Ana Marie Cox remains a committed liberal, her Christian coming out, as she described it, notwithstanding. Even so, she had a raw truth-telling moment this morning that will not please Hillary fans.
On Steve Kornacki's MSNBC show, Cox declared that close Hillary associate and informal foreign policy adviser Sidney Blumenthal is "kind of a scumbag." A scandalized Kornacki quickly interjected "that's your characterization!" and a guest from the leftist Guardian dismissed the Hillary-Sidney connection as a campaign issue.
ANA MARIE COX: Right now she's in this position where she doesn't have to be that fresh and exciting, except if Marco Rubio winds up getting traction. Like, everyone else she's running against, I mean, or Jeb Bush, to the obvious point, as the person she's running against, she doesn't have to be that fresh and exciting. I mean, she could just--it's Bush versus Clinton.
But I do think that there's something -- I actually want to get back to the point you started with, which was about Sidney Blumenthal, which I do find to be the most disturbing thing in all of these e-mails. Is that he is just kind of a scumbag and she cannot let go.
STEVE KORNACKI: That's your characterization!
SABRINA SIDDIQUI: I find that to be the most disturbing part of the e-mails, but that goes to the beltway-scandal part of this. How do you translate the Sidney Blumenthal issue to the American public? I don't know how Republicans are going to really turn that into a major issue for the Clinton campaign. It is something that we talk about here, his influence on her; how does that affect her campaign. Is she listening to this person -- who is passing on faulty intelligence to the State Department. But I don't think that average people sitting at home are really tuned into that.
