Hillary: Not Out of the Woods Yet
Hillary: Not Out of the Woods Yet
Robert Kuttner
Huffington Post
Senior FBI officials still feel burned by the 2012 Petraeus affair, in which the former CIA director, David Petraeus, faced possible felony charges for providing classified information to his lover. In that case, the FBI recommendation for criminal prosecution was overruled by Attorney General Eric Holder and Petraeus was allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges. Just as he did last week, President Obama was publicly been dismissive of Petraeus's culpability, which critics saw as a political fix of a criminal case.
Even more potentially damaging are the continuing reports of conflicts of interest involving the Clinton Foundation and its assorted deals and favors done by Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state. Some of these deals merely involved pet charity projects of Bill Clinton; others involved ways for the Clintons or their allies to cash in personally.
It also remains to be seem how much of her movement on the issues was a genuine shift in a progressive direction, and how much reflects tactical feints necessitated by the more leftward mood of the Democratic electorate. Progressives, in coming months, will be seeking commitments that she does not intend to appoint as her core economic advisers yet another generation of protégés of Robert Rubin and the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party.
This sort of infighting, however, is not likely to be conclusive. It's inside-baseball. She can co-opt progressive critics by claiming to be getting advice from a broad spectrum of economists. She can profess opposition to the TPP trade deal without doing any real heavy lifting to try to defeat it. Classic Clinton, and she will probably get away with it.
But her real vulnerabilities have less to with her positioning and repositioning on the issues than with the unexploded bomblets that may or may not go blow up her candidacy. There is no good protection against that risk, either for Clinton or for the Democrats, because it's hard to know just what's there, or how much damage it could do.
Related:
Vox: Hillary Clinton's flip-flop on the TPP makes no sense
Lobbyist: Hillary Clinton will become Mrs. Wall Street if she’s elected
Why You Actually Should Care About Hillary Clinton's Damn Emails
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