I don’t know if Joe Biden is going to run for president, but he probably won’t let a little thing like Hillary Clinton having all the big donors sewn up stop him. That could be her second Waterloo. Her first was hiring people to run her 2008 campaign who didn’t understand how the nomination actually worked. It could happen again if she thinks having a lot of hard money is going to impress anyone.
I mean, how’s that working for Jeb Bush? And he has more PAC money than God.
Her first disaster was an unforced error. It was the incredible stupidity of the “home-network” email server.
This single decision is disqualifying for POTUS. This was an unsafe and stupid decision. I don’t care if the home-brewed network was more secure or less secure than the government network. She took all responsibility, and this was an incredibly stupid decision. I consider it disqualifying. It has so many downsides you cannot count them, and only the upside of convenience. The most single damning point is that any sensible person would identify this as a vulnerability. It’s an obvious point of criticism, and should have been obvious to her. That it was not, and that she used this “home-brewed” system, demonstrates a total lack of foresight and planning. Where were her advisors?
Here is my prediction: Someone has an email or two which are entirely damning, and which are being withheld until the right moment. There is an entire closet of shoes in this issue, and only 1 or 2 have dropped.
It’s going to be bigger in the future than we have seen to date.
I guess none of the other Hillary “scandals” are panning out, so there’s no alternative but to keep banging this one.
Remember when THIS was the Scandal of the Century?
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/colin-powell-personal-email-secretary-of-state-115707.html
Yeah, me neither.
Last I checked, Colin Powell was not running for POTUS, and Hillary is. It’s so important to separate TRUTH from ISSUES. This is an issue, and Hillary must play defense. Truth does not matter. An issue is something that can be politically manipulated, and this one certainly can.
Here’s another aspect of the private server: She certainly had extremely sensitive information in those emails of one sort or another. Did persons without security clearances see those emails? Did she run an in-house security clearance process?
It’s just a clusterfuck of the most annoying sort. It’s Whitewater all over again – questions can be raised, and Hillary will be playing defense, and it’s a distraction, and blah blah blah.
Yeah, it’s Whitewater all over again: a nothingburger that resulted in a Clinton re-election.
Biden’s not going to run, and even if he did he doesn’t have the campaign structure that Hillary has.
Barring an unforeseeable catastrophe — and the email “scandal” will not rise to that level — she waltzes to the nomination, and then to the Oval Office.
○ President’s Management Government Records Directive (MGRD) M-12-18 issued on August 24, 2012
○ National Archives and Records Administration: The Presidential Memorandum
Records keeping during the Bush years, under Colin Powell’s tenure:
POWELL: I — I can’t speak to a — Mrs. Clinton and what she should do now. That would be inappropriate. What I did when I entered the State Department, I found an antiquated system that had to be modernized and modernized quickly.
So we put in place new systems, bought 44,000 computers and put a new Internet capable computer on every single desk in every embassy, every office in the State Department. And then I connected it with software.
But in order to change the culture, to change the brainware, as I call it, I started using it in order to get everybody to use it, so we could be a 21st century institution and not a 19th century.
But I retained none of those e-mails and we are working with the State Department to see if there’s anything else they want to discuss with me about those e-mails.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So they’ve asked you to turn them over, but you don’t have them, is that it?
POWELL: I don’t have any — I don’t have any to turn over. I did not keep a cache of them. I did not print them off. I do not have thousands of pages somewhere in my personal files.
And, in fact, a lot of the e-mails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system. They were addressed to State Department employees and the State.gov domain. But I don’t know if the servers the State Department captured those or not.
Again, I reiterate: This is not a problem of the law, nor of fact. This is a problem of perception, and of political discussion.
HRC made a decision. She did so in full knowledge that she was going to run for POTUS for 2016. And thus, her decision was reckless, stupid, and obviously wrong. Because this will be used to damage her, and that is a totally unforced error.
It’s disqualifying.
“This is a problem of perception…. It’s disqualifying.”
Oh, Cokie.
It’s only disqualifying if enough people decide that it is. What you think doesn’t particularly matter.
Wait…using a private email server disqualifies her from running for president?
That’s just insane.
Did you read my comment? It is not the private email server per se, it is the failure to anticipate patently obvious issues which result from that choice.
Please, try to concentrate. Read all the comment.
What you wrote isn’t hard to understand. I just happen to think it’s insane.
That’s clarifying. We will see in about 1-2 months if this issue gets bigger (my guess) or smaller (your bet).
We should see by mid-September.
who cares if it’s picked up; I agree with Data – in fact I’d say it was an insane move on her part – hasn’t she learned anything from being in public life all these years ?(I guess not) unless what she didn’t retain is more damaging that the fact of it
I don’t care at all, and since I am the source of almost all political information for my group of friends, they don’t even know about it. And if they did, they wouldn’t care of all. We have Presidents starting wars for profit and candidates who think women should be allowed to die instead of being given an abortion. No one really gives a damn about email servers.
For God’s sake, the American right has been waiting for that shoe to drop for 23 years. Wouldn’t it have happened by now?
To the best of our knowledge, the Clinton personal e-mail server dates from her appointment as SOS and it only became public information a few months ago. So, where are you getting the American right has been waiting for that shoe to drop for 23 years?
Doubt that any damaging e-mails or documents have been retrieved from her server. Unless a hacker — either free-lance or employed by any one of a number of rightwing entities — got in there before it was wiped clean and there was anything there at all that was or could made to be seen as damaging.
However, what you seem to be missing is that using a private e-mail server for official government business adds to the pattern of Clinton acting as if she has something to hide. Don’t know that there ever was anything worth hiding, but there’s a difference between what becomes public in real time and many years later. Had President Harding’s two long-term affairs with one resulting in a child been public in 1920, there likely wouldn’t have been a Harding administration but a Cox/Roosevelt one.
I don’t mean the emails, just the fact that they’ve wanted her scalp since 1992. Maybe they’ll finally get it this time, but I wouldn’t count on it.
It’s not personal. The right has wanted the scalps of all Democrats with any whiff of liberal values, principles, or policies since 1980. In their current (or post 1980) formulation, Nixon would have survived an assault from them. Obama/Biden frustrates the hell out of them b/c they don’t offer any actual molehills for them to make mountains out of. They’re done all they can to create artificial Obama/Biden molehills but that only works for the GOP true believers. Benghazi began as a GOP concocted molehill that was supposed to take down Obama and elect Romney. When that didn’t work, they shifted it to a molehill for the presumed next DEM nominee. An effort that would have failed by now and been junked if it hadn’t led to the discovery of Clinton’s private server.
You may be right–the Clintons certainly do give their opponents more ammunition than Obama.
Well, time will tell. Personally, though, I feel like I’ve seen this movie before, and I know I’m not alone.
It was a reckless and stupid action. It was an action which demonstrated that HRC is basically unable to see an obvious and direct consequence. And if you cannot see the problem with this as you are setting it up, you have no business running the US as POTUS.
It’s a disqualifying choice.
It was certainly stupid but unless she is found to have committed a crime I don’t see it as disqualifying. What’s relevant is that this is the issue more than Benghazi or any other nonsense scandal that might drag her down.
I don’t think that the e-mail server decision is necessarily disqualifying. The Iraq war vote- now there’s disqualifying for you. But I guess after Kerry, that’s old news now and no one wants to talk about it.
I do think that there is a common thread that runs through both decisions (not that they are in any way equivalent) and that is that the “experts” probably told her she needed to do it if she was going to run for president and she didn’t have the foresight to think how things might play out long term. in the first case the reason was obviously just crass politics, and in the second case I guess to make sure there wasn’t any damming emails surfacing from her tenure as Secretary of State.
Not that I expect my presidents to be Nostradamus, but both decisions I would chalk up as failures to anticipate likely future outcomes.
agree, plus other issues with using a private server – it’s private but her work is supposed to be for the public. she decides what part of her public service is for us the citizens? also it’s just insane that she did that knowing she was very likely going to run for president. and what about security? really stupid.
Yeah, all that, AND at LEAST 305 emails contained high security information. Did she ensure that all those with access to the emails had appropriate clearance? And who, specifically, had access to the emails?
The issue is not emails. The issue is judgement, prudence, foresight, and plain old common sense. I have a bunch of emails. In 2008, I had fewer. However, I had a work email, and a home email. I used the work email for work, and the home email for home. How hard is that?
yes!
I saw this in a tweet this weekend and thought it was on point.
We all thought George W was Fredo.
In actuality, JEB is Fredo.
So, W. was Sonny? Because neither of them is Michael.
The family had to outsource Michael with hopes that one among the third generation will have the right stuff.
Somehow, I read “Fredo” as “Frodo,” and your comment took on a whole other level of significance.
so did I!
All this talk about Clinton in trouble, yet she still clears 50% on the national polling for the Democratic primary. Around this time in 2008, she was polling in the upper thirties.
A gem from Mark Ames in 2012 that I missed in real time:
The Gary Johnson Swindle and the Degradation of Third Party Politics. Doubt that more than a handful of voters appreciated that the whole point of John Anderson’s 1980 third party run was to elect Reagan.
A link between those and many other swindles covered in Ames’ article and Trump is Roger Stone. To soon to tell what the deep dirty tricks plan is for this election cycle.
I’ve always wondered about Ross Perot, who has deep state connections. After 12 years of running the country did GHW decide it was time to turn over the reins? Was there enough Iran-contra/S&L/et al still floating in the air for Bush to make a tactical retreat and leave the job to another CIA asset?
Doesn’t appear that Perot had any of the known rat-f**kers on his team. My guess is that as a real Texan he never much liked the elite Yankee faux Texan Bush. Doubt that there is much overlap between the Bush and Perot bidness sectors in the TX economy and federal “security” purchasers.
There was this: Perot engaged in unauthorized back-channel discussions with Vietnamese officials in the late 1980s, which led to fractured relations between Perot and the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. iirc in real that was dismissed as CT by rational people, but it wasn’t without support from all those “stab in the back” Vietnam War supporters.
He then opposed Bush’s Gulf War. Possible that while it was good for Bush’s BFF, it wasn’t a winner for Perot. Or perhaps it was just a way another way for him to attack Bush.
The problem for Bush was that in his own right, he didn’t have much of a support base. Some big industry elites and some of the old CIA/Pentagon Cold War warriors. He inherited the fundies from Reagan and they didn’t trust him. The Reagan Democrats were beginning to perceive that they’d been screwed by Reagan and Bush. Otherwise, it was the old guard GOP partisans. Still, that was too entrenched for Perot to challenge Bush in the primaries. It wasn’t until February 1992 that he began to speak on TV about challenging Bush at all and that was too late for a primary run.
What do we make of the fact that he hired Democrat Hamilton Jordan and Republican Ed Rollins? A Carter guy and a Reagan guy. Going for the sweet spot of conservative DEMS, Reagan Democrats, and Vets and/or working class Republicans? Why did he withdraw in July when he appeared to be ahead? He was just nutty and erratic enough that his campaign and withdrawal was more of the same. Or perhaps, his intent all along had been that either he or Bush would be elected and the internal polls showed that Clinton would be the winner. Did he later get back in b/c by then he thought that he could hurt Clinton more?
Contrary to the view of most Democrats, I never thought Clinton was a strong, national political candidate. Stronger than Dukakis but that’s a low bar except when the opposition was running GHWB and later the septuagenarian Dole.
Trump does seem to be running from the same playbook as Perot — only right now he’s inside the tent. And have no idea where it goes from here.
○ Ross Perot and Senators Seem Headed for a Fight on P.O.W.’s-M.I.A.’s
○ Ross Perot’s Private Rescue Of EDS Employees In Iran, 1978 … or myth thereof
○ Perot Systems Posts Energy ‘Gaming’ Files – the ENRON Case of California
Perot had a score to settle with Republican leaders in Washington DC under the Reagan and Bush presidencies.
Dislikes McCain as well — but that was b/c of McCain’s treatment of his first wife.
Difficult to sort out how much of that score settling was personal animosity, business, or political. Seems to me that at the end of the day, he remains a Republican with somewhat different nutty ideas from that of the party movers and shakers.
Stone was an adviser to Trump, as of a week or so ago.
Not at this time – he was fired/resigned about last Tuesday.
Wouldn’t discount that the “fire/resigned” public report isn’t more Kabuki from these two liars, one of whom is among the sleaziest political operatives.
Why is Hillary Clinton responsible for fat cat blather reported in Villager media outlets? I don’t see her out there waving money around to impress anyone or scare Uncle Joe off.
He pretty much agrees with me that it was an unmitigated disaster, compounded by arrogance, stupidity, and failure to forsee the patently obvious.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/apologizing-for-the-e-mail-mess/2015/08/17/d8853068-4514-11e
5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html?hpid=z2
HRC is arrogant and, unfortunately, not too bright.
there’s a diary over at the Orange place about the Clinton vacation home they’re renting in the Hamptons and a truly awful utterly useless thread of comments accusing each other of being Hillary bashers or Sanders bashers; that aside, the 2 week vacation in the Hamptons, from a story in the Daily Mail, makes me wonder if Hillary has ever heard the word optics? it is truly remarkable to me that given Sanders popularity she isn’t at least making an effort.