General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: i understand fully, Hilary's premise that Sen Sanders hurt her candidacy. [View all]karynnj
(59,511 posts)work emails.
Months before that, there were already requests for Clinton emails on various subjects. These requests were not going to dissapear when she left. It would not have taken much ability to see THAT future. So, what could she have thought would happen? That the Republicans would suddenly lose interest? That the State Department could stonewall for 4 years without it looking fishy -- thus harming Clinton claiming the Obama administration was hiding something.
It was nearly two years after she left, that the State Department got all the email and quickly tried to answer a prominent Congressional request as they started to process those emails. This led to the NYT getting a story in March 2015 -- right before she was to declare formally her intention to run -- that she had used a private server for all her email for her term as SoS. This was a terrible story and even then, she did not completely get the truth out immediately - leading to a month or so of corrections. It also led to her demanding ALL the emails that could be published be put online. This lead to monthly HRC email tranches -- reminding people for a year about the email problem.
While the full eventuality could NOT have been foreseen, consider that there was NOTHING in the emails that related to any of the requests that was a problem. Not to mention, information coming out in 2013 or 2014 on emails, where it is very likely no one would have known that they did not come from a regular state account, would have been far less damaging than the email story eclipsing her formal entry into the race.
Taking the entire email story, complete with investigations, Comey letters, Anthony Weiner etc would have changed her campaign. It had to be an enormous burden for her team to having to regularly deal with bad stories. Consider her polling was MUCH higher before the Comey letter. Also consider that even before that, her favorable numbers and polling on honesty took a major hit in the months right after March 2015.