4 reasons the Hillary emails are hurting Obama

With each passing day that Clinton chooses to stay silent on why she kept her digital correspondence private, the White House is forced to answer questions on her behalf.

White House aides are clearly frustrated that Obama has gotten engulfed in the controversy with so little time before the entire political conversation turns to 2016.

Yet Obama’s problems have only compounded since his messaging team tried to sidestep blame for the latest uproar surrounding secretive Clinton tactics.

Here are the 4 reasons the Hillary emails are so damaging for Obama.

1. The White House story has shifted

In just 48 hours, the White House take on what Obama knew of Clinton’s emails has changed dramatically.

Obama was asked by CBS when he first learned that Clinton used a private email system for official State Department correspondence.

The president replied, “The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports.”

That answer prompted many political observers to deduce that Obama never actually exchanged emails with Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state.

But that’s not the case.

For the first time, White House press secretary Josh Earnest conceded Monday that Obama had traded emails with the former secretary of state — during which time she used the email address “[email protected]” rather than an official State address and hosted her mail on a private server registered to the fictitious person “Eric Hoteham.”

“The president … did over the course of his first several years in office trade emails with his secretary of state,” Earnest told reporters Monday. “I would not describe the number of emails as large. But they did have the occasion to email one another.”

The White House claims Obama was unaware of how Clinton set up the private emails or server to handle the communications — and did not know what her plans were for turning the conversations over to recordkeepers, as required by law.

“I assume that he recognized the email address he was emailing back,” Earnest said of Obama. “The question here is about compliance with the Federal Records Act.”

Those new details are making the president’s political headache even worse, analysts said.

“Even if it’s genuine and even if he’s learning as it unfolds, it creates the appearance they’re not telling everything until they have to,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “It gives even more energy to the story, as opposed to just explaining it up front.”

2. Obama looks in the dark, again

A common critique of the president has been that he’s often the last to learn of scandals within his own administration.

The controversy involving Clinton’s emails is no different, and Republicans are using it to paint Obama as either deceptive or willingly ignorant about the actions of his Cabinet members.

“Just like with many other controversies, the president of the United States thinks it’s fine to tell the public that he’s always the very last person to know,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Raj Shah. “Why does he even need advisers when it’s the media that’s telling him everything that’s going on in his own administration?”

Republicans say the president employed a similar defense when addressing the botched rollout of the Obamacare website, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservatives and phony waiting lists for medical care at Veterans Affairs hospitals, among other embarrassing episodes for his administration.

3. Democrats are starting to panic

Perhaps the clearest indicator of turmoil for Obama is that Democrats are increasingly anxious about the fallout from the Clinton emails.

“Step up and come out and state exactly what the situation is,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., urged Clinton in an appearance on “Meet the Press.” “She is the leading candidate, whether it be Republican or Democrat, for the next president … from this point on, the silence is going to hurt her.”

Such thinking has caused some Democrats to explore — for the first time — alternatives to a Clinton candidacy.

And though Obama won’t endorse a Democrat for president anytime soon, he’s spent much of his time since embarrassing midterm losses trumpeting his party’s unity.

As the head of the party, Obama will surely be asked to handle any signs of discord.

“There were some Democrats who were looking for an alternative to Hillary because they felt the family brought baggage that would come up in a campaign,” Ron Nessen, White House press secretary for Republican President Gerald Ford, told the Washington Examiner. “This has already encouraged some other Democrats to maybe think about somebody else. And that also takes even more attention away from Obama.”

4. Obama is already stuck talking about Hillary

The president knows that it’s only a matter of time before much of the public and media tune him out. That’s a reality all lame-duck presidents eventually face.

To a certain extent, the Clinton scandal has expedited that timeline.

In an attempt to maintain his relevance, Obama has relied extensively on executive action, granting him much of the spotlight even as Republicans control both chambers of Congress and his last election is behind him.

In recent days, questions about Obama’s agenda have taken a back seat at virtually every White House press briefing. Obama’s daily events, for example, have been overshadowed by how often he emailed Clinton, what he thought of her cryptic messaging and whether he used similar techniques.

“It is only going to get worse,” a former senior administration official said of the mood among current White House staffers. “We’re not going to have all the answers anytime soon. So yeah, I’d say this has legs, especially given the Clinton silence. Whether they like it or not, [Obama staffers] now have to play Clinton surrogates. It’s unavoidable.”