That's a good name for it and I'll admit I borrowed it from Josh Marshall.
"There's no question that the Clinton email 'scandal' has become a major issue for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Not that it should necessarily but it has. It's the focus of negative press stories that appear clearly to have at least helped pull down her favorability numbers nationwide."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-view-from-the-clinton-scandal-nonsense-mill
It shouldn't have. But then you have to think that if it weren't this it would be something else. Or of that's not right then this is truly the only issue with which to criticize her with which means she's a pretty good candidate in this case.
But even Marshall concedes too much in saying that Hillary's favorability has dropped thanks to emails. Her favorability from when she was a nonpartisan Secretary of State would have dropped anyway.
"Consider the following results from this nationwide survey of voters. When asked, only 41 percent of those polled find Clinton "honest and trustworthy," while fully 54 percent do not. Among those who do not find Clinton trustworthy, fully 67 percent say they are voting for Clinton's opponent. The results seem to support the contention of political pundits that a candidate who is so widely mistrusted is unlikely to win the presidency. As one analyst puts it, "If you don't fundamentally trust someone or believe they are, at root, honest then how would you justify putting the controls of the country in their hands for at least four years?"
"How indeed? Except that this data comes from 1996 presidential election exit poll – the one taken on the day of the election. That was the election, you will recall, in which the deeply mistrusted candidate Bill Clinton handily defeated his opponent and man of sterling character, World War II veteran Bob Dole, 49.2 percent to 40.7 percent. Nor are the 1996 results a fluke."
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/opinion-blog/2015/08/20/dont-buy-hype-about-hillary-clintons-untrustworthy-issues
"And yet at least the 'classification' aspect of it all turns on an administrative tug of war which occurred long after the emails were sent: should some information that was not considered classified at the time now be re-designated as classified? And if that happens, should Hillary be in trouble for discussing classified information on her personal email server by some sort of time warp logic because some government officials now think these documents should be classified differently."
What this really gets to is
1. A turf war between agencies about what should be classified and what shouldn't be.
2. Overall, there is a tendency to over classify information in any case.
"If you've been paying attention to this pseudo-scandal you're probably aware of all this. But now Reuters comes into the mix with an "exclusive" which dresses up the same basic issue in new clothes."
"From the Reuters 'exclusive' ...
"The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton's emails from her time as the nation's most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department's own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not."
"In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own "Classified" stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts."
"This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be "presumed" classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters."
"This is followed by the obligatory ..."
"Reuters' findings may add to questions that Clinton has been facing over her adherence to rules concerning sensitive government information."
"In other words, this is a news article. So we're not saying this is a big deal. But others may decide this is a big deal. So we wanted to let you know that."
Right now the media is in this pack mentality and no Beltway insider, liberal or otherwise, wants to break with it and show s/he's not part of the club.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/george-stephanopolous-throws-softball.html
Groupthink at its finest. Ie, Hillary was right. There was and is a Right wing conspiracy.
"There's no question that the Clinton email 'scandal' has become a major issue for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Not that it should necessarily but it has. It's the focus of negative press stories that appear clearly to have at least helped pull down her favorability numbers nationwide."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-view-from-the-clinton-scandal-nonsense-mill
It shouldn't have. But then you have to think that if it weren't this it would be something else. Or of that's not right then this is truly the only issue with which to criticize her with which means she's a pretty good candidate in this case.
But even Marshall concedes too much in saying that Hillary's favorability has dropped thanks to emails. Her favorability from when she was a nonpartisan Secretary of State would have dropped anyway.
"Even if there were no Clinton scandals, however, she’d probably still be receiving fairly negative press coverage. The campaign press more or less openly confesses to a certain type of bias: rooting for the story. Inevitability makes for a really boring story, especially when it involves a figure like Clinton who has been in public life for so long."
"Instead, the media wants campaigns with lots of “game changers,” unexpected plot twists and photo finishes. If the story isn’t really there, the press can cobble one together by invoking fuzzy concepts like “momentum” and “expectations,” or by cherry-picking polls and other types of evidence. The lone recent poll to show Sanders ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire made banner headlines, for example, while the many other polls that have Clinton still leading, or which show Sanders’s surge slowing down in Iowa and nationally, have mostly been ignored."
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hillary-clinton-scandal-inevitable-problems/
"Instead, the media wants campaigns with lots of “game changers,” unexpected plot twists and photo finishes. If the story isn’t really there, the press can cobble one together by invoking fuzzy concepts like “momentum” and “expectations,” or by cherry-picking polls and other types of evidence. The lone recent poll to show Sanders ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire made banner headlines, for example, while the many other polls that have Clinton still leading, or which show Sanders’s surge slowing down in Iowa and nationally, have mostly been ignored."
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hillary-clinton-scandal-inevitable-problems/
Yes there is a drop in her trustworthiness' but this is an overrated concept in any case.
"How indeed? Except that this data comes from 1996 presidential election exit poll – the one taken on the day of the election. That was the election, you will recall, in which the deeply mistrusted candidate Bill Clinton handily defeated his opponent and man of sterling character, World War II veteran Bob Dole, 49.2 percent to 40.7 percent. Nor are the 1996 results a fluke."
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/opinion-blog/2015/08/20/dont-buy-hype-about-hillary-clintons-untrustworthy-issues
Ok, back to Josh:
What this really gets to is
1. A turf war between agencies about what should be classified and what shouldn't be.
2. Overall, there is a tendency to over classify information in any case.
"If you've been paying attention to this pseudo-scandal you're probably aware of all this. But now Reuters comes into the mix with an "exclusive" which dresses up the same basic issue in new clothes."
"From the Reuters 'exclusive' ...
"The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton's emails from her time as the nation's most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department's own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not."
"In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department's own "Classified" stamps now identify as so-called 'foreign government information.' The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts."
"This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be "presumed" classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters."
"This is followed by the obligatory ..."
"Reuters' findings may add to questions that Clinton has been facing over her adherence to rules concerning sensitive government information."
"In other words, this is a news article. So we're not saying this is a big deal. But others may decide this is a big deal. So we wanted to let you know that."
Right now the media is in this pack mentality and no Beltway insider, liberal or otherwise, wants to break with it and show s/he's not part of the club.
http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2015/08/george-stephanopolous-throws-softball.html
Groupthink at its finest. Ie, Hillary was right. There was and is a Right wing conspiracy.
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