per email…
Dear Friend,
It’s time.
It’s time we broke that highest and hardest glass ceiling.
It’s time for an economy that works for everyone, for pay equity, for higher education that’s affordable for all Americans.
It’s time for Hillary Clinton.
Today, I’m proud to announce to you, my friends and supporters, that I’ll be working hard this year and next to help elect Hillary and I hope you’ll join me. Will you commit to joining me in New Hampshire on August 29?
Hillary is a lot of things to a lot of people. Activist, organizer, lawyer, mother and grandmother. Sunglass-wearing, tough-negotiating, world-traveling Secretary of State. History-making U.S. Senator and First Lady.
There’s a lot of reasons to be with her but let me tell you a few of mine.
She’s a leader who is willing to take on the big guys to protect the rest of us. As a young lawyer, she helped lead the Congressional investigation into President Nixon. In Arkansas, she taught law and ran legal clinics to help poor families and children. As the first woman Senator from New York, she took on Congress when it wasn’t doing enough for rural areas and small towns.
Now, she’ll be on our side as President. Her economic plan will fight the core challenge of our time – raising incomes for everyday Americans and closing the equality gap in earning. She’s proven she’ll be our champion and the champion for all Americans.
Hillary Clinton shares my vision for what America can be, she shares our values as Democrats and she’s the right leader at the right time. We’ve come too far for equality, for human rights, for economic justice to go backward.
I’m all in and I’m ready to hit the streets. On August 29th, I’ll be kicking off a canvass for Hillary in Exeter, New Hampshire, just down the road from where I grew up. Click here to sign up and join me in New Hampshire.
There’s a lot at stake. And it’s time for action.
Please join me,
Maura
This isn’t surprising. I suspect that the vast bulk of the EMILY’s List elected officials will come out for Hillary early, although this does seem to be quite early.
Of course, Hillary is leagues better than any of the Republican candidates, but we’re not choosing between her and them, at least not yet. That’s why it’s funny to see language like “She’s a leader who is willing to take on the big guys to protect the rest of us” in the endorsement. That deserves nothing but a huge eyeroll when one considers who she is running against for the Democratic nomination.
But what the timing makes me think is, the Clinton campaign is seeing internals that more than validate the Boston Herald poll from a week ago, that showed Sanders in a statistical tie in New Hampshire. If their polling shows the race tipping in his direction and momentum still building, they might want to push the very popular AG from next-door Massachusetts to make the endorsement early, and get her actively involved in New Hampshire early, especially if you think she can bring a reasonable percentage of the people who volunteered for her campaign with her. You don’t need the early endorsement if your candidate is cruising, but you’d want it now if they’ve stalled out.
Of course that’s 100% uninformed speculation, and presented mostly for BMG’s amusement. Facts may come out that disprove it at any moment now. But it was pretty much my first thought on seeing the announcement, and the pushback it was getting this afternoon on Facebook.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Hillary’s campaign is stalling a bit. It seems to be an overly managed and cautious inevitability-themed campaign. They should take a look how that worked for Martha Coakley . . . twice.
Like Coakley, her lead is so great in the primary that it may be enough to win without really engaging the other candidates, and then she could be on to the general not having to had really fought, and this could make her very weak, especially against a less managed candidate who comes off as more authentic.
And that authenticity issue is the key. I think that’s a big chunk of the reason why Sanders is gaining. He’s being honest and really engaging.
Take this, quite remarkable, real-life impromptu session from Bernie with the press.
Would Hillary ever do that?
If anything she is the one candidate with consistent opportunities for voter outreach from what I have seen. She has also had some very engaging public events and many have noted the difference in this regard compared to 2008. I also see no evidence of lack of authenticity.
Here’s some evidence:
She won’t take a stand on the Keystone Pipeline.
She won’t answer an important and direct question from BLM.
More on the email server issue in a press conference.
This is all in the last week.
She handled herself well with the BLM group, much better than Sanders did with either of his disruptions, and I say that as one of his supporters. But he is far more authentic than she is because he just says what he thinks and has for over four decades in public life. His values are Democratic values- social democracy, social justice, and impassioned grassroots politics. The opposite of the direction the Clinton’s have tried and take our party, with mixed results, for the last two and a half decades.
I think it is essential for Hillary to learn from Bernie and just let her inner liberal and inner policy wonk come out, this is the generation that is actually receptive to those ideas and that kind of detail. Let Trump and the right wingers line up to shout trite slogans, belittle minorities, and praise the markets-Democrats know better. It’s time the Clinton’s learned that their party has returned to it’s roots-theirs-and fast.
I don’t think she handled herself all that well. She 1. did not answer the direct question, and refused to acknowledge that she made a mistake or evolved in any way, 2. condescended about their approach while not acknowledging that BLM has made many specific recommendations that have been swept aside with that disorganization meme, and 3. basically said she was going to need to be pushed, not lead and do the pushing on major social justice issues.
I agree that Bernie did not handle the initial disruptions well, but his response after was tremendous. He actually engaged with those issues, understanding how important they are. Hillary has not.
Given everything she’s done, are we really so sure there is an inner liberal there?
Establishment Dems who may be super delegates should take their time before they commit to a candidate. It creates an aura of being part of the clan is sufficient to get your vote.
…but I don’t think state AGs are automatic super delegates. I think it shows leadership to be out front.
…..with the email server issue and the big donations from the “usual suspects” (aka the “too big to fail crowd”) I’m just not willing to back Hillary. Of course, if she wins the nomination, given the Republican field, she’s still a better choice if it comes to that.
She has said that in hindsight using a government account would have been smarter, but I’m not sure what people are hoping or expecting her to do after the fact.
What is the reasoning behind setting up such a server other than she wanted to be able to control what was and what was not tracked/released?
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I haven’t seen a satisfactory answer.
Colin Powell used personal email as Secretary of State. Other Secretaries of State did it, so it was a reasonable decision.
The policy got changed in 2013 and 2014 (after she left and John Kerry took over) so this is the NYT not paying attention to the timeline and acting like it’s a scandal when it isn’t.
My issue with Ms. Clinton is her exclusive use of her personal account.
Eating an occasional fish caught from inland fresh water in Massachusetts is unlikely to hurt anyone (though still not something I do). A diet comprised of ONLY fish caught from inland fresh water in Massachusetts is an extraordinarily bad idea, very likely to cause serious health disorders because of the toxic chemicals still in our inland fresh waters.
Hillary Clinton clearly falls in the latter category, while the reports I’ve seen about Colin Powell are unclear. Telling me that “all that rubbish about pollution is trivial nonsense, she’s fine” would not persuade to choose her as my physician.
The only answer I’ve seen is that Clinton found it inconvenient to have to use 2 different cell phones. I’m not sure any other answer will be forthcoming.
Her husband was the President for eight years. She was a US senator after that. I frankly don’t believe that she didn’t absorb, through osmosis (never mine “pillow talk”), enough information about security to know the implications of this.
Anybody who didn’t understand the implications of this decision, given their long exposure to national security issues, either willfully refused to admit or arrogantly ignored them.
I’m not objecting to what she’s done “after the fact”. I am appalled that she did this in the first place.
Big difference.
…that may have been her way of handling the security/sensitivity issue. It also occurs to me we are hearing contradictory complaints: that by using private means it’s not transparent enough for scrutiny, but also too transparent from a security standpoint.
She was the SECRETARY OF STATE! She had top security clearance, for everything. What was she thinking of?
There is nothing contradictory about expecting that all her electronic communication would be as secure as possible, archived as needed, and available for scrutiny by all lawful parties. The same is true for the President, Vice President, and each cabinet officer.
The notion that Hillary Clinton or any other lay person (in matters of national security) would presume to “have her [own] way of handling the security/sensitivity issue” is utterly preposterous. It is also exceedingly dangerous. What Ms. Clinton did was to create an egregious breach of national security.
The only suitable response is “mea culpa”, and then address the quite understandable questions about whether her judgement and temperament, as illustrated in this terrible decision, is suitable for the Oval Office. The more she and her supporters dance, bob, weave, and defend this indefensible practice, the more she hurts her cause (in my opinion).
Her way of handling the “security/sensitivy issue” makes me wonder if, as President, she would decide to similarly create her own woefully amateurish nuclear codes controlling our nuclear arsenal — the system in place is surely much to inconvenient for a busy man or woman. Would she decide to create her own security detail? After all, the Secret Service has had all sorts of trouble lately.
The arrogance of her decision about this email server is nearly as insulting as the incompetence of the result. She and her supporters really need to stop attempting to defend the indefensible — sooner rather than later.
There seems to be this defense from Democrats that Republicans are just trying to make a mountain of a molehill. That may be true to an extent, and it is certainly true for something like Benghazi, but is it really possible to defend her actions? I don’t think it is.
What legitimate reason is there to go with the private server?
The problem is that everyone has to rely on her word and nothing else. How do we know it was secure? She says so. Why do we think it was no big deal? Because she says so. Why do we think that all of the email was actually produced in response to subpoena? Well, because she says so.
Been there done that with the Clintons, and have the t-shirt. It really will be a shame if another promising Clinton Administration squanders opportunities because of this kind of crud.
People forget she beat Obama here.
But this bothers me. I want the focus on female candidates to focus on their abilities, stances, etc. and not on cosmetics, wrinkles, jewelry, pants vs. skirts, and all the other irrelevant crap that (mostly) male political writers seem to focus on that trivializes women running for office. Gushing that a candidate is a mommy and a grandma doesn’t help unless endorsements of male candidates reference how the kiddos call him ‘Bompa’ too.
…but her email is otherwise very substantive.
seems you are trying too hard to dislike something, anything.
I notice that as well.
But they can’t be so high-minded as to avoid reality. And the reality is that they have to do this.
Bush or Rubio is certainly going to play the “she’s an old lady” card in some way, and given the state of the GOP, probably without much subtlety.
Blunting that particular line of attack is just good fundamental baseball. Say what you want about the Clintons, but they are not unskilled in their chosen profession.
These are two of the smartest and most passionate policy wonks in our party, and they are the two smartest political minds of their generation, which is why it’s so frustrating to constantly see them play it safe in campaigns and try and hide and evade from responsibilities for trivial infractions.
Imagine how much better our country would be if Bill had just said on day 1, “i got the bj, I am deeply sorry to my family’ and avoided the millions of dollars and countless political capital wasted on the investigation. We knew he was a cheater when we elected him, so were many of our Presidents from the lousy like Harding to the brilliant like FDR. It’s irrelevant to the job. And admitting it up front spared us the whole ordeal, even if the polling would’ve taken a brief nosedive.
Same here. Just say she used the personal email since it was convenient and she had full control, admit that broke some trivial regulations, reimburse the government, and move on. Instead, Gowdy and his cronies will waste millions more of OUR money to investigate the Clintons, and the voters again, won’t care and move on. So let’s cut the chase short, same some taxpayer dough and refocus the campaign on the issues.
Which, let’s admit it, when she delves deeply into the issues she comes across far more authentic than she does in this awkwardly staged pressers and ‘im just a regular gal’ encounters the campaign has been stuck in. Her interaction with BLM is actually quite instructive on how she views the world. They want some symbolic victories and concessions, and she says stays focused on the actual policies. I actually thought the video was impressive with how she honestly answered their questions, treated them like adults, and didn’t pander but just said ‘here is the political reality as I see it’.
Granted, I still think one should, as Mayor Curtatone shows us how, symbolically acknowledge the real pains and concerns these activists are expressing and apologizing for any role policies one championed in the past might have played. Absolutely, but I have to say it was a pretty presidential moment for me.
I mentioned more above, but the one thing she definitely did not do in that interaction was “honestly answered their questions.” After her douchey campaign aide interrupted to give Hillary time to think of answer, she talked about the BLM movement and what it needs to do, which was not at all the question she was asked.
I agree with most of this, except the following:
Sorry, but these were NOT “some trivial regulations”. This was a major error. Surely the litany of breaches, including many from the federal government itself, demonstrates that we are very much at risk. There is strong evidence that many of these originated in foreign governments or in agents working on behalf of foreign governments. The threat is very real today, was very real when she became Secretary of State, and absolutely is NOT “trivial”.
Full disclosure — my day-job is doing back-end development for a leading identity-theft detection and protection company. My company is handling the OPM breach for the federal government. In my view — both personal and professional — it is a grievous mistake to view this action by Ms. Clinton as a “trivial” political blunder.
If she demonstrated this colossal lack of good judgement as Secretary of State, what will she do as President?
She did not violate the policy of the State Dept. by using her own email. That much is clear and I believe I sourced that already.
It doesn’t matter whether there were regulations or not (and your source was, as I recall, to a Clinton campaign statement).
It was a stupendously bad decision, and she should have known better.
Cardinal Bernard Law was not prosecuted in Massachusetts because Massachusetts law allowed him to coddle, protect, and enable the sexual predators under his control. That fact is relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Law’s decisions were right or wrong, and irrelevant to questions about the judgement demonstrated by Mr. Law.
Her judgement was terribly wrong, and terribly wrong about a very real matter of national security. Maybe the fact that regulations allowed it (if they did) mollifies you. It does NOT mollify me.
Again, given the absence of time machines, what else do you want?
mishandled classified information and wound up resigning in disgrace, and under indictment.
It isn’t that there is something that can be done now. It is the fact that it was done at all, compounded by the pfft, it was nothing attitude.
I guess the good thing is that there isn’t a special prosecutor anymore.
…deliberately pass along information he knew to be classified to his biographer with whom he was also having an affair? A big difference it would seem.
It rests on the assumption that nothing therein was classified, but there is no way to know that, other than the candidate’s word.
I have read that something not classified at the time may later be flagged as classified, but I don’t think it’s fair to hold someone accountable for a future designation. Here is Politifact’s take, which while cited by the campaign in her defense actually has some critical elements as well. There’s letter vs. spirit and some dancing on the edge, but I’m prepared to declare no harm, no foul.
Which means that this is what we get… again.
If this comes down to IS the material classified vs. WAS it classified we will need to be precise. Likewise Bill accurately answered the question IS there a sexual relationship between him and Lewinsky in the negative, because it had broken off months before (not to mention the definition agreed upon by the lawyers of sexual activity).
I can’t believe you’re belaboring this.
From your link (emphasis mine):
Is your argument resting on the distinction between “classified” and “sensitive but unclassified”?
The article you cited makes it clear that the allowances for personal use were intended to be for occasional and/or emergency situations. Ms. Clinton used her private server exclusively.
The nits you focus on, like Mr. Clinton’s focus on “is”, may be important in court, they amount to noise that distracts from the reality of what she actually DID.
Yes, I do think those distinctions are important, but I don’t think I’m belaboring the point. Her detractors are doing the belaboring in the desperate hope to get anything to stick and now it seems that some are proving Deval Patrick’s oft-made point that the first people to believe GOP talking points are Democrats.
Until a satisfactory answer can be provided for why she did it, the whole episode raises serious questions of trust and about her judgment, regardless of whether anything bad happened to classified documents.
It’s not about GOP talking points (save that for Beghazi crap), it is a legitimate and serious issue.
Again she has already acknowledged it wasn’t the best choice and has basically just said convenience was the motive. I have yet to see “evidence” for nefarious motives EXCEPT from people trying to make hey out of Benghazi. I do not feel qualified to second-guess or micro-manage how a cabinet officer communicates and I don’t think most people who have weighed in are either.
I reject the accusation that I’m somehow hoping to “get anything to stick”.
I’ve expressed my support for a nearly all of the things Ms. Clinton has said. I’ve said, clearly, that I will support and work for her if she is the nominee.
On this issue — her breathtakingly irresponsible flouting of very real and immediate national security concerns about her email server — I’ve expressed my astonishment at her ham-handedness in addressing the issue. That hardly qualifies as attempting to “get anything to stick”.
The GOP very occasionally gets something right in their talking points (even a stuck clock tells the correct time twice a day). The fact that the GOP says something does not automatically make it false.
Ms. Clinton was egregiously wrong in this case. You compound her error by attempting to trivialize it, and by casting aspersions on those of us unwilling to drink the kool-aide that you seem to enjoy.
I don’t even understand what “should” and “must” even pertains to in what we’re discussing.
Ms. Clinton made a grievous error in judgement. She did absolutely the wrong thing, and the fact that she did that after her long experience as First Lady (and presumably as close confidant of her husband) makes it worse. When her supporters argue, as you do here, that it is “disloyal” or whatever to pay attention to that, you drive us away.
Perhaps in your view I am betraying our party. It seems to me that you are bringing the same divisive and ultimately failing energy to the Hillary Clinton campaign that you brought to the Martha Coakley campaign.
It failed then, and it will fail now.
” It seems to me that you are bringing the same divisive and ultimately failing energy to the Hillary Clinton campaign that you brought to the Martha Coakley campaign.”
Man, oh, man–christopher’s “energy” is not the reason Coakley came up 30,000 votes short.
You’re going off the deep end on this.
I give up. I have this absurdly optimistic idea that when facts and logic are laid on the table, progress can be made in a dialogue.
A physician who is familiar with the clinical risks of smoking cigarettes is likely to have a hard time not “going off the deep end” when discussing the hazards of smoking with a lay person. A comparable analogy is a lay person who supporting another physician seeking to head the AMA, and whose candidate is a heavy smoker.
Saying “I understand the risks of smoking and I don’t care” is different from saying “There’s nothing really wrong with smoking, and you’re just trying smear my candidate”.
Whether we all accept them or not, the fact remains that what Hillary Clinton did, in deciding to use her personal server exclusively for email, was a stupendously bad decision that DID endanger national security. That is my professional, as opposed to personal, opinion. It may be incorrect, but it is in my view the only answer supported by the evidence. It is comparable to the professional opinion of a physician who states that a decision to start smoking cigarettes is a bad decision that does endanger the patient’s health.
I agree that further exchanges about this topic are useless.
…but it seems odd to call someone defending rather than attacking a candidate the divisive one.
I strongly suspect that we agree on far more issues than we disagree. Perhaps we are each tenacious (my detractors prefer the term “stubborn”) on matters that we feel are important.
Were we to have exchanges like this in person, my guess is that we would reach a point where one or the other of us would roll our eyes, say “there you go again”, we’d laugh, and then move on.
I was out of line in my reference to your comments during the Coakley campaign, and I apologize.
According to my most recent link many strongly suggest that she should have used a government email account, but OTOH doing so was not an absolute requirement.
I’m also appalled that the foreign policy of the United States of America was being conducted on a non-government server.
I suspect that there could be security issues that somervilletom doesn’t want to get into on a public site.
Here’s an example, though, that you can read about in a not necessarily anti-Clinton source.
researchers-say-clintons-email-server-had-no-encryption-for-her-first-three-months-in-office
In terms of electoral politics, what is more worrying to me is that there is a whole demographic that is being targeted with this story by the GOP. It’s bringing back uncomfortable questions about the Clintons and their veracity that have been stewing for decades. (At 44 years old, AG Healey, whom I admire, is not part of this demographic … )
There is much that is better left unsaid on sites like this.
I don’t claim to be an expert on security, but the political question is did she adhere to the policies in place and believe that she was acting appropriately.
I agree with you that one political question is whether she believed she was acting appropriately.
In my view, it is not the only political question. Well-intentioned people acting in good faith can still do great harm when they do the wrong thing.
I think there is therefore at least one other political question: should someone in her position (8 years as First Lady, 9 years in the Senate, and the her 2008 presidential primary campaign) have had better judgement about the vulnerabilities, threats, and consequences of her decision to use a private and unsecured email server for all her email communication?
The link cited above by rcmauro reveals (it was news to me) that the server she used didn’t even have an encryption certificate for the first three months that she used it. I mean seriously, this is web administration 101. A great many high schoolers are fully capable of doing whatever they choose with a server that is unprotected this way. A professional, intent on doing harm, can do unimaginable things.
From that link (emphasis mine):
A Secretary of State is traveling in China, and using an unsecured email server for ALL her email communications? Whether or not she acted in good faith, and whether or not she believed she was acting appropriately, she was exposing the entire US government — up to and including the Oval Office and the highest levels of the Pentagon — to each and every Chinese hacker that was active at that time. China has been a hotbed of cyber espionage and cyber attacks for as long as cyber espionage and attacks have existed.
Another political question is “is there any offense, intentional or not, that Democrats will not excuse if it is committed by Bill or Hillary Clinton?”
Please understand that I raise these concerns as a loyal Democrat (who is also a loyal American) who will work and vote for Ms. Clinton if she is the nominee. Her husband was, in my opinion, our greatest president since FDR and the only president in my lifetime who compares to FDR. If nothing else, in my view it is absolutely imperative that she and her staff find better answers for these than what we’ve heard so far.
An aggressive GOP, with 24 hour a day access to Fox News, will absolutely destroy her “national security” credibility with the current posture she’s taking. That is, for me, the ultimate political question.
Friends, and I mean that sincerely, can we all agree that this is already a barnburner of a campaign fifteen months out !
My greatest fear at this point is that the passion for our chosen candidate is going to cause us to say or do something that might prevent us from uniting behind our nominee next fall. I include myself in this warning because, as many of you can attest, I have been known to let my hot Italian temper get the better of me on more than one occasion.
I say this as a passionate supporter of Secretary Clinton, just as my friends, James and Tom are passionate supporters of Senator Sanders; and my friend Terry is undecided (though I suspect he will end up in Bernie’s camp after all is said and done).
Can we disagree without being disagreeable ? Can we debate the issues without impugning the motives of our opponents. Can we keep our fire on the Fascist enemies of the people ?
Will you join with me to at least try to keep this conversation respectful ?
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I cannot stand the Clintons, and I imagine my impression of them doesn’t divert massively far away from those of a bitter elder Republican, but this email affair is so incredible similar to Benghazi. It’s built on falling sky scenarios and unlimited hypotheticals. The larger issue to me of whether or not Chinese crackers got into Clinton’s account is one of character (of which we do have data). Clinton took a step in which, even in the most charitable state, one must admit removed a sense of transparency and accountability. She’s also been one who has said that Snowden’s actions should not be condoned, and, like on so many other subjects, has had an “evolving” attitude to which she later admitted to understanding Americans’ sense of being disturbed by NSA spying.
Clinton was also the one, who it was revealed via Wikileaks, ordered the CIA and FBI to spy on United Nations officials.
I mean, isn’t it fairly easy to conceive of how she would want to ensure extra privacy for herself through her understanding of what actions she’d taken to remove privacy from others?