Democrats Have A Lot Riding On Hillary Clinton. The Word 'Immunity' Should Make Them Very Nervous.

[Purveyor]

By Chris Cillizza The Washington Post

Posted Mar. 3, 2016 at 12:23 PM

WASHINGTON - The news broke late Wednesday night in The Washington Post:

"The Justice Department has granted immunity to a former State Department staffer, who worked on Hillary Clinton's private email server, as part of a criminal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information, according to a senior law enforcement official.

"The official said the FBI had secured the cooperation of Bryan Pagliano, who worked on Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign before setting up the server in her New York home in 2009."

That latest development in the ongoing FBI investigation of Clinton's private server came on the same night Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook declared in a memo that it would soon to be "mathematically impossible" for Bernie Sanders to catch up to Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, given her current delegate dominance.

So . . .

Here's the thing: The Democratic establishment, a long while back, put all of its eggs in the Clinton basket. No one of considerable stature in the party challenged her for the nomination (Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, I am looking at you), and virtually every member of the party's power structure got on board with her very early on.

That bandwagoning around Clinton has been overshadowed over the past few months as Sanders' surprisingly strong challenge to Clinton (and his amazing small-dollar fundraising) has drawn much of the focus. But the truth of the matter was and is that the Democratic Party made a massive bet on Clinton about two years ago. That bet was that she was the strongest possible candidate they could field and so it only made sense to push everyone else to the side for her.

But it was a bet. And, like all bets, there was -- and is -- risk involved. That risk was that sometime before the 2016 general election something might happen that would make it more difficult -- or even impossible -- for Clinton to win. This is the Clintons we are talking about, after all. For all of their smarts and deep résumés, there does tend to be some serious baggage that trails them wherever they go.

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http://www.norwichbulletin.com/article/20160303/NEWS/160309823

[WillyT]

1. Huge K & R !!!

[KoKo]

2. I think Cilliza's last sentence in the article is chilling, though.

With so much invested...how could a Democratic Administration not try to be helpful to it's long standing candidate.

That's the question skittish Democrats have to be asking themselves today. The granting of immunity to someone at the center of the email controversy will be taken as a sign that things may get worse for Clinton when it comes to the email server before they get better.

All of the party's chips are on Clinton. And that's where they will have to stay -- almost no matter what.