I am a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter.
For my first-ever book report, I read about First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton back in 1999 (roughly around the time this never-ending election cycle first began). I was With Her in 2008; I flooded my Facebook friends’ news feeds with photos and videos the day I met her in 2014; and I carried my ‘Keep Calm and Vote for Hillary’ shirt in my bag for two weeks in April 2015, ready to throw it on the second she formally announced her candidacy. Yes, I supported Bernie for a few months in early 2016, but only to help push the Democratic Party platform to the left.
Through all her public setbacks, I was always With Her. But in light of the latest email scandal, I realized I actually needed to read Hillary’s emails. What I found was infuriating to say the least, and I now know that some arguments against her are true. Let’s break this down:
Hillary is a compulsive liar. At the end of each email, she claims that I’m “one of her most committed supporters,” but I’ve only contributed $5 to her campaign. That sounds cheap, but $5 is a day’s worth of caffeine for me, so voluntarily relinquishing my cognitive function to support her is a big deal.
She’s needlessly demanding. “Alice, sign Hillary’s birthday card!” was the subject line of one recent email. Who asks people to sign their own birthday card? That’s objectively ridiculous.
She makes others do her bidding. The number of times she gets her friends — Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, etc. — and her family — Bill and Chelsea Clinton — to send emails on her behalf is sickening, just sickening. Is there no accountability anymore?
The number of deleted Hillary Clinton emails is way more than just 33,000. She sends what must be 15,000 mass emails a week, and I’d be surprised if more than 10 of the recipients don’t immediately delete those emails. So I’d say there are at least 75 million deleted emails out there that we don’t even know about.
Oh, wait, you weren’t talking about the emails from Hillary for America? Well in that case, it’s a non-issue. There has been so much terrific reporting out there by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Slate, Vox, POLITICO and so many other outlets that goes over the Clinton email scandal with a fine-tooth comb and concludes the thing Hillary is most guilty of is poor judgement. If you read the FBI’s official case report, you’ll almost certainly draw the same conclusion.
Meanwhile, in the words of former Hillary Clinton and Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett, from the podcast Keepin’ it 1600: “There is a crazy, dumb, fascist racist running on the other side [of the aisle]” this election cycle, so we can talk about these so-called scandals or how Hillary for America needs to chill out with the 10 billion daily emails on Nov. 9. In the meantime, get out to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton on Election Day!
– Alice Hubbard Lahoda is a senior political science major and columnist at Her Campus Northeastern.
