Hil’s stumped
Unlike Trump, Clinton not cut out for this
Hillary Clinton issued an apology the other day about the hot mess she has made and her campaign has made with that personal email account she used when she was secretary of state, but it seemed about as sincere as what you get sometimes from an athlete or a celebrity in trouble, where you walk away not quite sure what they are even apologizing about, or if they apologized at all.
This one ended with her saying, “I take responsibility,” which was a tremendous relief. The rest of us were starting to worry that bungling this whole thing the way she has was somehow Roger Goodell’s fault, or Tom Brady’s. Or yours. Or mine.
As we move up into what feels like the regular season of this presidential campaign in both parties, Hillary Clinton — who was supposed to run away with this thing, who was running from the start like an incumbent — now finds herself in a statistical dead heat with Donald Trump when polls imagine the two of them go up against each other.
Now she says of her old friend Donald, “I’d love to debate him.” You wonder if she actually believes that, especially with the way she has stumbled around the ring so far. She’s the one campaigning like a rookie, not Trump.
“She’d be easy,” Trump said Sunday. “So much baggage. But I did hear her say it, that she wanted to debate me. But did you see her when she did? It was like a talking point, like she was reading a script written by a pollster.”
He paused and said, “She’s not a natural. I’m not sure she’s even going to make it to the starting gate.”
Trump was asked about Clinton's email controversy and the way she’s handled it.
“The fact that she even did it (had a separate server) is crazy,” Trump said. “That’s one. I know she thought there were advantages, for personal reasons.” His voice rose as he said, “But it wasn’t worth it! It especially wasn’t worth it knowing she was going to run for President. You know what it really was? More bad judgment from her. Like her bad judgment on Whitewater, where she got bailed out by a friendly prosecutor. Her bad judgment on Benghazi. And her bad judgment when she tried to tell everybody she was taking fire when she landed in Bosnia that time. Remember that one? At least there, she apologized quickly.”
A great summer for Trump was a terrible summer for Clinton. Always you hear that she is one of the most experienced presidential candidates we’ve ever had. She has been through two presidential elections with her husband — you’ll know she thinks she’s in real trouble when the big dog himself gets involved in the email controversy — and her own Senate campaigns in New York and that amazing campaign against Barack Obama. But sometimes you get the idea that she would rather be anywhere than on the stump.
Trump? Whatever you think of his politics, he does not just seem made for this kind of action and stage, he revels in it, all the way to the Iowa-Iowa State game on Saturday afternoon. One thing you know for certain: Trump doesn’t let Bernie Sanders take the fight to him the way Sanders is currently taking it to Hillary. It was Larry Wilmore who pointed out that Hillary is currently getting Obama-ed by an old white guy. It isn’t as interesting as what Trump has done to the political summer. But it is close enough.
It was mentioned to Trump on Sunday that he doesn’t seem to be enjoying the whole thing a lot more than Hillary Clinton, he seems to be enjoying himself more than anybody running.
“Well, one of the reasons I’m enjoying it is because I’m winning,” he said. “It’s like I go up five or 10 points every week. Who wouldn’t enjoy that? Then I’ll read that somebody like Carly (Fiorina) is surging. I’m at 40% and she’s at, what, three? But she’s the one surging.”
Trump announced three months ago this week. Now he is in this statistical dead heat with Clinton. It is as if one of them is playing offense and the other is constantly playing defense. Somehow, because of these emails, Clinton has managed to do the impossible: Add more baggage and more Clinton fatigue to this run of hers. She really is lucky she is not being charged for extra baggage the way the airlines charge you, or she might have to hit up Bill’s foundation for a loan.
“(She’s) not a natural, no matter how you cut it,” Donald Trump said again. “One of us is having a great time. And connecting with people. And one of us isn’t having a good time at all.”
You just assumed she'd be a better candidate this time around. She isn’t. Sometimes she acts almost insulted that she even has to run at all.