http://nypost.com/2015/09/27/how-hillary-clinton-manages-a-leaky-scandal/How Hillary Clinton manages a leaky scandal
By John Podhoretz
September 27, 2015 | 6:00am
While the presidential news continues to revolve around the Donald Trump & Barnum & Bailey Circus, by far the most significant political fact of the summer that just ended was the air that has been steadily leaking from the Hillary Clinton balloon.
She no longer commands the support of a majority of Democrats. She’s 20 points down from her poll peak, and is now significantly trailing a 74-year-old Socialist in the first primary state of New Hampshire. The most forbidding front-runner in modern history has become just another front-runner.
Yes, it’s all going according to plan — the Clinton plan.
If the plan works, she’ll come down to earth slowly and then be buoyed up again later on, as the lack of a truly acceptable alternative becomes clearer. And, more important, as the tangle of potential problems surrounding her e-mail system just keeps getting more and more confusing.
Hillary has spent the year seeing her reputation compromised by the drip-drip-drip of scandal. But that drip-drip-drip is deliberate. It’s a way of releasing damaging information in the least damaging way, and it’s been carefully designed by her and her team in response to various congressional subpoenas and judicial orders.
They, and the administration she served, are dribbling out information in a haphazard manner that is designed to keep the drips from pooling together in a way that would eventually cause a flood.
Or, to try a different kind of elemental metaphor, there’s a lot of smoke but there’s no discernible fire. And that’s entirely on purpose.
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