Monmouth University’s latest national poll released Monday had a lot of good news for Hillary Clinton: She's opened up a 13-point lead over Donald Trump (consistent with double-digit leads in other national polls) and 63 percent of voters said they're just plain tired of the media's fixation on her emails.
The bad news is, she's also lost ground with voters on the email issue: 64 percent say she hasn't been honest about it, 12 points higher than those who expressed that sentiment last October. That's probably because of answers like the one she gave last Friday following a speech to reporters with the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
“I may have short-circuited it," she said of her widely criticized answer during an earlier Fox News appearance, "and I will try to clarify.”
Clinton then launched into an eye-glaze inducing response that took roughly four and half minutes to get through, including a follow up question. The "short-circuited" part of her remarks has drawn the most attention, but the real problem was that she wasn't succinct, she consulted her notes several times, and she simply didn't look confident about what she was saying. Far from producing clarity, her answer kicked up another round of negative coverage.
So this should go without saying, but it’s time for the Clinton campaign find a short, intelligible, non-gaffe inducing answer to the email question. Why Clinton's aides haven't locked her in a room and drilled her on this for hours until she whittles down her answer to something she's both comfortable with and delivers with ease is a total mystery.
We can harp on the media's obsession with her emails all we want, but that's not going to stop journalists from asking the question. It will be asked again and again and again whether or not voters are interested in it, because journalists ask things repeatedly until politicians don't squirm when they answer. And while it's been smart for the Clinton campaign to avoid doing press conferences while Trump was busy impaling his own candidacy with a machete, she cannot sidestep the question indefinitely. Trust me: It will be asked at the debates—it's unavoidable—and that's the last place a candidate wants to fumble an answer about an issue that has dogged her for months and sown doubt in voters’ minds.
Her answer to any email question should start simple, with something like: "The FBI has looked into some 30,000 of my emails and found no wrongdoing."
Some people think that's enough and Clinton should stop there, but she will almost surely be asked follow ups and repeating that answer over and over will suggest she's hiding something. So assuming the follow up will be something about what FBI director James Comey said, she can simply say she was 100 percent truthful with the FBI, as Comey has indicated, and prior to the FBI review, she also believed that she hadn't sent or received any classified emails. Three of those emails were later found to include classified material that was indicated as such, but they were improperly marked, as director Comey indicated, which led her to believe she wasn't handling sensitive material. Three emails that were improperly marked seems like an honest and forgivable mistake.
Whatever her answer is, it should be easy to grasp and not take more than 30 seconds.
And when journalists follow up by asking—“Why should Americans trust you?”—she can reiterate her flawless answer on the trust question from Friday: because people have always trusted in her when she's doing the job.
The Clinton campaign is running a very smart, disciplined race in many ways. Hillary Clinton is completely capable of acing this question if her team focuses on it.