Off the Shelf

The worst is behind Clinton’s campaign

 

It is a foregone conclusion that Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump would be banging the drums about the FBI’s verdict on his Democrat counterpart’s Hillary Clinton. The FBI on Tuesday laid bare a litany of facts that amounted to a searing rebuke of her judgment, management and stewardship of state secrets.

For starters, Clinton used her private email system to communicate government information while she was Secretary of State which she has admitted was a mistake.

But the worst is over for Clinton and her camp. Trump and his team were praying for and hoping that FBI would recommend criminal charges to be brought against Clinton. Trump even stated the other day that the reason Democratic contender Bernie Sanders was not withdrawing from the presidential race was because he was hoping, thinking and praying that the FBI would indict Clinton over the private emails issue.

But short of FBI pressing for criminal charges against Clinton, Trump continues to make more mistakes about what he says which may greatly hurt his campaign. He told a rally in North Carolina on Tuesday: “The FBI’s failure to recommend criminal charges is the greatest example yet that the system is rigged.” Trump said the system had been set up to protect the Clintons.

Trump is directly accusing the FBI which is incidentally headed by a fellow Republican James Comey—someone with a sterling reputation among leaders of both parties—of being biased.

Trump went further to offer qualified praise for former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Whatever Saddam did well, he is better known the world over for being a bad guy. He may have killed terrorists alright as Trump says but he did worst things. Trump should not be saying things which are highly suspect at this point in time. He is in dire need of ‘positivising’ in his campaign.

The litany of mistakes he has already made is long—from accusing a judge on his Trump University case as being biased because he is Mexican to his unwarranted stunts against Muslims, minority groups and women.

Trump should just have been capitalising on FBI’s searing admonition of Clinton. As a matter of strategy he should have let others deliver doubt on Clinton’s fitness and trustworthiness because he himself is in no credible situation.

One of his latest mistakes is accusing Attorney General Loretta Lynch of being bribed, getting a promise she would keep her job in return for allowing Clinton to escape prosecution. Trump was referring to the unscheduled personal meeting with Lynch at the Phoenix airport last week with former president Bill Clinton. Accusing Clinton of “illegal activities” and “bad judgment,” out of anger and suggesting that the Obama administration was protecting Clinton from prosecution is not good enough.

I am no friend of Trump myself but I believe—like many Clinton’s allies do—the political fallout from the email controversy has already occurred. The criticism of her, the damage she suffered from having made a big mistake and having been irresponsible for using a private email server, has already happened and she has already paid a political price for it. This is surely in the matter of lessons learned.

To Clinton’s credit, the FBI did not find clear evidence that by using private mail system, she or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.

Clinton and her allies can now only expect that the issue will have little currency with persuadable voters short of an indictment.

Granted, it is really not a clean bill of health but like Democrats believe it is a workable situation because short of an indictment the verdict doesn’t have the same sort of sting that it would have had with an indictment and which Trump was hoping for.

Going forward the work is now cut out for the Democrats for the remaining period up to November 8 to come up with a campaign strategy that will control further damage while at the same time dig holes in the Trump camp. The good news is that Clinton has performed better in most opinion polls even with the cloud of emails hanging over her since the campaign started in 2015.

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