You know those super-fast-talking disclaimers run at the end of some ads? The kind of CYA things the lawyers force the advertisers to say? That's what Mark Halperin's pro forma praise of Hillary on today's Morning Joe brought to mind.
Halperin first ripped Hillary's campaign as the most "unresponsive to basic questions" he's ever dealt with, and reported that "elite Democrats" are worried about being stuck with scandal-ridden Hillary as their candidate. But Halperin apparently felt obliged to include this bit of posterior-protecting pablum: "she's still an extraordinarily strong candidate, she's a great public servant. She's, I think, right now, the most likely person to be elected president."
Wonder what Halperin had in mind in describing Hillary as "a great public servant?" Was it her failed attempt to foist HillaryCare on America? Her botched handling of Benghazi and mendacious manipulation of its aftermath? Her undistinguished tenure as a senator? What?
Was Halperin still stinging from the time MSNBC suspended him for calling Barack Obama a "d--k" and didn't want to get in hot water again for speaking the unvarnished truth about Hillary?
Halperin did get in a bit of self-deprecating humor. Commenting on Hillary's claim that out on the campaign trail "real voters" don't ask her about the email scandal, Halperin observed: "well, real people never bring up to me that I need to lose some weight. They might talk about it to other people, but never say it to me."
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Mark Halperin, what was the response at the fair this weekend on the Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy?MARK HALPERIN:: Look, I agree with you on the substance of this stuff, on the politics of it in Iowa, when she told me that joke [about liking Snapchat because messages disappear automatically], there were people around me who gasped, because it's not a joking matter for a lot of people.
She said here at the fair, when she had a press availability, real voters don't talk to her about this. They never bring it up to her. Well you know Joe, real people never bring up to me that I need to lose some weight. They never tell me that. They might talk about it to other people, but never say it to me. I will tell you, here in Iowa, talking to people at the fair, talking to elite Democrats, they bring her e-mails up to me. Extraordinary high degree, high frequency of people saying, what's the deal? It's why Joe Biden, I think, and why maybe Al Gore and others are saying, do we have a problem here? Are we heading towards nominating someone by consensus who has this big problem?
I have never in my career dealt with a presidential campaign who's as unresponsive to basic questions. Governor Rendell said, turn over the server. That's not the only issue. There's lots of facts that they won't respond to on a daily basis. You can ask them every day, what are the answers to these questions, at a time when people want transparency, she's still an extraordinarily strong candidate, she's a great public servant. She's, I think, right now, the most likely person to be elected president, but she is not dealing with this issue. And between the FBI and the congressional investigations, this is not only not going away, but it shouldn't go away on the substance, and voters do care about it.
JOE: Mark Halperin, the problem is, there And so they just --
HALPERIN: But I think she's got to bite the bullet and give the bad answers.
JOE: Yeah, you may be right.
