter is that everyone knows her life-long ambition to be POTUS, and so assume she will run and be crowned the winner.
If her missteps, though, cause her to falter, then the democratic calculus will have to dramatically shift, and I think, as do many others, the dem bench is narrow, thin, and fails to satisfy the various constituencies comprising the democratic party. For instance, Elizabeth Warren is the dream candidate for a dear friend of mine — a very social progressive dem. She, however will present problems for the moderate dem, and they might stay home. Jim Webb, a more moderate democrat, might please the moderate faction more, but will alienate the social progressive wing. Others on the spectrum, be it Biden, Cuomo, O’Malley et al, all have holes in their presidential resume including age, ethical attachments, or superficiality. Plus, none of these, that I know of, have formulated viable financial backing. I know just being a democrat will open liberal wallets. But, what about the enthusiasm behind a donor giving up money to a lightweight contender? Only Warner might appeal to this kind of person, and she is ultra liberal, and will cause just as much anti-Warner money to be spent on the other side, plus discouraging the participation of more moderate dems to vote.
Don’t you have to get to a server to recover deleted mail? And, if a person has their own server, and declines said permission, how does one do that?
jan, even if they get the server there are ways to make recovering the email impossible. It takes some added work, but it can be done. The best bet in that case would be that the Clinton’s IT staff had been incompetent again. But that assumes that anyone can get their hands on the actual server or the back-ups (if those ever existed), and that seems unlikely as me winning a billion dollars in the lottery and convincing both my wife and Kate Upton to let me keep Miss Upton as a sex slave.