Blog | Why the 295,000 new jobs could save Hillary Clinton from Email-gate
Hillary Clinton, the likely 2016 Democratic nominee for president, created the emerging Email-gate by inexplicable decisions she made while Secretary of State:
Setting up your own email server is something only the geekiest of tech geeks do because of the serious hassles involved, including spending every waking hour fending off spam. Like brewing your own beer, it's typically done just for fun — a way to challenge your smarts and fill the time. It also appeals to those who fear the government is sniffing around and could compel companies like Google or Yahoo to release customer data.
"It's not trivial to do it, but if you understand how all this works, you can certainly do it yourself," said Carole Fennelly, a New York City-area information security consultant who once operated her own mail server and has set them up for clients.
But there’s something that can save her from a “scandal” of her own making and make it easier for her to be the one taking the oath of office in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017: a strong economy.
If Sen. Mitch McConnell and other Republicans can try to take credit for the economic recovery - after spending years denying there was one - surely the Democratic nominee for president will.
Her campaign’s main message will be something like this:
“In the 1990s a Democrat, my husband Bill, was handed a struggling economy from a Republican president. He turned it around and created the longest economic expansion in U.S. history while not just chopping the deficit he inherited, but turned it into a surplus. Then a Republican took over, and the country went through its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and the deficit skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. Guess what happened after the country returned the reins of Washington back to a Democrat? His administration oversaw the longest unbroken string of private-sector job creation in history, an unemployment rate that was 10 percent is now half that, and the unprecedented deficit he was handed was sliced by two-thirds. Given that track record, why would we want to place the fate of our economy back in the hands of another Republican president?”
Of course that would be an incomplete and somewhat misleading message about what went on for a variety of reasons. Republicans could do the same about the economic changes from Carter to Reagan; presidential leadership is only one of a thousand factors affecting the economy; factors from previous administrations affect the next in unpredictable and good and bad ways that often go unacknowledged; and global events can impact the economy at any time, no matter what the president does.
But in a presidential campaign, distilling things down to their simplest terms is paramount, which brings me back to Email-gate.
Clinton’s problem this past week is that the “scandal” is pretty straight forward and opens her up to all sorts of questions, including ones that once seemed outlandish but now are legitimate.
“What was Hillary hiding in those emails?” will be the common refrain of many of her opponents, raising questions about her integrity.
That’s a compelling line of attack. But 295,000 new jobs created in February, an unemployment rate dropping to 5.5 percent and a stock market that routinely sets new highs is more compelling.
If that type of streak continues, and the economy continues picking up steam - and it has a ton right now - Email-gate will seem small and petty in comparison.
Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s jobs watch blog.
Further context:
In February 2009, the unemployment rate was 8.3 percent - a 25-year-high at the time - and we lost more than 650,000 jobs.
People have forgotten about stories like these:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. economy continued to hemorrhage jobs in February, bringing total job losses over the last six months to more than 3.3 million, and taking the unemployment rate to its highest level in 25 years.
The government reported Friday that employers slashed 651,000 jobs in February, down from a revised loss of 655,000 jobs in January. December's loss was also revised higher to a loss of 681,000 jobs, a 59-year high for losses in one month.
Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of 650,000 jobs in February.
"The economy is headed south with a vengeance," said Kurt Karl, head of economic research for the U.S. unit of insurer Swiss Re.
This story was originally published March 6, 2015 at 9:31 AM with the headline "Blog | Why the 295,000 new jobs could save Hillary Clinton from Email-gate."