“Hillary Clinton on Wednesday clarified that she alone bore
responsibility for the decision to use a private email server as
secretary of state.”
Cue the pudits: “Why oh why won’t she just clarify that she alone bore responsibility for the decision to use a private email server. If she’d only do that, this whole thing would go away. But she never does that.”
If she had said at the beginning that she had no excuses, that she was wrong, that she should not have used a private server, things would be a lot different. But she cut and trimmed and hemmed and hawed, and now she’s still having to talk about it.
Her latest comment is too little and too late.
Whether or not she’s a dollar short, she’s a day late. Many days, in fact.
She’s actually apologized almost exactly like that before…this was probably the clearest but she HAS apologized…almost ad nauseum.
And, we all know it doesn’t make a difference because even though she’s apologized, WE’RE STILL TALKING ABOUT IT.
My point is that she did do that, many days (months, years) ago. But the media refuses to hear her and report what she says. They always filter it through the Clinton Derangement syndrome that has all that smoke.
Now that Trump has entered a new phase of bamboozlement over immigration, the MSM has what it’s desperately wanted, which is justification for launching an all-out assault on Clinton in tandem with a multi-front fluffing of the entire Trump operation. Above all else, the MSM needs to be able to yammer about the horse race, and it’s hard to do that if one candidate is far out in front.
The AP has already kicked off this offensive, with its hatchet job on the CF in combination with their porn-studio quality fluffing of the Trump family:
http://bluenationreview.com/ap-tweets-then-deletes-trump-puff-piece/
I’ll predict right now that this will have an impact in polling, and the polls over the next 2-3 weeks will appear to show a “tightening” in the race, and people will freak out.
Of course, our ace in the hole is that Trump has shown no consistent ability to not shoot himself in the foot. We’ll see if Bannon and Conway can keep him on script.
Second ace in the hole: Trump has a pathological need to humiliate and undercut his staff. So if this new routine does start to work, the fluffing Conway is sure to receive as savior of the campaign will drive Trump crazy. He will blow the whole thing up just to prove that he is the ultimate boss.
I heard a discussion yesterday on Diane Rehm’s show which had some jerk from the NYT nattering on and on about how incriminating the new rounds of emails are, when no one knows what’s in them, whether they’re duplicates of the earlier ones, whether they’re instructions to Chelsea not to stay up too late. The proof was Comey’s accusations, which turned out to be his private opinion unsullied by facts. This was followed closely by the AP’s accusations that the Clinton Foundation was selling access to the SoS. The whole time the lone Clinton defender kept saying, “We know the AP story is phony. We know Comey’s presser was negated by his Congressional testimony. No one has any idea what’s in the emails, but that hasn’t stopped the speculation that it’s going to be a smoking gun.” No impact whatsoever.
Fortunately I was in and out of the car frequently enough that I didn’t vomit.
How this woman can stay as calm and patient as she does when she answers the same questions posed by heads who only talk about one topic at a time and are looking to burnish their journalism cred by going after her is scary, and I don’t think most people could withstand it so gracefully. She’ll deserve to be president more than almost any other candidate in recent memory since she will have survived the pundits.
“I’ve been asked many, many questions in the past year about emails, and what I’ve learned is that when I try to explain what happened, it can sound like I’m trying to excuse what I did,” she continued. “And there are no excuses. I want people to know that the decision to have a single email account was mine. I take responsibility for it. I’ve apologized for it. I would certainly do it differently if I could.” (SOS Hillary Clinton)
This is an excellent response and the best I’ve seen her give with regards to the email “scandal.” Thank you, Madame President.
I don’t think she was wrong. The were no rules regarding private email servers from the state department at the time. She broke no laws. According the the gop/bag head of the fbi there were 3, count them 3 emails that might have been secret that were not marked correctly that she RECEIVED, didn’t send!
Jeeeezzz, I am sick of the gop/bag/media faux scandal.
Who cares!
Hillary, you can put this entire faux scandal to bed by beating trumpet and the baggers by huge margins in November. Take the white house, the house, the senate and most of the state houses. Then they can go screw!
EDIT: Let’s make that happen!
Maddow interviewed Conway last night for almost the entirety of the show, and Conway did okay. She rarely began a question about trump by saying "Hillary said. . . " as most of the other campaign surrogates do. She’s taken on the job of making trump seem human, humane, and compassionate, and it’s a fool’s errands. Hope she’s getting paid yuuuge amounts of money. In cash.
Well said!
Yes!!! This is why she kills in debate and will continue to when she takes on HO who for his own good shouldn’t show up. She’ll leave him naked and howling with her ability to think on her feet and at the same time listening carefully to nonsense and forming replies…
FK those who said anything different as they ran back under their rocks. SHE DID IT. SHE SAID SHE DID IT. She ALSO pointed out others had done it and told her they did it and she did too. OMIGOD!!! HOLY CRAP!! She also had a private server…12,8,4 years after the others…technology moves on except of course, when you are Hillary Clinton and then we have to have 10 investigations on what is essentially a second laptop by the sanctimonious lying aholes in Congress. I’m with Bernie. I’m sick of this crap.
That’s a good answer, and it’s the one she needs to absolutely stick to from now on whenever the subject comes up.
The whole problem is that she has been trying to explain and in the process getting tripped up on arcane details of a totally trivial matter. If she just keeps saying what she just said and makes it clear she’s not going to say anything more about it, they will eventually (we hope) get tired of asking. She needs to be a broken record on this one.
It is a marathon and not a sprint. Maybe the Baggers wish for a President one would wish to “have a beer with”. I prefer a steady and resolute leader with patience.
We see it with Hill, in this instance. Patience, steadiness.
It is already having an impact on the polling. Trump’s base is holding solid, and non-crazy Republicans are beginning - albeit slowly - to come back home. We should watch the Johnson number very closely, because those folks are predominently Republican voters who were unsettled by Trump. But as unsettled as they have been by Trump, their Hillary hatred - excuse me - trumps that. So, I think the debates (especially the first debate) are going to be unusually important in either solidifying a Hillary lead or blowing the race open for Trump-- and it is all about dominance, as Josh Marshall has so often said. This is not a race that will be decided by the issues; this is a race that will be decided by who is tougher. I just hope Hillary - the master of the three point plan - understands that.
I can’t even fathom having a beer with Herr Trump. And if I did, I fear it would end up in his face, untasted, five minutes in.