What Hillary Clinton once expected to be a coronation as Democratic nominee en route to her rightful place as America’s first female president is turning into a two-front war for political survival.
Facing a tag team of opponents, she is being assailed by her irascible socialist rival Bernie Sanders from the left and pilloried mercilessly by an ebullient Donald Trump, who clinched the Republican nomination last week, from the right. Both are surging in the polls as she slumps.
At the same time, the growing scandal over Clinton’s secretive email practices while she was secretary of state is reinforcing fears among voters that she is dishonest and cannot be trusted.
A bombshell State Department report issued last week raised the spectre of months of congressional investigations and perhaps even an indictment after an FBI investigation is completed.
The report found that Clinton flouted government rules while secretary of state by using a secret “home brew” email server that put classified information at risk. She allegedly told staff she wanted this email arrangement because “I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible” — not out of “sheer convenience”, as she has claimed.
Clinton and her closest aides refused to co-operate with the State Department investigation ordered by her successor, John Kerry.
Although Clinton remains on track to be the Democratic candidate, Sanders has erased her once-comfortable poll lead in California, which votes on June 7. As the biggest prize in the primaries, a defeat there would seriously damage her chances of overcoming Trump in November.