Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Sick And Tired Of The Damned Emails

The IG report had a harsh tone, but it really didn't break any new ground.  Clinton shouldn't have had a private server, but that wasn't unusual.  There is no evidence that the servers were hacked, but they could've been.  Clinton screwed up, she has apologized.  Unless the FBI report uncovers anything, this is a case of institutional poor judgment, not criminality.

One of the wonders of the Obama administration has been its scandal-free nature.  That hasn't stopped Republicans from trying, from birth certificates to Solyandra to Benghazi.  But they have ultimately fallen flat in their attempts to gin up a scandal where none exists.

The Clintons have always been problematic in how they respond to these ginned up scandals.  They tend to be defensive and reactive.  They don't get ahead of these stories, and the accumulated weight of them have an effect.

Hillary Clinton is routinely perceived as corrupt.  Killary, she is called, because of fucking Benghazi.  That perception is based on things that go back to the original nothingburgers that were Whitewater, Travelgate and Vince Foster.  Benghazi and the email nontroversies are similar efforts to create enough smoke that people assume there is fire.

If she is going to win convincingly and govern effectively, she is going to have to change how she manages these scurrilous attacks.  Bunkering down won't cut it.

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