Politico brings the Hillary Clinton email crisis up to date from its start in March.
Months of advisors telling Hillary to come clean.
Months of Hillary fighting the advise.
Months of dropping poll numbers.
Finally dragging half-hearted and unbelieved apologies out.
And wondering why it didn't end the problem.
On September 4, she told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell she was “sorry” that people were bewildered by the controversy. No one was satisfied by her answer—especially the press—and even Benenson, who had counseled Clinton to eschew a full apology, was now convinced she needed to go all the way to quell the uproar. Meanwhile, polls released a few days before continued to show her overall disapproval rating sat at around 53 percent, as high as it had been during her bruising, losing 2008 campaign.
During the first weekend of September, Clinton, at home at her mansion in Chappaqua, dialed into another series of tense conference calls—finally agreeing to offer what amounted to acceptance of responsibility and a tempered, but unmistakable, apology. Saying “sorry” had always been a problem: She viewed backtracking as a sign of weakness, and in 2008 had repeatedly balked when confronted with past mistakes or misstatements, whether on voting yes for the Iraq war or overstating the risk of a trip she took as first lady to Bosnia.
But this time she would give in, even if she told people in her orbit that she believed it to be a meaningless Washington pound-of-flesh ritual aimed at stopping the media feeding frenzy. On September 8, she did it. “That was a mistake,” she told ABC’s David Muir when asked the same email question she had stiff-armed dozens of times. “I’m sorry about that.”
If the Hillary team thinks they will put this in the past, I say sorry.
It's not going to happen.
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