Last week was a bad week for the Democratic front-runner. First, polls showed Hillary Clinton trailing possible Republican challengers in three key states. Next, surveys revealed — surprise, surprise! — that voters just don’t trust her. And finally, a new controversy erupted over classified material on her private email server.
Put it all together, and it’s no wonder she is plummeting in the polls.
The bad news began when the Quinnipiac University poll asked voters in Iowa, Virginia, and Colorado to choose between Clinton and three possible Republican candidates: Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
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The survey found her trailing the Republicans in all three states, with the gap most pronounced in Iowa and Colorado. In Iowa, she trailed Rubio by 8 points, with voters preferring Rubio by 44 percent to 36 percent, and she trailed Bush by 6 points, 42 percent to 36 percent.
The results weren’t any better in Colorado, where she trailed Rubio by 8 points, 46 percent to 38 percent, and Walker by 9 points, 47 percent to 38 percent. Oh, by the way, a majority of voters in all three states also gave Clinton failing marks on the question of being honest and trustworthy. In Iowa, according to the survey, only 33 percent of the voters said she was honest and trustworthy, while 59 percent said she was not.
And here’s another shock for the Clinton campaign: According to the poll results, Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders polled almost the exact same numbers as Clinton. What does it say when an obscure senator from a tiny state, with only a fraction of Clinton’s staff and money, can match her in the polls?
It says the former secretary of state has failed miserably to appeal to a majority of potential voters. But that’s no surprise, is it? Clinton appears wooden and distant on the campaign trail, lacking virtually all of her husband’s vaunted charisma. She’s made it clear that she doesn’t trust the news media, even though most of them are in the tank for her.
And a new scandal has erupted concerning the private email server she used during her time as secretary of state. An investigation by the inspectors general for the intelligence community and the State Department found that four emails, from a sample of just 40 checked by inspectors, contained information that was classified then and remains classified to this day.
That’s not what Clinton has been telling us, of course. In March, she repeated her insistence that she “did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material.”
But that was just another in a long string of Clinton whoppers. The two inspectors general, I. Charles McCullough III and Steve Linick, said in a joint statement: “This classified information should never have been transmitted via an unclassified personal system.”
Joint statement out from State & DNI (finally) clearing up all the sloppy reporting from today on the Clinton emails: pic.twitter.com/tHbccNAqOG
— Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) July 24, 2015
Government investigators say they have notified the Justice Department about the potential compromise of classified information from Clinton’s server. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Justice to file any charges.
The more we learn the worse things look for Clinton and the more voters express their desire for somebody else — or, as Sanders’ growing popularity makes clear, almost anybody else.
If you think things are getting hot now, just wait until October, when Clinton is supposed to testify before a House select committee about the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. That’s when there will really be some fireworks.
If the numbers ever look bad enough, do you think it’s possible the super-ambitious lady will withdraw from the race? I wouldn’t rule it out.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest. This article first appeared on PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
