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As recently as last week the conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinton’s election was as inevitable as anything could possibly be in American politics. While she remains the frontrunner, the only ones now calling her nomination and election inevitable are partisan Democrats and Clintonistas who are burying their heads in the sand as to how severe her transgressions really are. It is not a good sign for Clinton when the email scandal still dominates the headlines of the mainstream media, putting aside the exaggerated hysteria from the right, and when she is being mocked on Saturday Night Live.
The main reason the scandal has traction is that it confirms what so many have already believed about the shadiness and lack of commitment to transparency in government on the part of Hillary Clinton. It doesn’t help that she has remained quiet except for a deceptive tweet, further contributing to her reputation for mendacity. She finally announced a press conference but has has already received criticism from the press due to limited access. The Washington Post warns against stonewalling by Clinton.
While Republicans are trying to tie this to their Benghazi nonsense, others are bringing up the more likely type of information which Clinton might be trying to hide. Ron Fournier questions the relationship between secretive email and possibly illicit campaign contributions:
“Follow the money.” That apocryphal phrase, attributed to Watergate whistle-blower “Deep Throat,” explains why the biggest threat to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential dreams is not her emails. It’s her family foundation. That’s where the money is: corporate money, foreign money, gobs of money sloshing around a vanity charity that could be renamed “Clinton Conflicts of Interest Foundation.”
Clinton’s foreign contributions also are leading to The New York Times questioning her record as an advocate for women. This is criticism from what would have been expected to be a friendly newspaper on an issue which is the last we would have expected Clinton to have trouble on.
Republican criticism has been far more hypocritical. Email problems for Jeb Bush came out a few days ago. The other current Republican front runner, Scott Walker, is attacking Clinton, but Bloomberg News reports that he has used a private server of his own, concluding:
As Walker emphasizes to McCormack, prosecutors never charged him with any wrongdoing, though two of his aides were convicted of doing political work while on the county payroll. And Walker obviously wasn’t privy to sensitive classified information, as Clinton was. Still, the similarities are pretty uncanny, and Walker’s willingness to attack Clinton anyway is a good illustration of his aggressive political style.
While Democrats might need to go on to Plan B, there are no clear candidates to replace Clinton. Joe Biden’s name comes up occasionally, with National Journal reporting no signs that he is running. On the other hand, a report at The Atlantic points out that Biden is the only “prominent Democratic contender who has traveled to all three early presidential primary states so far in 2015.” There is hardly a movement hoping to see Biden run, but his name recognition might make him the Democrat in the best situation to develop a campaign infrastructure quickly should Clinton continue to self-destruct.
Updated from a post at Liberal Values
Update: She stonewalled at the press conference. My fact checking and analysis here.
