Stuck between a rock and a hard place is no place to be, yet that is precisely where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finds herself these days over her email scandal, conservative political analyst
Dick Morris writes in The Hill.
"Hillary Clinton is stuck over her emails," Morris writes in the opinion piece.
"Her ability to maneuver on the issue is lost and comes down to a simple mantra: 'I erased the emails. There's nothing there you wanted to see. Trust me.'
"Voters aren't buying that," Morris writes.
According to a
Quinnipiac University swing state poll in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton's numbers are dropping, with Florida's former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush slightly ahead of her in Florida and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, slightly ahead in Pennsylvania.
Quinnipiac notes: "Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, Florida voters say 50-41 percent and Pennsylvania voters say 49-44 percent. Ohio voters are divided as 47 percent say yes and 46 percent say no."
"Something for Secretary Clinton's team to worry about: 36 percent of independent voters in the key state of Ohio say they are less likely to vote for her because of the email controversy," Quinnipiac's Peter A. Brown said.
"Majorities in each state think Clinton still has questions to answer about her emails," Brown said.
"Clinton's tactic of hiding at home in Chappaqua, New York, coming up occasionally to tweet, offering up to 140 characters to show she's still alive, isn't working. She is getting pounded each day in the media. Nobody believes her explanations," Morris, a former adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, and former President Clinton, wrote in The Hill.
"The bad polls and the nervousness of Democrats will combine to force the candidate-in-hiding to come out in public, announce her candidacy and campaign. While going public is the only real option for Clinton at this point, it will prove counterproductive and only mire her more deeply in the email mess.
"Hillary Clinton is truly stuck. Nothing she says about any other topic will be covered and the chance for the media to question her will just expose her to more negative coverage about the emails. She has already shown her difficulty in handling questions without proper scripting. She has nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide.
"The question looming over the presidential race is: How much can the Democratic Party take before it comes up with a default candidate?"
Clinton, who has appeared to be the all-but-guaranteed Democratic candidate for president in 2016, is beginning to seem risky in Democratic eyes, Morris says.
"As congressional hearings come and Clinton looks worse and worse in the witness chair, it will likely dawn on even the most dedicated of the party faithful that the jig is up. Even if Democrats' own admiration for her is undimmed, the prospect of carrying Clinton into the election will appear increasingly daunting.
"Democrats have to win in order to survive. Politics, for them, is no spectator sport. It's their living, their entitlement checks, their government handouts. They cannot afford, literally, to lose.
"Clinton may become a luxury they cannot afford."