CLINTON DOGGED BY EMAIL ISSUE
Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged that her 2016 campaign would be better than her 2008 campaign. And it has been.
She has hired the best and brightest of Democratic staffers. She has purposely downplayed her celebrity and has tried to connect with voters personally in Iowa and New Hampshire. She has focused on telling her personal story rather than trying to constantly answer the question: “Is she tough enough to be commander in chief?”
And yet, here we are. Clinton is in the midst of a full- scale Democratic freakout due to her faltering poll numbers and ongoing questions about how she has handled her private email server. Vice- President Joe Biden is considering running. Former vice- president Al Gore’s name — yes, Al Gore — has even been floated!
What gives? Increasingly, Democrats have begun to wonder whether the problem is not the campaign but the candidate.
“She has always been awkward and uninspiring on the stump,” said one senior Democratic consultant granted anonymity to assess Clinton’s candidacy candidly. “Hillary has Bill’s baggage and now her own as secretary of state — without Bill’s personality, eloquence or warmth.”
That same consultant added that he expected Clinton to easily win the Democratic nomination despite her weaknesses. “None of her primary opponents this time are Obama,” the consultant said. “Each lacks the skills, message and charisma to derail this train unless she implodes.”
But. “The general ( election) is another question.”
That sentiment was echoed repeatedly in a series of conversations with Democratic strategists and consultants not aligned with Clinton or her campaign. And it’s evident anecdotally as well. Clinton’s decision to make light of her email problems — she joked that she liked Snapchat because the messages disappear automatically — during a speech at a Democratic event in Iowa over the weekend rubbed a lot of people in the party the wrong way.
“The combination of messy facts, messy campaign operation and an awkward candidate reading terrible lines or worse jokes from a prompter is very scary,” admitted one senior Democratic operative.
Clinton last week handed over to the FBI her private server, which she used to send, receive and store emails during her four years as secretary of state. The bureau is holding the machine after the intelligence community’s inspector general raised concerns recently that classified information had traversed the system.
Questions about her use of the server have since shadowed her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Republicans have seized on the issue to raise questions about her trustworthiness.
Clinton still has time to get better. The benefit of an only marginally competitive primary fight means that she can use the next six months ( or so) to get in some practice.