MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell: Clinton Using Private Email ‘Stunning Breach of Security’

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

142. Several points.

First, that's human nature. Especially since the story was being reported on by basically every pundit on TV already, which made it seem like it was 'general knowledge' and not everything coming from a single story. How many times have you gone into a 'breaking' type story, and found commenters digging up all sorts of new info somehow on their own, rather than depending upon what was already presented? Not bloody often.

Second, virtually everyone on here has strong opinions about what they think the Party 'should be', and most of those include thinking that some 'Democrats' actually tarnish the party image and make it less like their ideal Party. In some cases, that includes Hillary Clinton. So yes, people who already think she is dragging the Party farther from their ideals are going to 'jump on her' when she does something that yet again seems to show a Democrat in power acting just like Republicans in power.

Third, while many people (not me, because I read some of the comments addressing the 'illegality' issue before I posted) did mistakenly assume that what she did was 'illegal', what actually matters electorally is how voters perceive her actions in term of the 'known Clinton' narrative. So whether it was 'illegal or not' (I don't know enough about the 1950s statute to judge whether it covers what she and her team did or did not do), and whether rules were clarified AFTER her term in office or not, what voters see is another politician doing something that looks a lot like trying to be able to keep some of what they do out of public hands. They may remember Scott Walker's private email setup, or, apparently Jeb Bush's similar private emails. And so that narrative of 'powerful Democrats and powerful Republicans act the same' grows stronger, and the Party's image with voters grows poorer. Most of them don't care WHY she had a private email system, only that she DID.

Heck, even those who have heard about the State Department's 'crappy antiquated email system' have to ask how it is that her 'solution' to that problem was to fix HER email rather than the State Department's email. For her entire term of office, she did nothing about what was apparently a well known problem with what was supposed to be the primary means of communication for the entire Department for which she was supposedly in charge? She didn't even bother to delegate the job to some Deputy, to say 'This is unacceptable. It might have been good enough for Colin Powell or Condaleeza Rice, who were from the party that constantly tries to weaken and destroy the government's ability to do anything efficiently, but not for me. I'm a Democrat and we believe that government is actually capable of solving problems. I want it fixed ASAP. At the very least, it needs to be as efficient as the email this generic IT guy set up for me personally, and preferably much more secure. Report back to me on your progress on fixing this every two weeks.'

So even if your voter is savvy enough to have heard about the lousy email system, again, the impression given is that she only cared about HER email, and didn't give a crap about that of every other person in the State Department. That she acted just like the Republican Secretaries of State before her.

Can you see how that frustrates people who want Democrats to be seen as better than Republicans? Who believe that standing up for regular Americans and being seen as caring about other people and wanting government to be seen as working better under Democrats is the path towards getting more people to vote for Democrats? Why they might want Democrats who don't want to be better than Republicans to get out of the way, and let Democrats who actually want government agencies to be run well take over?

This is still a Democratic message board. But a lot of people are tired of the excuses for Dems behaving like Republicans. They want Dems to be BETTER.