Clinton loses ground against GOP in hypothetical 2016 matchups

[karynnj]

72. This poll was done March 1-4 (I looked at pollingreport.com)

If the polling was uniform over that interval, half would be before the NYT reported the most recent story - so these responses would not reflect this. However, for the second half, this might have been the last thing they heard about HRC.

One interesting question, for which I have no idea how to assess, is how much of HRC's support in the primary is a function of her polling as beating all Republicans. (There were a very few outliers at various times where she was tied, but in general she has had a healthy margin.) I suspect that name recognition coupled with the belief that HRC is a sure thing for keeping the Presidency has an enormous impact on the primary results.

My gut reaction is that you will unfortunately be right that HRC might have a tough fight to win the Presidency. The saving grace might be that there is no charismatic Republican without a lot of baggage who would not have his own (hopefully greater) problems.

The last week has increased my fears - the email reinforces some of the worst images I have of Clinton, but what is scarier is the reaction of her team - which has been to slowly do all of the following -

- argue that others did the same thing - when in fact, what they did went beyond anything I have heard of previous Secretaries of State. (Not to mention, I think this triggers the same reaction from many of us who are parents - as someone else posted, we didn't accept that response from our kids even when they were little.

- argue that both Obama and Kerry also have some (unproven/undefined) private email too, ignoring that the SD has said specifically that Kerry has exclusively used government email on anything work related and it is archived contemporaneously.

- argue that it did not break the law -- ignoring that more is expected than just not breaking the law.

- Ignoring that the SD will likely have to augment every FOIA and inquiry concerning the Clinton era by going over these Clinton emails AND having to at least implicitly add the caveat that it only includes the email given to them by HRC. The SD has no way to claim that nothing was extracted after the fact.

- Note this also is why the historical record is impacted - obviously being able to remove or edit anything that lends a bad light on a decision seen up to 6 years later could make these records suspect.

_ In typical Clinton fashion, her way to resolve this is not to explain what she did and defend it or take responsibility. It is to make a splash saying the SD should make everything public. This would be nice transparency except that no one looking to dispute HRC will accept this as the full account. So, the SD, not only is left with likely augmenting inquiries, but with the task of redacting private or sensitive material for this huge cache of emails. On top of that, they have been accused of stonewalling for about a year -- when it appears from the behind the scenes accounts, they were working to comply in complete good faith.

This will likely blow over as a news story, but it is easy to resurrect. Consider how many - maybe coordinated to not happen all at the same time - demands for reprocessing the inquiries on ANY topic requested to the SD over the last 6 years that covers the Clinton years.

Not to mention, there are likely more shoes to fall - as is typical with many Clinton things. One thing mentioned that troubles me is that her aide Huma Abedin was also on this serve. That means that work emails from Clinton to a top aide are not in the SD records. Knowing this, it is hard to accept the view that the SD has or will get everything. (Note - I have heard nothing said about Abedin's emails being sent to the SD - and they should be as well.)