Five
takeaways from Hillary Clinton’s bad Friday
Clinton
doesn’t believe in good luck, and latest bombshell shows why.
By GLENN
THRUSH 10/29/16, 4:29 PM CET Updated 10/29/16, 4:35 PM CET
Hillary Clinton has
never met a sunny day she completely trusted, and Friday proved why.
The front-running
Democrat has always been weakest when protecting a lead, and,
according to the people around her, chronically suspicious of any
overlong stretches of good fortune or blue-sky forecasting. She
needn’t have worried. The last 10 days of her historic campaign are
now socked in by a lowering overcast of suspicion, and a depressingly
familiar threat.
Friday started off
brightly enough in Des Moines, as a cheerful Clinton rallied her
supporters during the first round of early voting in a state she
wants, but doesn’t need to win. She seemed chilled-out in an
aqua-blue suit that suggested marine tranquility, and was buoyed by
the presence of her childhood friend Betsy Ebeling and the superstar
photographer Annie Leibovitz.
But by the
afternoon, a candidate and campaign that thrives on preparation were
blind-sided by a bombshell (that might ultimately prove to be a
blank): FBI Director James Comey – who declared her handling of
classified information “careless” but not criminal in July –
has begun looking into what are said to be thousands of new emails
for possible violations of the classification laws.
Then, the elect-ile
dysfunction: The source of the new controversy, Clinton’s surrogate
daughter Huma Abedin and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner,
package-proud proof that not every horny narcissist with bad judgment
is named Donald Trump.
How much the latest
email eruption affects the race depends on how both campaigns handle
it over the next few days – and how much voters give a damn. Still,
it’s a drag. The best peppy self-talk one Clinton ally could muster
today was: “People don’t trust her already, so that’s baked in
the cake. But she’s better than Trump.”
Here are five
takeaways from Clinton’s very bad Friday – that could turn into
something much worse.
Blame Huma and Tony
– for now. According to numerous published reports, thousands of
potentially sensitive (and possibly classified) government emails
from Abedin’s account were discovered on devices owned by Weiner –
seized by the FBI in connection with their probe into the former
congressman’s alleged social media lewdness with a 15-year-old
girl.
How the emails got
into Abedin’s possession isn’t clear (though Clinton often
emailed her aide-de-camp documents to print out). But the fact that
the material being examined didn’t come from Clinton’s account
gives the candidate a degree of separation she didn’t have in
Comey’s prior investigation – and the correspondence being looked
at, according to some reports, come from Abedin’s account, and not
the “homebrew” server that has been the source of so much
controversy and reputational damage. That helps, if only a bit.
Donald Trump and
Republicans – giddy to get the old email band back together —
wanted to keep the focus squarely on Clinton and, for an hour before
Weiner connection was known, they succeeded. But the sexting angle,
the Huma angle, the tabloid marriage-gone-sour angle made it seem a
lot less sinister — and more the continuation of a political soap
opera in which Clinton has played a starring but supporting role.
The CNN, MSNBC and
FOX screens at POLITICO world headquarters said it all – they
split-screened between dour, preoccupied snapshots of Clinton and
more whimsical images of the once happy Weiner-Abedin glamour couple.
Clinton will ultimately bear responsibility for whatever happened to
her emails – and Comey made it clear that the new messages “appear
to be pertinent” to his earlier look at the former secretary’s
handling of classified and secret missives.
But unlike the first
go-around – when Clinton stood alone — she now shares the stage
with Anthony and Huma.
It takes the focus
off of Trump. We are in the final stretch of a psoriasis-vs.-eczema
election – and whichever candidate gets the greatest scrutiny tends
to make the voters the most itchy.
Trump has had them
scratching for a month – what with his 2005 hot-mic admission that
he committed what sounded like sexual assault, followed by a
procession of a dozen or so women who accused him of being a cad,
groper and commando kisser. He denied it, but compounded his problem
by attacking regular, non-famous-type people who had the gall to
criticize him — and washed it all down with three of the rottenest
debate performances in the history of people moving their lips to
emit sound. Trump capped it all with a threat to destabilize 240
years of American democracy by claiming any vote against him was
automatically rigged.
Clinton, who hates
everything about campaigning except reading briefing books and
debating her opponents, has been happy to coast in Trump’s
turbulent wake – tsk-tsk-tsk-ing him and deploying a Hall of Fame
roster of surrogates from the Obamas to Bernie Sanders to Elizabeth
Warren to Katy Perry. But gradually, inevitably, the focus has turned
back on the second-most detested candidate running for president –
in part because of the drip-drip of WikiLeaks, in part because voters
are now forced to grapple with the reality that she’s likely to be
the country’s next leader.
She doesn’t fare
especially well alone in the spotlight – while she’s held her own
in most polls, and retains a commanding advantage in many
battleground states (and the Electoral College) – Trump has begun
to finally consolidate support among core Republicans, which has
brought him as high as 44 percent in one national poll and to par
with her in Florida and Nevada.
So look for a new
oppo dump on Trump — and a new line of attack — or anything,
really, that will turn the race back into a referendum on his fitness
to serve, not hers.
Never underestimate
Trump’s ability to misplay a winning hand. Trump is about as good a
political poker player as he was a casino owner. Case in point: His
first comments about Clinton’s new email problems were aimed not at
wider audience of Donald-skeptical conservatives and persuadable
voters but the cheering throng at his most recent rally in New
Hampshire, where he trails in most polls.
Weinergate, he
declared, “is bigger than Watergate.”
It totally isn’t,
at least not yet – and there isn’t a voter not already committed
to Trump who believes the hype. No, the target for his message now
needs to be higher-educated Republican voters (and, perish the
thought, GOP women) who are considering defecting to vote for
Clinton. They aren’t looking for another Trump body slam, but a
little reason and rhetorical subtlety – a permission structure to
accept him as an alternative to hated-but-tolerated Hillary.
There are smarter
ways to do this, obviously. Take Paul Ryan, Trump’s intra-party
nemesis, who offered a more targeted and legalistic attack on Clinton
that undermined her legitimacy as a potential commander-in-chief by
calling for the suspension of her national security briefings. “Yet
again, Hillary Clinton has nobody but herself to blame,” the House
speaker said in his statement. “She was entrusted with some of our
nation’s most important secrets, and she betrayed that trust by
carelessly mishandling highly classified information.”
Clinton vs. Comey.
It wasn’t so very long ago when Trump and his surrogates were
hammering Comey and the once-sacrosanct bureau for allegedly covering
up Clinton’s abominable email offences.
“FBI director said
Crooked Hillary compromised our national security. No charges. Wow!
#RiggedSystem,” Trump Tweeted when Comey cleared Clinton of
criminal wrongdoing.
On Friday, he was in
a J. Edgar state of mind with his opponent back in the investigative
crosshairs. “I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the
Department of Justice are now willing to have the courage to right
the horrible mistake that they made,” he said, with faintest
flip-floppy grin. “This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the
American people fully understood. And it is everybody’s hope that
it is about to be corrected.”
Now it was the
Democrats’ turn to accuse Comey and Co. of unfairness – with
surrogates like former Obama Justice Department official Matt Miller
flat-out accusing the director of needlessly publicizing the details
of an ongoing investigation to burnish his own image. The reaction
among Clinton’s top aides and lawyers was fury – they had been
given no advance warning by the bureau before Comey sent a letter to
congressional Republicans, copying Hill Democrats – and they
questioned whether the timing was, somehow, intended to scuttle
Clinton’s chances of winning the White House.
By late afternoon,
it was Clinton’s turn to play the old Trump card against Comey,
demanding that all the details of the probe – especially the
involvement of Abedin and Weiner were made immediately public.
“We don’t know
the facts, which is why we are calling on the FBI to release all the
information that it has,” a clearly ticked-off Clinton told
reporters between campaign stops. “Even Director Comey noted that
this new information might not be significant, so let’s get it
out.”
Trump’s not the
only candidate with a self-destructive streak. Among the most
revealing (and funny) emails released as part of WikiLeaks’s
(allegedly) Kremlin-supplied hack were the tart, accurate
observations by longtime Hillaryland adviser Neera Tanden, who
couldn’t believe the Clintons would have set up a private server in
the first place. “Do we actually know who told Hillary she could
use a private email? And has that person been drawn and quartered?”
Tanden asked her friend John Podesta, who was subsequently hacked –
adding that the “whole thing is f—ing insane.”
What made it
especially insane was the candidate’s own propensity for
self-protective self-immolation: The server was set up, in part, to
shield the hyper-scrutinized former first family from scrutiny,
embarrassment and scandal. Worked like a charm, if that charm was to
foment an already burbling suspicion among the American people that
Clinton was secretive, self-interested and not to be trusted. In
September 2015, before the email server scandal was weaponized by
Trump (her primary opponent Bernie Sanders famously eschewed using
the issue against her), The Atlantic hosted a focus group to figure
out why more than half of Americans didn’t trust an international
superstar who was almost always voted the most admired woman in the
world.
“She’s lied
again and again and again in the pursuit of power,” one man told
the magazine’s pollster. “This has been her entire life’s work,
it seems like, has been building up to this moment, so she doesn’t
have any shots left.”
“She wants it so
much she’ll say anything, she’ll do anything,” a female
respondent added: “the people behind her will say anything or do
anything. Do I want those kind of people in power? Oh, please no.”
Those opinions have
taken deep root, even among her supporters; Mind you, voters often
vote for candidates they don’t trust, but Clinton’s no-trust
numbers are abysmal – topping 60 percent in some polls, with solid
majorities of voters expressing unease about her handling of the
emails and her family’s charitable foundation. This won’t help.
Trump hasn’t done
much to burnish his own image, but he’s been relentless in
degrading public esteem for “Crooked Hillary” – leading rally
chants of “Lock her up!” despite Comey’s July exoneration of
Clinton. The FBI’s decision was hailed with relief in Clinton’s
Brooklyn headquarters but it came ahead of her deepest swan dive in
the polls to date: For a few days in late July, Trump briefly seized
the national lead, and poll aggregators gave him a roughly 55 percent
chance of winning the election on the eve of Clinton’s successful
convention in Philadelphia.
She’s in better
shape now – the handicappers give her between an 80 and 90 percent
chance of winning and roughly 30 percent of votes have already been
cast, thanks to early balloting and absentee voting in many states.
And the scandal (or pseudo-scandal) doesn’t yet directly involve
her.
But by late Friday
all the Democratic talk of landslides and big down-ballot victories
had given way, yet again, to nervous chatter about a candidate who
never seems to able to seal the deal.
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