Hillary Clinton: "Reply All" to E-Mailing It In

Official portrait of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In politics, as in anything else, your name is your brand.  It can be a blessing or a curse, especially if you are part of a family dynasty that's had a mixed record of public service and has had trouble escaping scandal (See:  the Bushes and the Kennedys).

Take Hillary Clinton, who has yet to announce her intentions about running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, though most assume it's forthcoming.  We've known Clinton as a First Lady to her two-term president husband.  She's been a U.S. Senator, a Secretary of State, and a past presidential candidate.  An impressive resume, no?

But there have also been those missteps that put doubt in people's minds that Clinton could handle the most important job in the world (beyond answering that 3 a.m. phone call), which is usually planted by Republicans who have no use for her except as a punching bag for their supporters.

During the White House years, it was Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, the ones that came close to torpedoing husband Bill's presidency.  When Clinton was Secretary of State, it was the terrorist attack at Benghazi and her seemingly nonchalant reaction to it, which got the GOP's collective undies in a bunch that persists to this day.

This time around, it's for something else Clinton did while she was at the State Department.  She had a private e-mail account on her own server instead of using the government's.  Out of the more than 60,000 messages she says she created, half of them that were deemed unimportant were deleted.

People do dumb things.  Downplaying the seriousness of your actions is one of them.  For Clinton, who said she used her own account for the sake of convenience, she must have forgotten that most people use at least two e-mail accounts, one for personal use and the other for business.  For obvious reasons, the business account should be the most secure one in Clinton's former line of work. 

Isn't it also possible that, with all the concern about the privacy of the Internet, Clinton's making a point about the vulnerability of government communications and how they could easily be hacked?

Clinton is the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, should she decide to run.  So what happens if, for some reason, she doesn't?  The Democrats, who seem to have put all their eggs in Clinton's basket, seriously need a Plan B because right now they don't really have one.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts?  A popular choice, but she's made too many enemies on Wall Street to be a viable candidate.  Joe Biden?  Sure, he's Vice President.  But he's also a loose cannon.  Maybe they could persuade Michelle Obama to run?

If Hillary Clinton wants to be the first elected female President, she has to stop making these stupid mistakes that do nothing but earn GOP ridicule and prompts everyone else to question her judgement.  Owning up to them is a start.  Because without her, the Democrats are in big trouble for 2016.