James Carville sure was right. After all the breast beating about how she just has to answer this phony issue dredged up by the House GOP about emails, all it has led to is more of this much ado about nothing. The media just wants to talk more about emails. He said this is what would happen:
“Look, the problem here isn’t about the emails, you guys are never going to be satisfied with whatever answers she gives,” said former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville. “Y’all are just going to go out there and say, ‘She raised more questions than she answered.’
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/did-hillary-tell-her-email-critics-to.html
Paul Waldman, who apparently shares the same brain as Greg Sargent as well as the Plum Line blog, didn't like that comment.
"He may not be wrong about that, but believing it can be a justification for some extremely unwise decisions."
So what exactly is the right decision when there is a feeding frenzy in the media over a phony issue that everyone in the media including the alleged liberals keeps dignifying with an answer?
Of course, Carville was right. She answered the questions but this has only led to more demands for more answers.
Her explanation that she used her personal email for convenience has upset all these oh so concerned media folks. They just can't understand how something as crude as 'convenience' could fit into what high ranking public officials might do. These media folks never do anything for convenience's sake and have never heard of anyone having more than one email or more than one phone. Average people just can't relate to this they whine. Ok so the media-liberal as well as others-say her explanation isn't a good one.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/03/10/hillary_clinton_email_press_conference_2016_frontrunner_attempts_to_defend.html
As Carville points out, they don't really care about the substance of this usse, they just want it to go on and on. Clearly even the alleged liberal folks want this to keep going on and on.
Both Waldman and Sargent keep warning us that Much Ado About Emails is not going away anytime soon. Well, heres a thought:
Maybe this phony scandal would lose some momentum if guys like Waldman and Sargent would stop fanning the flames by saying it's a real issue that has more questions to be answered. If they'd learn to be honest and admit this is just about killing Hillary for something that plenty other high ranking officials have done until recently-Kerry is the first one to solely use a government email after the law passed in 2014 went into effect-maybe this would slow down.
Why don't they do this? Because you have a lot of these folks that hate Hillary. Don't fool yourself, all they want is to see her meet some comeuppance-it's not that they care so very much about government transparency. This is just pure high school stuff. Sargent claims this proves she needs a primary challenger. He's just determined to blame the victim, not the Republicans. Surely there is something she's doing to cause their craziness.
"Today, Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who has been talking about challenging Clinton from the left, was repeatedly asked by reporters to comment on Clinton’s emails, and he repeatedly refused. Not because he doesn’t think there are legitimate questions here, but because his advisers say raising them might reflect badly on him:
“Look, the problem here isn’t about the emails, you guys are never going to be satisfied with whatever answers she gives,” said former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville. “Y’all are just going to go out there and say, ‘She raised more questions than she answered.’
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/did-hillary-tell-her-email-critics-to.html
Paul Waldman, who apparently shares the same brain as Greg Sargent as well as the Plum Line blog, didn't like that comment.
"He may not be wrong about that, but believing it can be a justification for some extremely unwise decisions."
So what exactly is the right decision when there is a feeding frenzy in the media over a phony issue that everyone in the media including the alleged liberals keeps dignifying with an answer?
Of course, Carville was right. She answered the questions but this has only led to more demands for more answers.
Her explanation that she used her personal email for convenience has upset all these oh so concerned media folks. They just can't understand how something as crude as 'convenience' could fit into what high ranking public officials might do. These media folks never do anything for convenience's sake and have never heard of anyone having more than one email or more than one phone. Average people just can't relate to this they whine. Ok so the media-liberal as well as others-say her explanation isn't a good one.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/03/10/hillary_clinton_email_press_conference_2016_frontrunner_attempts_to_defend.html
As Carville points out, they don't really care about the substance of this usse, they just want it to go on and on. Clearly even the alleged liberal folks want this to keep going on and on.
Both Waldman and Sargent keep warning us that Much Ado About Emails is not going away anytime soon. Well, heres a thought:
Maybe this phony scandal would lose some momentum if guys like Waldman and Sargent would stop fanning the flames by saying it's a real issue that has more questions to be answered. If they'd learn to be honest and admit this is just about killing Hillary for something that plenty other high ranking officials have done until recently-Kerry is the first one to solely use a government email after the law passed in 2014 went into effect-maybe this would slow down.
Why don't they do this? Because you have a lot of these folks that hate Hillary. Don't fool yourself, all they want is to see her meet some comeuppance-it's not that they care so very much about government transparency. This is just pure high school stuff. Sargent claims this proves she needs a primary challenger. He's just determined to blame the victim, not the Republicans. Surely there is something she's doing to cause their craziness.
"Today, Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor who has been talking about challenging Clinton from the left, was repeatedly asked by reporters to comment on Clinton’s emails, and he repeatedly refused. Not because he doesn’t think there are legitimate questions here, but because his advisers say raising them might reflect badly on him:
His advisers say there’s no benefit to him criticizing Clinton at this point. She’s already on the defensive, they reason, and die-hard Democrats are likely to be turned off if O’Malley sounds too much like Clinton’s Republican critics.
"Well, I hope that isn’t the real rationale. I suspect most Democratic voters and activists want to hear a spirited debate about Clinton’s emails; in fact, such a debate among Democrats could be more illuminating than whatever results from Republican criticism of her over it, which is likely to be polluted by overreach."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/03/11/maybe-its-time-for-a-real-democratic-presidential-primary/
Oh, really. I'd love to see an example of the kinds of GOP questions that go too far vs. good Democrat questions that touch on what's really at stake. I have no idea what he's talking about here. What Democrats are chomping at the debate for a 'spirited debate over Hillary's emails?' I'm sure these 'Democrats' spend their days listening to Rush or are among those Americans who made Fox News the number one place to trust for their news.
I don't know why he doesn't like O'Malley's rationale-it makes sense to me. I assume anybody who keeps flailing on and on about Hillary's emails is either a Republican, a stupid media flack more interested in their silly 'narratives' than actual issues that matter to the American people, or really dumb Democrats that are hoping maybe this destroys Hillary so we can elect Saint Elizabeth Warren and she can make all banks illegal and abolishes the NFL and sign a bill for world peace forever more.
If you're a Democrat why are you talking like a Republican? is my first thought for anyone obsessed over Hillary's emails. So O'Malley is right on that. I would certainly think less of him if he started that stuff.
Sargent has a clever argument: we need to primary her for her own good or the press will feel they have to oppose her and rip her to shreds.
"Democratic primary voters may let her have the presidential nomination without a struggle, but the press won’t,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist who has advised several presidential candidates including Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. “The press will wage a kind of primary campaign against her, at least try to bring her down a peg or two. In the end, she will be the nominee, but she has to go through it first.”
"Tuesday was surely just her first face-off with the political press corps. And Election Day is 20 months away. “I don’t think the press primary is helpful: It can get very annoying and distracting,” Mr. Shrum said. “Al Gore got tortured by the press for claiming that he invented the Internet, which he never claimed. But it’s hard to predict which controversies in the media will actually end up hurting.”
Ok so that's the choice Democrats face: we either have to primary Hillary so she gets knocked down a peg or two or the media will do the job of knocking her down. What is vital is that someone knock her down apparently. She's just so-uppity.
So tell me this: how do incumbent Presidents ever get re-elected; after all, they're not-usually-opposed. In fact the rare times they are primaried they usually lose.
I don't buy it. I think this is just a question of Hillary haters trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, but ultimately it's not going to work. This issue is t0o trivial. You truly have to have the IQ of a hamster to care about this. Alas, most in the mainstream press fit the bill. What they forget is none o the scandals of the 90s every achieved anything either and neither will this.
P.S. Think about it this way: if her explanation isn't a good one, what would be a good one? What explanation would satisfy this scandal mongering horde? The trouble is that she has the law on her side-she broke no laws but the email alarmists say that doesn't matter. NO what counts is some high falutin sensibility that just feels that somehow having more than one email 'isn't right. '
The whole basis that these Cassandras are arguing is so subjective they're always going to say 'that's a poor excuse, we demand more.'
UPDATE: I'm glad to see that Waldman now concedes this at least.
http://prospect.org/waldman/absurdity-asking-whether-hillary-clinton-can-satisfy-her-critics
http://theweek.com/articles/543620
Here is a chronology for just how much the media has gotten this story wrong on the basic facts again and again.
http://mediamatters.org/research/2015/03/10/how-not-to-cover-a-scandal-4-media-outlets-walk/202834
The problem with calls for Hillary to 'be transparent' and 'answer legitimate questions' is that this is not that kind of conversation-where facts matter. It's not a logical conversation that cares about what actually happened and didn't but about what somehow is felt to fit a narrative. I mean you might as well argue with a Klansman-the GOP has one of those as their 3rd highest member in the House-on whether are not Black people deserve t he same rights as others: there is no hope of having a logical conversation in good taste; to even try to answer his accusations about whether or not 'world Jewry' are behind all the evil in the world is to dignify something that must never be.
I argue that Hillary haters are on the same basic level-you can't engage with them; The late philosopher Richard Rorty would say they are 'inappropriate conversational partners.'
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BykRVQaTsC_nOUlscEk5Y2puMWMycWNUZGlnaDVYTndqbVJF/edit
Basically, Hillary hating is a 'conversation stopper' you either believe that she is the most evil, arrogant, corrupt person in the world or you can't engage such a conversation. It's like having a conversation about the President's birth certificate.
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