Clinton’s E-mail Mess Shows WE NEED A PRIMARY, Not a Coronation

[Segami]

I am not going to pretend to know enough about National Archives and Records Administration regulations to have a worthwhile opinion about whether Hillary Clinton violated them by relying on a private e-mail address while secretary of state. (Most of the people talking about it on cable TV, or writing their own hot takes, probably don’t either.) Right now, it looks like Clinton went out of her way to keep her correspondence secret when it was supposed to be public. But it’s also true that a lot of Clinton scandals turn out, upon closer inspection, to be bullshit. (See, for example, Benghazi, or Whitewater.) Worse, they tend to be bullshit that serves as a pretext for more bullshit, as each new uproar is said to “feed into the narrative” set in motion by the previous ones.


Yet at a certain point it stops mattering whether coverage of Clinton is as unfair as her defenders say it is. If she‘s going to be the Democratic candidate, part of her job is not to leave herself open to this sort of thing. If she wasn’t actively skirting the law by not using a State Department e-mail address, she was being sloppy. By not keeping her official e-mails separate from her private ones, she gives Republicans a pretext to subpoena them all. At the very least, there’s going to be a drawn-out fight over access to them. Should she be forced to turn them over, her genuinely private e-mails as well as her public ones will be used against her. Imagine what Republicans would be able to do with a trove of private correspondence that Clinton never thought they’d get to see.


The whole mess underscores the immense danger for the Democrats of holding a coronation rather than a primary. Even if the front-runner were as low-drama as Obama, the party, the country and even the candidate would benefit from a genuine debate about everything from foreign policy to the financial industry. And Clinton is not low-drama. She and her husband live at the center of a constantly unfolding political soap opera with endlessly proliferating subplots. Even if they’re not always treated fairly, they also seem to pathologically court trouble. See, for example, recent stories about foreign governments making donations to the Clinton Foundation during Clinton’s State Department tenure. One of those, The Washington Post reported, “violated [the foundation’s] ethics agreement with the Obama administration.”


Maybe there’s nothing more there, or anywhere, waiting to come out. But without other credible Democrats building the infrastructures they’d need to run, there’s no plan B if something explodes. Democrats are betting the future of the country on the Clintons’ ability to avoid crippling scandal. Maybe that wager will ultimately make sense, but there’s no reason to go all in so soon.




cont'


http://www.thenation.com/blog/200169/clintons-e-mail-mess-shows-we-need-primary-not-coronation

[Egnever]

1. Did they cancel the primaries?

[Agschmid]

2. Yah you didn't get the memo?

You should fire that admin...

[slumcamper]

18. Hell no. And nobody implied that. But who else is running? Answer me that. n/t

[Autumn]

38. No one is running, not even Hillary. Her being coy and waiting like this is another

bad move on her behalf. She's the presumed front runner, other Democrats are waiting to see what she does. If she goes down because of this show of poor judgment over her emails I'm not seeing anyone else having the time to set up the infrastructure to run.

[Segami]

40. Its obvious...

that Hillary has possession of the presidential game ball (even though she hasn't yet announced her candidacy) and is running out the game clock eliminating all potential candidates simply by default.

[Autumn]

43. Yeah and that can be a big ass problem

for we Democrats and a helping hand for any fucking puke who climbs out of the clown car.

[Warren DeMontague]

65. No, despite people trying to for months on DU.

Some people have seemed really pissed off that such a thing is even going to be bothered with.

[Egnever]

70. Right?

[madville]

3. The AP is getting into the mix now

Associated Press announced today they are considering filing a suit in court to force the State Department to obtain and release all of Hillary's emails from her personal accounts since it's evident now they were used for official government business.

This will drag out well into the primary and election.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

14. And that's the problem - this shit's NEVA goin away, all because of Hillary's profound lack of judgment.

[slumcamper]

19. Not a good start...and she hasn't even announced. n/t

[daredtowork]

4. Wasn't there another one with Bill Clinton's personal assistant?

This guy apparently "worked" his connection to the Clintons to invite a bunch of elites (including Bush Jr) to a business presentation for his start up...?

IIRC, to Hillary's credit, she didn't like this guy and had already tried to push him out of the dealings of the Clinton Foundation.

Have no idea when or where I read this. Maybe 3 years ago?

This is exactly the sort of thing poor people find demoralizing in the US - seeing Big Connections in play.

[brooklynite]

5. So, what are YOU going to do about it?

Is it the Party's job to give you an alternative choice? And would you trust a candidate the Party selected?

So, why are YOU sitting around complaining? Don't you have a lot of work to do finding an acceptable candidate?

[JI7]

6. O'Malley has been trying to run for a while now but more want to rant about how we need a primary

instead of actually supporting candidates and help them be competitive against clinton.

[msongs]

9. trying to run? did he take the legal steps? has he officially announced? nt

[JI7]

10. serious candidates start running before legal/official steps if they want to win

it's how they can get an idea of what kind of chance they would have.

Obama did it and saw he was getting a great reaction and there was something there which could make him a serious challenger to hillary and actually win.

omalley is trying and isnt' getting the response Obama did.

[KittyWampus]

48. Has Elizabeth Warren? No, she hasn't. And yet many DU'ers have a bumper sticker in their signatures

proclaiming "Warren For President" and attack anyone who points out she has said repeatedly she isn't going to run.

Sanders hasn't either.

[still_one]

52. Though Sanders I think has a committee looking into the feasibility, Warren has explicitly said

absolutely not. Of course that was on a 3rd Tuesday during a full moon, so who really knows

[Agschmid]

13. This.

[Man from Pickens]

7. "a lot of Clinton scandals"

It's funny how she has so many of them, isn't it? God help us if we have to sit through a year plus of her sordid history being at the center of national debate, in addition to all the war and corporatism one would have to swallow to get behind her.

Please folks, let's spare ourselves the sickening trials of a Clinton nomination, and let's find someone else - anyone else.

[Mr.Bill]

21. And do you think

they are not going to throw shit at whoever else is a likely Democratic nominee? All they are doing right now is showing how much they fear her, and I have faith that the public, excepting the wingnut fringe, will see through this. They will not play nice with any one we nominate. There are rooms full of operatives digging up shit on every conceivable Democratic nominee right now. And what they can't dig up they will make up. And we are doing the same thing. It's going to be a bumpy ride, and we will prevail. If accusing her of violating a law that did not even exist when she was in office is all they can come up with, it's advantage Democrats. Bring it on.

[Man from Pickens]

27. barely the tip of the iceberg

The woman has so many scandals you need to categorize them just to get a handle on the volume, and many of them are quite substantial. The current one is just getting started, and it's not about the Open Records Act as her partisans are asserting. This isn't even her first scandal in the field of missing records! http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/06/us/elusive-papers-of-law-firm-are-found-at-white-house.html

Need I go over the extensive list of ugly topics extending all the way back to her youth, which would resurface long after we'd all hoped they'd been dead and buried? No other potential candidate has this (massive) liability or anything close to it - and I for one would like a campaign about issues that matter rather than a grueling rehash of the Rose Law Firm, cattle futures, all her associates who have ended up in jail, Vince Foster, snipers on the tarmac in Bosnia, the 1993 health care debacle, the intimidation of Nita Lowey, Benghazi Benghazi and more Benghazi, missing FBI files, "Hillary's War" in Libya, the dramatically failed "reset" with Russia, all of Bill's women and their non-marriage of convenience, the outrageous list of demands she issues along with her 200k "speaking fees", her conversion of political influence into massive wealth to a degree that's downright unprecedented....

If we nominate Hillary Clinton it is a virtual guarantee that the election will not be about issues that matter, it will be about her very ugly history. This country can't afford any more time wasted on that kind of thing.

[Oilwellian]

56. Plus there are many video clips from Hillary's past campaign against Obama

Changing the skin tone of Obama in her campaign ad; her support for war with Iran; planting questions in the audience at her campaign stops; and for her pièce de résistance, after realizing she wouldn't win the primary yet forced Obama to continue campaigning, she joined Bill to publicly show support for McCain and gushed about the experience he would bring to the White House. I've got all of these clips in past videos I created during the 2008 primary. (I was for Obama, obviously), and hope I get the opportunity to use them against her again.

If she is nominated, she will lose the general election and we will see a Repub in the White House again.

[Man from Pickens]

58. also I forgot

Remember that picture of Obama in traditional African garb that the wingers all use to "prove" Obama is a Muslim? That was Hillary's work as well. The woman knows no barrier of conscience that is large enough to attenuate her ambition.

[Mr.Bill]

59. They will do

the same thing with whoever is the Democratic nominee.

[Man from Pickens]

61. they can't

There's no other possible nominee who routinely creates controversies like this. Sure there will be attacks against any candidate, but Hillary provides opponents with a gold mine of opportunity. There's no other potential candidate with that level of vulnerability.

And she does it to herself. If this were a non-issue, what would any non-Hillary person do? They'd get up in front of the microphones and state their position clearly. From Hillary, we get an ambiguous tweet, as if we don't have any right to know what she has done with the Department of State records, which have no business being under her sole control.

And it's not an accident, as evidenced by her registration of the domain on the day of her confirmation hearing - this was definitely premeditated.

[Mr.Bill]

63. Yeah, shame on her

for breaking a law that had not been passed yet. She's not creating scandals, they are. No need to discuss this any further with you, I see they've got you convinced.

[KittyWampus]

49. She doesn't have a lot of scandals. She has a lot of smears from republicans. BENGHAZI!

[treestar]

55. lol. Trumped up by the M$M.

If you think they wouldn't do the same thing to Sanders if necessary, you are off your rocker.

They already started one for Elizabeth Warren on the Native American thing.

They will pick on any Democrat endlessly.

[NYC_SKP]

11. K&R and The Nation. Not exactly some RW tabloid, they are absolutely right.

And I can see already that some are upset that we even speak of such things as having a choice or having concerns.

I say, "Fuck That Shit."

This is still America and we still have primaries and I say what I want about it, Hillary is bad news for the people.

[Liberal Lantern]

12. If she has a medical or some devastating political event that causes her NOT to run...

The Democratic Party will be in some serious hurt.

Biden isn't really taken as serious enough to be President (even though he would probably be really good) he woboy, would get the Gore and Kerry treatment and boy would it ever stick.

Warren says she won't run and I really think she is in the place where she could help Democrats in the best way, that is the Senate.

After these two...the field is up for grabs.

Heaven help us if Hillary doesn't run and they pick a right winger...talk about a cruel summer. Ugh.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

16. If Hillary bows out, which is startin to look like a real possibility, Elizabeth WILL run. Guaranteed.

[Agschmid]

34. Oh she told you?

[cascadiance]

69. I was also given a strong hint this would be the case from someone who works with her...

... in the Senate.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

17. Not very bright...especially if she intended to run for President.

Remember all the stink we raised about missing emails from Shrub's dynasty, and what is her answer? She didn't know, after being in government how long, that you are not supposed to use private anything when in government?

This stinks. She's done.


Good.

[Marr]

26. Exactly-- I just don't understand this.

Apart from all the legal/ethical arguments, just looking at this in purely political terms, I don't understand it. We just saw the Bush Administration embroiled in a scandal on the same topic a few short years ago, and Hillary Clinton has been in and around government for years. I find it very hard to believe that she and her staff could be unaware of how this would look, and the potential problems it could cause.

Considering the fact that the whole world has known she'd be running for president in 2016, to me it speaks of either incompetence or deep arrogance.

[zentrum]

20. Seriously, if Hillary

….doesn't run (I'm no Hillary fan), and Warren doesn't run, who have we got? Why is the Democratic national bench so thin?

I know there are some good Dems out there but do they have the big national name recognition like a bunch of Repugs do?

Something systemic has happened to the Democratic party that we have so few.

[appal_jack]

23. Sanders would be inspiring!

I know that he would need to register as a Democrat, but hey, why not Bernie?!?

-app

[dreamnightwind]

25. Nobody ever mentions Kerry

He's a little too centrist for me, bettter than most though, and IMHO he actually won in '04. He isn't scandal-plagued, has vast name recognition, has held important posts in a number of different roles, foreign policy experience, he can raise money...

Personally I'm still hoping for Warren, though I expect to be supporting a token left-flank Sanders campaign instead.

[BubbaFett]

32. it is by design

this nation has millions of people.

[WillyT]

22. Huge K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[6000eliot]

24. Isn't this EXACTLY what was said the last time the media turned against her?

[rpannier]

28. Wow. Even the Fox legal experts (former US Attorneys) said there's nothing to this

Why are we egging this foolishness on?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026314045

[madville]

31. There's nothing illegal

But now every House committee will be issuing subpoenas and every media outlet will be sending FOIA requests to the State Department asking for emails about every subject under the sun from her multiple accounts since they are now considered "official" email accounts used to conduct government business.

This will drag on forever and there could potentially be new email dumps regularly for a year or two.

Or they could ignore the subpoenas and requests and create a bigger "what are they hiding?" atmosphere.

[silvershadow]

29. And if I may jump in on your post to point out that even that primary only includes

those whose primary votes matter. In my state, usually by the time we vote, the winner has been decided. So for me, when you stay we need a primary, we do...but we also need to move toward a single primary day for all states, so the winner can truly be representative of the true will of the people.

Sorry to bogart on your thread, but it really is the same topic. Just another aspect, and one I harp on every chance I get. It truly affects a lot of things.

[McCamy Taylor]

30. You just played "blame the victim."

You would realize that if your hatred of Hillary was not so irrational.

[Segami]

37. And you're playing...

the 'point-the-finger' game. So, do you agree or not agree with this article's statement?

"....Maybe there’s nothing more there, or anywhere, waiting to come out. But without other credible Democrats building the infrastructures they’d need to run, there’s no plan B if something explodes. Democrats are betting the future of the country on the Clintons’ ability to avoid crippling scandal. Maybe that wager will ultimately make sense, but there’s no reason to go all in so soon...."

Nobody hates anyone here as you're so quick to claim....A difference of opinion about her actions (that could affect her future candidacy) doesn't constitute hatred.......keep it real and don't wallow in the gutter with senseless insults.

[hrmjustin]

33. There will be a primary.

[Hatchling]

67. Great!

From the OP I got the impression it might have been canceled. Whew!

[hrmjustin]

68. lol.

[uponit7771]

35. No it doesn't, 99.9% of people who have a comercial ISP model has an email server in their

.. home....

The reporting by the AP and the Times is disingenuous at best

http://support.asustor.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/191/41/how-to-configure-mail-server-app-in-asustor-nas

thats from a wap... anyone can setup

[Orsino]

36. I think the post is right about its lack of knowledge, and therefore about its worth.

I believe we need a primary, too, but that's a non sequitur in the context of the Nation piece.

[Spazito]

39. The 'hair on fire' discussion on the emails tells me...

her opponents have nothing. If this is all they have, yikes.

[B Calm]

41. Nothing happened when Dick Cheney deleted e-mails.

[Segami]

44. Yes,..

but is he considered a criminal in the eyes of many and would the nation 'trust' him with holding office ever again?

[B Calm]

64. Even criminals can be good teachers.

[Autumn]

47. Nothing ever happens to republicans. Their party and the media make sure of that

Democrats? Not so much. If you have paid any attention that is obvious. David Vitter, Anthony Weiner? Which one is still in office? Which one was going after Scalia? Give you a hint, the one still in office is the one who hires prostitutes to change his diaper.

[B Calm]

57. Spot on with the corporate owned media!

[MineralMan]

42. Primaries will be scheduled in almost every state.

If anyone wants to run for President, they can enter those primaries. Why wouldn't there be primary races? If you have a potential candidate you think should be in those primaries, right now is when you need to be contacting them, encouraging them to run and perhaps making a donation to their exploratory committee.

It seems quite likely that Hillary Clinton will be one of the candidates. If you would prefer someone else, that person will have to run as well. I'm not seeing anyone trying to block people from running in next year's primaries. Are you?

[madokie]

45. From what I can see its really not a mess

in actuality but in republiCON land it may be but shouldn't be. Making mountains of molehills is all the pukies have in their tool box so thats what they do.

I don't even think about who I'm going to be supporting at this point in the cycle. I know it's going to be the Democratic nominee, that you can bet on.

[Blue_Tires]

46. If you don't want a "Coronation", identify, promote and fund other candidates...

[Agschmid]

51. Yup.

[mylye2222]

50. K&R.

Even if they dont express it publicly we know that many Dems are enought with Clintons behaving lole of they were the Democratic Party's heiresses under divine right.

[Annoying_Ashley]

53. And if she wins the primary, you will call it a dynasty

It's a lose-lose for her in your world.

[randome]

60. Which would be technically incorrect.

[hr][font color="blue"][center]Treat your body like a machine. Your mind like a castle.[/center][/font][hr]

[treestar]

54. We are having a primary

Who said we weren't?

[randome]

62. Instead of being against someone, why don't you post some threads about who you support?

[hr][font color="blue"][center]A ton of bricks, a ton of feathers, it's still gonna hurt.[/center][/font][hr]

[woo me with science]

66. kick