In 2012, when it was rumored that Obama would not retain Joe Biden as his running mate, Hillary and her team were certain that Obama was going to select her. They were wrong of course but at the time, they believed that and that would have set her perfectly for 2016.
Mark Penn, a longtime pollster for the Clintons was convinced that Obama would select Hillary as his running mate because after the midterm elections, Obama was in trouble and pointed to his previous State of the Union message as proof that he was angry.
Penn wrote to Hillary:
“Only way for him to win second term is to ask you to be VP- he will realize that after midterms.”
There is no record of Hillary replying to Penn, but Hillary did have an aide print her out a copy of the email. Personally, I don’t blame Obama for not choosing her. How comfortable would you be if your heartbeat was the only thing between and the presidency? Michelle would have been buying a huge insurance policy on Barack.
The 75 new messages released Friday are some of the thousands recovered by the FBI that Mrs. Clinton should have, but didn’t, return to the department after she left office.
One is an email containing dictation from former President Clinton to another aide to Mrs. Clinton. In it, Mr. Clintonoffered advice for how to get poor countries to sign up for President Obama’s global warming plans.
“To keep poor counties from siding with China, India etal on issues like transparency, you might offer them this deal: whatever commitments they make are contingent on the availability of an option that is good for their economics,” the email read.
Most of the other messages are brief communications with top aide Huma Abedin about scheduling.
But it’s the Penn email that’s likely to get the most scrutiny.
Mrs. Clinton said she belatedly turned over all work-related messages, but the FBI found thousands that it said were work-related that she didn’t turn over.
The Penn message could signal that Mrs. Clinton’s team discounted potentially embarrassing political talk as official government business, but the FBI and State Department have concluded otherwise in releasing that email.