#ClintonEmails — Hillary Clinton's main foe is herself, then #Clintonistas

Contra a make-nice New York Times piece as a follow-up to her no-questions-allowed presser, a story which even tried to humanize her (and thus refuted David Brock and Media Matters' ongoing claim that this is just the latest part of the vast right-wing conspiracy) Hillary Clinton's main enemy is not the mainstream media.

It's Hillary Clinton.

In addition to the half-lies, omissions and full lies that I documented Tuesday, experts are now weighing in on her "no classified emails" claims — and are skeptical.

Steven Aftergood notes that, if nothing else, that, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was herself in charge of "classification" issues. And, theoretically, could  have given herself an official "okey-dokey" pass, including her kibitzing on Libya foreign policy with Sid Blumenthal, per my initial post at the time this broke.

Beyond that, as I noted last week, with Huma Abedin having an email account on that private domain, we now have to trust Clinton's word about two people, in addition to noting that domain administrator and Clinton moneybags Eric Hothem could have read all "private" emails without having to respond.

Frank Bruni gets into this "self-enemy" issue in much more detail, though he arguably buries the nut graf near the bottom of the column:

She’s going to have a primary, all right, but it will be a contest against her own worst impulses, default defensiveness and prickly sense of insult when pressed for explanations. From what I saw Tuesday, victory is uncertain.

Yep, that's about right.

Hence, my poll at right; the issue behind it is, does Hillary Clinton want to spend 18 months running against herself?

And, Clinton's second biggest enemy isn't the media, either.

Per my opening graf, it's actually the vast "left wing" (scare quotes needed) conspiracy of folks like Media Matters.

I love the Clintinistas at places like Media Matters for America peddling the line that the Clinton email imbroglio is yet another part of the vast right-wing conspiracy, how the NYT has gotten so much wrong (when it hasn't, and even, per above, has a make-nice story today) and more, all of which shows that just as there's a massive conservative para-political "apparatus" which connects itself to the GOP, rather than, say, the Libertarian Party, there's a similar vast "liberal" para-political apparatus that attaches itself to the Democratic Party, rather than true liberalism, including, say, the Green Party. It's all about the 11-dimensional chess, picking winners and losers, etc.

And, as Ted Rall's cartoon shows, Clintonistas? You're defending Just.Another.Politician.™

And thus, the Clintonistas marching in lockstep with every statement of hers are her third-worst enemy. When neoliberal quasi-wingnuts, on a page like this, claim, in lockstep with David Brock, that the New York Times, which launched this coverage, is peddling  "conservative misinformation," it's bad.

But why?

I think some Clintonistas are put out by the fact that Dear Leader beat out Slicker Hillary (oh, yes, this is going to get more fun) and are insisting that it's now "her turn." Speaking of the nickname, I've often thought she wore the pants in the family, so to speak, and had the brains in the family, and, to the point, had the Machiavellian streak in the family.

Others think that Democrats simply can't win without her. Well, the Slickster himself wasn't the pre-primaries Democratic favorite in 1992 and yet he beat Gulf War hero Poppy Bush. Besides, if you think the Democratic presidential-timber bench is that bad, isn't that problematic anyway?

That said, I agree with this great new follow-up piece from the Times, that a lot of Democrats are indeed "desperate." Like the banks fellated in 1998 by her husband, then by Dear Leader's Treasury Secretary, she's almost become "too big to fail" for many of them. At the same time, the piece makes clear what I've said before — the Dems' national "bench" is pretty thin.

Yet others can't — or won't, or refuse to — think outside the two-party box, getting defensive when I accused MM of exactly that.

Well, it's true. Show me when Media Matters has ever complained about lack of media coverage for third-party candidates as part of its complaints about media bias.

That said, the not-so-liberal, but not-conservative, media is becoming "enemy" No. 4, with AP now officially suing the State Department to get its hands on those emails. And, per CJR, Team Clinton's not totally innocent in making the media into an enemy in the first place.

This is all part of why, although I identify myself as a left-liberal, at least in American political alignment terms, I also call myself a skeptical left-liberal.

If 2012 Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein had somehow been Secretary of State, and had done the same things Hillary Clinton had done, and then made the same claims, I'd have done the same blogging as I'm doing now.

So, deal with it, Clintonistas.