The Clinton emails: it’s the coverup, stupid
More than any previous scandal, the email controversy seems to be threatening to sink Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. But why?
One reason is that it is being driven from left rather than right. The MSM usually plays the role of Democrat defender, but although there have been some defenses mounted here and there, this scandal has been unusual in that it targeted a leading Democrat but was initially led by liberal newspapers.
That could be because Clinton had thwarted the Freedom of Information Act, which was originally a liberal cause. But I don’t buy that, and to understand why just imagine that it had been Obama instead of Hillary. Do you think for a moment that liberal newspapers wouldn’t be defending him mightily?
And I doubt that this is driven by people being “tired” of Hillary. Why such a sudden sense of fatigue? Until just a short while ago, no one seemed all that tired.
No, it’s being driven by something else, and that something is (IMHO) the Obama administration having given the word that Hillary is persona non grata, either because they have a different successor in mind (Elizabeth Warren?), or because Hillary could expose them in some way (Iran?), or simply because of old animus from 2008.
The original Benghazi incident, the one that sparked the Congressional investigation that sparked the document request that sparked the revelation that Clinton was using private rather than government email, always has been important to the right. It certainly was important to me and to readers of this blog, and extremely frustrating that it appeared to going nowhere. Now it may be bearing fruit in an odd and unexpected way, proving once again the old adage that it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.
The Hillary private email situation is just one big coverup, and a preemptive coverup at that. Clinton established the system at the very beginning of her Secretary of State post, as though she knew there’d be lots to be keep quiet about. There’s something about the scope and timing that makes the coverup intent obvious. Even long-time Clinton apologist Lanny Davis has struggled to come up with a defense. As Chris Wallace said to him towards the end of their interview: “Do you ever get tired of cleaning up Clinton messes?”
In the cases of both Menendez and Hillary, it reminds one of the way Obama operated when he was running for State office and the Senate. He managed to out information about his opponents that was bad for them and gave him an advantage.
The MO here looks pretty similar.
For some reason, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Lanny’s ultra-white teeth. Those new choppers really give him a distinctive shark-like look, no?
Seeing them trot out old-timers like Lanny Davis, James Carville and that Neera Tanden lady reminded me how tired I am of the Clintons. Hard to imagine another 9 or 10 years of them…
In any battle between the Obama’s and the Clintons, I hope they both lose. But I am very worried about her lack of concern about hacking. She should definitely be asked about her server security and her staff should be searched for any potential Snowdens. She can hang her own dirty laundry out in public, but not that of the whole country.
Given all the @#$! that Hillary had done in her life it would be ironic if this is what brought her down. Lying about Benghazi was far worse, but only Fox News seemed to care about that
Of course, this could just be the straw that breaks the camels back. Or it could all blow over and we would have to deal with another horrible president.
Obama did have mail contact with Hillary.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/9/obama-talked-hillary-clinton-via-email-white-house/
I wonder if she contacted him during the Benghazi attacks–or Susan Rice, for that matter.
The Clinton’s have been getting away with lying all their lives because the journalists ignored or covered for them. Why should Hillary think she can’t get away with it now? It reminds me of Jason Blair at the New York Times. People knew he was lying and plagiarizing but they were PC and wouldn’t report him because he was black.
I thought it was pretty interesting that Pat Caddell called this administration “Nixon on steroids” when talking about the Clinton e-mail scandal. Wow!
Here is the link: http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/03/09/caddell-obama-white-house-nixon-on-steroids/
Carl in Atlanta:
Lanny’s teeth! Yes, that’s the first thing I noticed.
And I agree. I’m not looking forward to 4-8 years of having Lanny, Serpenthead, Begala, et al., lie to our faces trying to defend the Clintons. I barely made it through the 90’s with that crew on TV nearly every day. Don’t forget Ann Lewis, the smarmiest of them all.
IMO, you’re forgetting to account for the left having not liked the Clintons for a long time. Starting back with Bill moving toward the center and working with Newt. They were furious about that. The left had been working to move their party left for a long time and they felt that Bill betrayed their agenda. A lot of people jumped on the Obama train, early. You don’t ditch the supposed front-runner for a guy that had been in the senate for a couple of weeks if you love the Clintons.
Plus the Democrat party has never treated their losers kindly, they want them to go away. They don’t have the unfortunate next in line tradition of the Republicans. The left hasn’t made any secret that they want Warren to run. This is a fortuitous break for them. A chance to dump Hillary; cover for their dissatisfaction.
It’s kind of humorous that Hillary is actually a leftist herself while pretending to be a centrist. And of course discouraging that the Republican party will make the same mistakes running against her that they did against Obama.
Well at least we can be amused watching the Democrat’s circular firing squad while the Republicans give us Jeb Bush.
The WSJ is reporting that the 50,000 pages of emails are just that, 50,000 printed pages of email. No doubt, Lois Lerner is holding onto the disk drives for safe keeping.
I think you’re right, Neo. The animus between the Obamas and the Clintons, going back at least to primary season 2008, is well known. And yet Obama has not thrown her under the bus explicitly, as he has with so many others. He has stood by her, to the extent that he stands by anyone.
Why? I suspect it’s because she has some heavy-duty dirt on him. (The Clintons have a reputation for that too.) One can only wonder what she knows… and what would persuade her to reveal it.
(If it’s Benghazi, well, I suspect the two are in a Mexican standoff there. I won’t claim to know what went on behind closed doors on Sep. 11, 2012, but I suspect the full truth would damn them both in the eyes of an awful lot of people.)
What is most curious is that the Clintons couldn’t/wouldn’t use their Obama opposition research at the times or … later.
Not to dismiss the importance of a SecState with huge amounts of missing emails, risking our national security but… I consider Hillary receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from misogynistic M.E. regimes with horrible human rights records, all the while making women’s and human rights her central political theme far more damaging to her credibility than having a private email account.
The Washington Post reports that,
Note that the $25 million that the Saudis gave was as of 2008, which begs the question; how much have they given since?
Finally the obvious; no one gives that kind of money without expecting something of equivalent value in return.
Obama needs a successor who will protect him from investigations, exposures, and to continue to his disastrous policies. For some reason he doesn’t think old Hill will do that hence the sandbagging with the emails to get her out of the way for his successor to raise money in time for rigged primaries and time for the media to plumb him/her up. They want the Clinton’s out of the way now.
ArmyMom:
I saw that Caddell thing and was looking for the clip. Thanks!
Caddell never pulls his punches.
It’s going to be Michelle. Told you that three years ago, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!
There’s definitely a cover-up: apparently Hillary has only turned over the printed record of her email communications to the State department. That is why we keep hearing about “55,000 pages of email” – she has not given them them in electronic form. Not only does this make it harder to search, it withholds the metadata, potentially attachments, and likely enabled her team to alter them in the transfer from electronic to paper form.
Also makes her claim that she’s demanded the WH release her emails to prove no foul play even more ludicrous. Where exactly does she want those 110 reams/11 cases dropped?
* * *
IBD also mentioned that Huma Abedin was a consultant for the Clinton foundation at the same time she was Hillary’s top aide at the State Dept. Sounds fishy, huh?
As I have noted many times, there is a deep hatred between the bill-hill gang and the messiah gang. So far, the blood lost has been hidden, now the msm (ever loyal to their messiah) will circle like sharks around the chum. Warren/Gutierrez 2016. That is the left’s dream ticket.
Is it possible that the field is being cleared so that only Obama is left and he goes up for a third term?
Well, THIS was amazingly rough. (Ace actually calls it “brutal”). “Saturday Night Live” actually skewered Hillary in the Saturday show’s opening segment:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ncbso8c
(autoplay, Youtube)
That SNL bit, by the way, is as rough as anything they did to Sarah Palin.
Extraordinary.
Obviously the Hive Mind got the okay to take her out.
springtime
Clearing the field to run Michelle for his 3rd term…
Wow! They’ve “Palinized”her for sure.
Stick a fork in her. She’s done.
I didn’t watch any of the Sunday morning talk shows, but I read that Sen. Schumer on one them said something like, hey, ordinary folks don’t care about this kind of thing, it’s all inside-baseball, so no big deal.
Have political types always been this openly cynical and, in essence, dismissive of “ordinary” people?
It’s just possible that some of the younger leftists, even at MSNBC, are offended by this because they are true believers and may not even want to admit to themselves that they too are manipulative in this regard.
I’m thinking maybe this is playing into the antipathy suddenly being displayed toward Hillary.
Listen up!
After HRC gets the nomination, all will be revealed. Vlad was reading her emails in real time. Bengazhi was an operation to get arms to Syria. She knows all about Iran and did nothing. And Hillary hates Barack and says many unkind and harsh things about him in private. As in he is lazy and not very smart. The real bombshell will be that Val Jarrett is the REAL president.
HDR is finished. Done. She doesn’t get 40% if the popular vote.
Elliot,
It is the continuance of his disastrous policies with which he is concerned. No one would DARE prosecute the FIRST BLACK President! That would be racist…
Richard Saunders,
I can’t bring myself to take Michelle seriously as a threat. She simply doesn’t have even the barest of qualifications.
Lizzy,
The stink of the rotting fish is overwhelming.
parker,
Warren/Gutierrez in 2016 would indeed be a dream ticket for the left.
I’ve often mused that many of our friends on the left have short memories and draw far too many conclusions and inferences based on news of the present. But it seems some conservatives are guilty of this weakness as well. Perhaps such is inevitable in our era of instant “breaking” news where even the most transient story is billed as “history making”.
No, my friends, Hillary is not done. Not by a longshot, as history proves. Was she “done” after Whitewater? After her commodity inside trading? After Troopergate? Vince Foster? Was she “done” after the eight million missteps in her 2008 campaign culminating in the Iowa caucus defeat? Was she “done” after her multiple losses and rebounds in the 2008 primaries? Was she “done” when she ultimately lost the nomination? When Obama “exiled” her to the state department? After Benghazi?
I have long maintained Hillary was virtually guaranteed the Democratic nomination, absent a major scandal. The email imbroglio certainly gives me pause and I will acknowledge this scandal may, at long last, be her undoing. However, it will have to become much more damning and pervasive than what has come out so far.
Now, for those who point out how restrained the liberal establishment is in defending her, indeed how some of the criticism has come from liberal pundits and Democratic politicians, I offer a slightly conspiratorial rejoinder. Has it occurred to you, the fuss and fury from the left may be carefully crafted to speed up the burnout of this scandal? We are still 10 months from the Iowa caucuses. If the email controversy (and its residuals) are “old news” in six months, they will have minimal impact on Hillary’s campaign. Never, never, never, underestimate the short attention span of the average American voter. Better to run the scandal into the ground now so that come primary season, one can scoff at crazy tin-foil hat tea partiers dredging up “old news”.
I say again my friends: Eyes. On. The. Prize. Unless she winds up in jail or under indictment, the prize is now and will remain, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Cornhead, 10:02 pm — “Vlad was reading her emails in real time. Bengazhi was an operation to get arms to Syria. She knows all about Iran and did nothing.”
Not sure why it’s occurred to me only now . . .
In 2008, Candidate Hopenchange assured us his administration was going to be the most transparent administration EVAH! . . .
And his Secretary of State saw to it that that promise was kept.
The analyses of the USSR’s politburo were fanciful at best and usually wrong.
These analyses of power struggles within the USA’s politburo leave me cold.
“Or it could all blow over and we would have to deal with another horrible president.”
Alas, given the ability of the MSM to simply not report relevant news and the ADHD of the general US voters, I suspect it will blow over. 🙁
Gone are the days when most in Congress/Senate take their jobs seriously. Although Senator Bird/WV was scum, he jealously viewed the Power of the Senate as his domain and protected it from both Dem/Rep Executive incursions.
The current crop just want to keep themselves in power and collect their benefits. The future of the country be damned.
🙁 🙁
Ackler — you make a good point. Hillary is a fighter, at least as much as Bill is.
On the other hand, she brings nothing to the table. The primary reason for her to be elected President — very close to the only reason — is that she wants it so badly.
She has no legislative accomplishments from her time in the Senate. She has no diplomatic accomplishments from her time as Secretary of State. She has never run anything, as have Gov. Walker, Gov. Jeb Bush, and Gov. Perry. She hasn’t even taken a bold stand in the Senate, as have Sen. Rubio and Sen. Cruz. Her first time being in charge of a significant number of people was as Secretary of State… and her employees DIED on her watch, fer Gossakes.
About the only thing she can claim is that she’s more credentialed, now, than Barack Obama was in 2008… and that’s weak tea indeed. (She was more credentialed than him then too. It didn’t help her.)
She’s old. Her grasp of foreign relations is dangerously naive at best. She has no proven ability to stand up to her own people, or even to stand up for Americans being slaughtered overseas.
Hers is a life of blind ambition, that could have accomplished so much, had she used her talents in the service of something bigger than herself — and had she accumulated some scruples along the way. But her wasted potential is not reason to reward her with the Presidency, or anything else. She can’t do the job, and she sure as hell doesn’t deserve it.
No way will Michelle run. She doesn’t like having the family on the national stage nor putting in the time required to carry out official duties. She loves the perks though, and she’ll basically have those as an ex First Lady without the hassles of actual duties. Leaving the White House is win win for Michelle.