Global Research

Hillary Clinton’s unannounced campaign for the U.S. Presidency has already failed. Her arrogance (or else stupidity) in having wiped clean the hard drive of the private server she had used for her emails while she was the U.S. Secretary of State adds insult to the injury already done to her incipient campaign by the earlier revelation that she had evaded the State Department’s record-keeping system and had used her private server for all of her State Department emails and not only for her personal emails. (The NYT had headlined March 2nd: “Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules.”)

CNN, early Saturday morning, March 28th, bannered the big follow-up, “Hillary Clinton deleted all email from personal server,” and reported that, “Hillary Clinton permanently deleted all the emails on the private server she used to do official business as secretary of state.” Ms. Clinton immediately responded to reporters’ questions by saying that nothing of importance to, or concerning, her State Department business, was on that server, and that she had recently sent to the investigator who is looking into this matter “roughly 30,000 emails” that related to State Department business. However, the public, and prosecutors, will now not be able to see the other emails (which she says were approximately 32,000), because she then had that server wiped clean. She says she had had this done because “no one wants their personal emails made public.”

In other words: the public would just have to trust her assertion that nothing related to government business was in those “personal emails.”

Private letters from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and other American leaders, are published in books; but Hillary Clinton does not think that the American public should ever have access to hers. Today’s emails are like paper-and-ink letters in that bygone era; but she has, in effect, burned them. Historians won’t get to see them; neither will the public.

Even the earlier revelation had caused her ratio of unfavorable-to-favorable ratings in polls to soar.

On March 19th, Reuters headlined, “Many Democrats want independent Clinton email probe: Reuters/Ipsos poll,” and reported: “Support for Clinton’s candidacy has dropped about 15 percentage points since mid-February among Democrats, with as few as 45 percent saying they would support her in the last week.”

In the CBS News poll, taken March 21-24, Hillary’s Favorable rating was 26%, Not Favorable was 37%; this had last been polled by CBS on September 12-16 of 2008: 51% Favorable, 35% Unfavorable. Her Favorable is down from 51% to 26%, almost half, since then. The latest Gallup poll on that question was March 2-4 (this year): 50% Favorable, 39% Unfavorable. Assuming comparability of the Gallup and the CBS polls, her figures went from 50% Favorable and 39% Unfavorable just as the first news of this email scandal broke, down to 26% Favorable and 37% Unfavorable just before the latest revelation — the revelation that she had wiped her server clean — and it’s likely to go even lower now, after that second blow.

Wall Street has banked on Hillary’s becoming President. Her husband gave them what they wanted (the end of the Glass-Steagall Act); and during the past year she has been collecting millions of dollars in ‘speaking fees’ for meeting with them in private.

According to all accounts of the collections by her nascent campaign organization, money has been flowing into it by the millions.

And Wall Street is already panicking at the news-reports of her email scandal.

On Friday March 27th, Britain’s Guardian headlined, “Elizabeth Warren: Banks Could Halt Donations in Protest at Senator’s Plans,” and reported that, “Big Wall Street banks are so upset with Elizabeth Warren’s call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said. Representatives from Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party’s tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.”

On 19 April 2014, the Guardian had headlined “Wall Street deregulation pushed by Clinton advisers, documents reveal” and reported that, “Throughout the documents, which are among 7,000 pages released by the Clinton library on Friday, there is little discussion of internal opposition to repealing Glass-Steagall,” which was the FDR law, passed in response to the 1929 economic crash, that (up till 2000) blocked banks from ever again gambling with depositors’ money and from their leaving the Federal Government holding the bag (bank “bailouts”) when such bank-gambles produce losses, as occurred again in 2008. Senator Warren wants to reinstate those protections for depositors and taxpayers, and the megabanks are terrified against that possibility.

Naturally, then, on 21 May 2014, Mother Jones bannered, “Hillary Clinton’s Speaking Circuit Payday: $5 Million (and Counting),” and listed some of the companies that were forking over $200,000 apiece to have private sessions with her (’speaking fees’) while she was “considering” to gear up for a Presidential campaign: Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the National Association of Realtors, etc. Her donors’ list is rich; and it’s all ‘private,’ perhaps just like the emails that she destroyed.

The only Democrats who will be voting for Hillary Clinton are the ones who are satisfied for Wall Street to own Main Street.

And Republicans will vote against her because she’s not nominally “Republican.”

End of story. End of Presidential chance. (But, likely, not end of Presidential campaign. More likely, just the start for other Democrats to enter the race.)

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity