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Hillary Clinton’s e-mail issues have become a massive political problem -
The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/14/hillary-clintons-e-mail-issues-have-grown-into-a-massive-political-problem/?postshare=9651442283755272

Hillary Clinton’s e-mail issues have become a massive political problem

Hillary Rodham Clinton answers audience questions at a Brookings
Institution event in Washington on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The new Washington-Post ABC News poll
<http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-sept-7-10-2015/1821/>
contains lots of bad news for Hillary Clinton. She's lost more than 20
points in a hypothetical Democratic primary ballot since July and now finds
herself in a statistical dead heat with Donald Trump
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/13/donald-trump-now-running-neck-and-neck-with-hillary-clinton/>
-- not a typo -- in a potential general election matchup.

Those top-line numbers, though, aren't the cause of Clinton's problems;
they're the effect. The cause is buried deeper in the poll in a trio of
questions about the private e-mail server Clinton used as secretary of
state.

Consider:

1. Just 1 in 3 registered voters approve of how Clinton has handled the
issue, while 55 percent of voters do not.

2. Just 32 percent of registered voters think Clinton "stayed within
government regulations" in the establishment and use of a private server,
while 51 percent believe she broke those regulations.

3. Thirty-four percent of those polled say Clinton has "honestly disclosed"
the facts about her e-mail usage, while 54 percent believe she has "tried
to cover up the facts."

On top of all that, add this:

4. Just 35 percent of registered voters believe that the words "honest" and
"trustworthy" describe Clinton, while 56 percent say they do not.

That number has been in steady decline since the revelations about
Clinton's server came to light in the spring; she was at 41 percent on the
honest/trustworthy question in a May WaPo-ABC poll, and back in June 2014
she was at 53 percent!

Scan those numbers and you quickly grasp why last week Clinton decided to
offer an unequivocal apology
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/08/hillary-clinton-finally-apologizes-for-her-private-e-mail-server-but-is-to-too-late/>
for her decision to set up a private e-mail server after months of
insisting no apology was necessary. Legally speaking, she might have been
right, but politically it's clear just how much damage the issue has
already done to Clinton.

[*Takeaways from Hillary Clinton’s e-mails
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/takeaways-from-hillary-clintons-private-e-mails/2015/08/13/2e89d8f4-4139-11e5-846d-02792f854297_gallery.html>*
]

Into this atmosphere land two major news stories about the server: The
first, first reported by the Washington Post, is that the tech company that
handled Clinton's server says there is no evidence that it has been "wiped."
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tech-company-no-indication-that-clintons-e-mail-server-was-wiped/2015/09/12/10c8ce52-58c6-11e5-abe9-27d53f250b11_story.html>
That's a good and a bad thing for Clinton, since it suggests a lack of a
cover-up (or what could be made to look like a cover-up) but also that,
potentially, her deleted e-mails could be recovered and mined for anything
that could disprove Clinton's version of events. The second story is that
the Justice Department said Clinton was well within her rights
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-emails-delete_55f349c5e4b063ecbfa47b17>as
a government official to make her own determination on which e-mails on her
server could be deleted as personal and non-relevant to her work as the
nation's top diplomat.

Exoneration, shout her defenders! Much ado about nothing! A media-created
story is debunked!

Except, not really. The fact that she had the ability and right to delete
e-mails was never really in question. At issue is the process by which she
did it -- and who got to make the final calls on what got sent to the State
Department and what didn't. Yes, the way Clinton went about it was within
her rights. But Clinton is not just *any* government official or even any
secretary of state. She is someone who is -- still -- the heavy favorite to
be the Democratic nominee for president in 2016. As such, she is held to a
different standard than someone who, well, isn't the heavy favorite to be
the Democratic nominee for president.

And, remember, Clinton deleted more total e-mails than she turned over to
State.

The problem for Clinton is that the public -- as evidenced by that trio of
poll questions -- already believes that there is something (or somethings)
not totally above board with how she has handled this e-mail issue. When
just one in three voters believe you are (a) honest and trustworthy (b)
honestly disclosing the facts about the server and (c) staying within
government regulations in regards the server, you have a major, major
problem on your hands.

Add to that the mandated monthly release of tranches of Clinton State
Department e-mails, and it's hard to imagine how the story goes away (or
gets better) unless Clinton takes more decisive action. A speech in which
she fully explains her actions, expresses contrition (again) and tries to
contextualize it all might be the best solution to what has now become a
major impediment to Clinton's hopes of being elected president a year from
November.

During an interview with ABC News, Hillary Clinton apologized for using a
private e-mail server during her time as secretary or state. Here are past
statements where the presidential hopeful neglected to take personal
responsibility for the controversy. (The Washington Post)


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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