Former Obama adviser David Axelrod said Hillary Clinton needs to address her private email use as secretary of state in a Monday interview with MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts.
Axelrod said the ongoing email situation “is an ongoing concern” and “a warning sign” that the Clinton camp needs to address as she continues to “give oxygen” to the issue.
“But there is no doubt that she’s given oxygen to the story by not just coming out and forthrightly saying ‘This is why we did it, this is how the e-mails were secured,’ and answering the other questions,” Axelrod told Roberts. “So as to kind of get past this… You play rope-a-dope and let your opponent punch themselves out and then the whole thing passes. But that makes folks nervous because the presumption is she will be the nominee, and those who support her want her to be a strong nominee, but this is an ongoing concern.”
“One of the things I would say, Thomas, part of this is a result of the fact that she’s a quasi-candidate, but she’s not a candidate. She doesn’t have a campaign in place yet,” Axelrod continued. “She doesn’t have a communications structure in place yet, and that may explain some of the clumsy handling of this issue, and she may become more nimble as time goes on, but that doesn’t solve the problem right now.”
“[Y]ou don’t want to create a pattern of behavior that gives your opponents an opportunity to attack and creates questions,” Axelrod said. “So I don’t think this one issue is something that will unravel her potential candidacy, but it should be a warning sign to her and her operation that they need to be more nimble. They need to be more forthcoming. They need to be in a kind of instant response mode and not a rope-a-dope mood if she’s going to be successful.”