Democratic insiders haven’t hit the panic button yet, but Hillary Clinton’s burgeoning scandal over her use of a private email server while secretary of state is leaving them with a bad case of political heartburn.
In interviews Thursday, Democrats based in Washington insisted that their faith that Clinton would win the party’s 2016 nomination and be elected president hasn’t been shaken. But when a campaign holds an emergency conference call with party insiders and media surrogates to quell nerves and offer messaging guidance, as Team Clinton did late Tuesday evening, people are bound to worry that a situation dismissed as Republican shenanigans might be worse than feared.
“There’s a little nagging worry in Democrats that probably won’t go away and probably will only grow larger,” Jimmy Siegel, a Democratic strategist who produced campaign ads for Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, told the Washington Examiner. The concern is “that somehow, some way, the script won’t go according to plan.”
“It is concerning to watch the drip-drip-drip of the story, with the ‘it’s nonsense’ response from the campaign,” added a Democratic operative backing Clinton. “It feels terrifyingly similar to the partisan dynamics of the Swift Boat mess of 2004. I really hope I’m wrong.”
Several factors are contributing to Clinton supporters’ August angst.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist from Vermont who’s challenging Clinton in the Democratic primary, is drawing crowds all over the country in the tens of thousands, and according to at least one poll released this week, now leads President Obama’s former secretary of state in crucial New Hampshire. Then there’s talk that Vice President Joe Biden is taking a fresh look at running in 2016. And, of course, there’s the ongoing controversy over Clinton’s private email server.
Clinton and her team for months have maintained that she did nothing wrong or unlawful in using private email, run through a server kept and operated inside her private residence in Chappaqua, N.Y., during her tenure as America’s top diplomat. But Clinton’s assurances have not proven completely accurate, and she and her aides are now embroiled in a FBI investigation over their use of the private server as it relates to the handling of classified, sensitive material.
Clinton charges that all of this stems from a politically motivated witch hunt by Republicans, especially South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House select committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Democratic loyalists say that voters will eventually see this issue for the political sideshow that it is — if they’re even aware of it.
“It’s just not an issue I’m seeing people connect with — it doesn’t affect daily lives like issues such as jobs and the economy,” said Edward Espinoza, a Democratic operative in Austin, Texas. “Until Republicans talk about issues that people actually connect with, I think they should expect blank stares from voters.”
Perhaps Espinoza’s distance from Washington offers him perspective that Democratic operatives living in the Acela Corridor are lacking. But it’s hard to blame them for being concerned when early public opinion polls have shown her vulnerable to multiple Republican presidential candidates in the general election, and each day seems to bring a new headline about the federal inquiry into Clinton’s private email server.
Jittery Democrats agree with the Clinton campaign that this issue is a bogus story hatched by the Republican Party. And many of them believe that Team Clinton is doing a good job, strategically and operationally, of handling it and responding to the GOP and media feeding frenzy.
But they say that it appears to have taken on a life of its own, out of the control of the Clinton’s message-machine inside campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. Some who dismiss Gowdy’s committee as a “clown show” worry that a possible investigation by Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley of Iowa won’t be easily swept aside. Others fear that there will be more unanticipated hurdles from this scandal that could blow up Clinton’s best laid plans.
“Polls go up and down,” said one veteran Democratic insider. “It’s early and I still believe she’s going to be next president of the United States. But they’re in for a bumpy ride.”
One Democratic staffer on Capitol Hill, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that email dustup isn’t the real danger that Clinton faces. What Democrats most fear, or should fear, is the hit to her “narrative of inevitably.”
Nothing is worse for a party than the perception that the campaign is sewn up for their side so they can relax, this Democratic press secretary said. “That’s dangerous,” the Capitol Hill communicator added. If Democrats think Clinton will win easily and they can “stay home and sleep,” then they will lose the race. The presence of Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley in the primary is good for the party, and might help in that regard.
“Anything that engages” the base and motivates them to tune in and turn out is critical to overcoming the built-in challenge for any party, but especially Democrats, to effectively win a third term in a row, the Hill aide said.
Disclosure: David. M. Drucker’s wife works as an adviser to Scott Walker.
