http://kutv.com/news/nation-world/asked-if-she-wiped-email-server-clinton-says-what-like-with-a-cloth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rKZ66HjMQ&feature=youtu.be
Clinton losing ground in polls; body
language suggests "Servergate" frustration
By Stephen Loiaconi Wednesday,
August 19th 2015
Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding at the
Surf Ballroom Friday, Aug. 14, 2015, in Clear Lake, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie
Riede
Hillary Clinton
released a new campaign ad Wednesday aimed at the theme of rebuilding the
middle class as questions continue to swirl around her emails and a new poll
suggests the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination is
losing ground to rivals in both parties.
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“The deck is
stacked in favor of those at the top…We need to have people believing that
their work will be rewarded, so I’m going to do everything I can to try to get
that deck reshuffled so being middle class means something again,” Clinton says
in the ad.
The focus on
economic themes comes a day after a heated exchange with reporters over
questions about Clinton’s use of a private email server during her term as
secretary of state.
Asked by a
reporter whether she wiped the server’s data before turning it over to the FBI,
Clinton joked, “What, like with a cloth?”
Following
Clinton’s comments, the Republican National Committee began offering a “Secret Server Wiper” on its website for $5, a cloth with an
inversion of Clinton’s campaign logo on it.
“Do you have a
secret server you need to wipe clean? Having trouble clearing out those pesky
Top Secret emails? Well Hillary's got just the thing: the Secret Server Wiper,”
the product description states.
Republican
frontrunner Donald Trump attacked Clinton over the email issue with an
Instagram video earlier this week.
"Look,
it's ether criminal or incompetent, it's one or another... either gross
incompetence or criminal, and neither's acceptable to be president," Trump
said in an interview with CNN Wednesday.
Clinton has
maintained that she did not send emails containing classified information or
receive emails with information that was marked as classified. Investigators
have not accused her of any wrongdoing or established that anything criminal
occurred, but the inspector general for the intelligence community has claimed
that several emails included classified information.
Body language
experts who analyzed video of Clinton’s brief question-and-answer session with
reporters Tuesday said she displayed signs of frustration and anger when
challenged about the server.
“What’s interesting is her gestures are very expansive,
very large and away from her body” earlier in the press conference, said Patti
Wood of Communication Dynamics. “That’s a very confident baseline. She was
feeling very good about what she was saying.”
When Fox News
reporter Ed Henry pressed Clinton about the server, her gestures became “more striking and forceful and
weapon-like.”
“All of that shows a desire to retreat from the truth or
retreat from how she was being questioned. She didn’t want to go off script at
all,” Wood said.
A new CNN/ORC poll suggests an increasing number of Democratic
voters have reservations about Clinton as well.
47% of
Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents said they support Clinton, a drop
of 9 points from last month. 29% backed Bernie Sanders, up 10 points from July,
and 14% picked Vice President Joe Biden, who has not announced whether he will
run. The poll also shows that a majority of Democrats want Biden in the race.
Among all
voters, Clinton’s unfavorability rose to 53%, the highest since 2001. In a
general election match-up with Republican candidates, Clinton leads Donald
Trump and Scott Walker by 6 points, Jeb Bush by 9 and Carly Fiorina by 10.
Schmidt said
when Clinton’s numbers fall below 50% with Democrats, as this poll indicates,
“the red lights start going off in her campaign organization.”
Although the
numbers should raise concern for Clinton, Whalen said Democrats are still in a
strong position for the general election because they lead with women, Latinos
and African-Americans. Republicans, and particularly Trump, could have trouble
appealing to those demographics regardless of who the Democratic nominee is.
Carroll pointed
to another significant finding in the poll, that 56% of voters now say Clinton
did something wrong by using a private email server as secretary of state,
including a majority of independents.
It is not too
late for Biden, or even Gore, to get in the race, the experts said, but they
saw few other potential candidates in the Democratic Party.
“It’s kind of
shocking Democrats don’t have a deeper bench…It’s kind of like the golden
oldies tour,” Whalen said.
“A lot of
Democrats are getting very skittish,” Schmidt said, with fears that Clinton’s
campaign will fall apart like it did in 2008 without a strong alternative like
Barack Obama waiting in the wings.
“If there is a
catastrophic crash, someone needs to be there to pick up and take flight.”
Carroll said
the biggest challenge for Biden jumping into the race now is that so many of
the party’s big donors have already thrown financial support behind Clinton.
“There’s not a
lot of fish out there to reel in for him…but that doesn’t mean he can’t do it.”
With her
support slipping, Carroll questioned the strategy behind the Clinton campaign’s
new ad.
“I find the ad
sort of equally tin-eared as her responses in the press conference,” he said.
Going after the
ultra-rich when Clinton herself is very wealthy—the Daily Mail Wednesday highlighted the “$100,000-a-week Hamptons home” where she
plans to vacation this month—could be problematic, according to Carroll. She
may be seen as criticizing affluent people for acting like the rules do not
apply to them, when that is exactly what voters believe she did with her
private email server.
Schmidt had not
seen the new ad, but he said the idea of playing up the theme of middle class
insecurities is not a bad one.
“She needs to
focus on those and hammer away on those,” he said, and just hope concerns about
her emails and her trustworthiness subside in the coming months.
Democrats still
seem to expect Clinton to be the party’s nominee, but Carroll said another
candidate could catch fire with voters quickly like Obama did in 2008,
especially if Clinton’s trust issues do continue to dog her.
“This has
potential to be some huge acid flashback for Hillary Clinton where she goes
from inevitable to the sidelines.”
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
