JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Shall we boogaloo on over to the Hillary Clinton story?

Not her apology — issued on national TV Tuesday — for setting up and maintaining a separate email account while she was secretary of state. The apology may help her a little, but I agree with Republican National Committee spokeswoman Allison Moore, who suggested Tuesday that Clinton was only apologizing because “she got caught and is dropping in the polls.”

The bigger story is the underlying dynamic and suspicion that her campaign for the Democratic nomination is unraveling by the day.

Charles Blow

The media is playing a huge role in this, and New York Times columnist Charles Blow today put his finger on it in his column today.

Here’s what he said:

“There seems to me a gravitational pull of media desire that wants, on some level, to see her crash and burn. Twice snubbed. The ‘queen’ goes down, again.

“The media, and possibly even the public, loathes coasting. Trajectory, either up or down, makes a better story. Since Clinton started with such high expectations, the only trajectory available to her — and to those covering her — was down.

“Now she can’t seem to stop the slide. She simply can’t direct the narrative away from the email and toward her policies. And this constant chatter about things other than her vision for the future and the suggestion that she is not being fully forthcoming is hurting her in the polls.”

As is the case in so much of sports, it’s all about momentum. Late last summer the Kansas City Royals captured momentum, and look at the thrills we experienced as a result.

Clinton was going along smoothly until the email scandal broke, and now she appears to be caught in a swirling descent similar to those hair-raising, haunted-house slides that, in short order, deposit you back on the sidewalk.

As Blow went on to say, “It’s not clear to me how this story ends other than how it appears it wants to end: badly.”

The latest bit of bad new for Clinton came this morning when figures released from a Quinnipac University poll showed Clinton being the choice of 40 percent of likely Democratic caucus participants in Iowa, but Bernie Sanders with 41 percent.

Polls also show Sanders gaining ground fast in New Hampshire.

So, while Clinton still can claim the mantle of being the overall frontrunner based largely on the depth of her organization and her durability in the public arena, she appears to be extremely vulnerable.

Chris Cillizza

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, who has a column called “The Fix,” wrote today that once a frontrunner loses traction, he or she can lose a lot of ground quickly. 

“(W)ho’s to say what political cost Clinton might pay for losing the first two states to Sanders with (Vice President Joe) Biden, potentially, waiting to ambush her in the Palmetto State (South Carolina)?” Cillizza said.

“Remember how Rudy Giuliani was just going to let the first three states play out before making his mark by winning the Florida primary in 2008? He was irrelevant long before the vote turned to the Sunshine State.  The first states to vote inevitably impact how the race is covered and, therefore, how voters (and donors) regard it. Front-runners need to win; otherwise they aren’t front-runners anymore.”

A news story on page A18 of today’s New York Times said Democratic Party officials have been “casting about for a potential white knight to rescue the party from a beleaguered Clinton candidacy.”

Democrats know full well that Sanders, an independent who has characterized himself as a “democratic socialist,” probably can’t win in November 2016. Among those mentioned in the story as possible Democratic saviors were Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Secretary of State John Kerry.

Al Gore was also mentioned, but I can’t see that at all; his day under the arc lights is long past. The most likely of the those four to emerge, I would say, would be Kerry, mainly because most Democrats seem to trust him and he has steered clear of impropriety during his long career in politics.

The story quoted Robert Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist, as saying:

“You still have to think of her (Clinton) as the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination. But the challenge she faces in the general election is both the trust problem and the likability problem.”

Trust and likability? If a candidate for president doesn’t have either of those qualities, she — or he — might as well get out of politics, go to the haunted houses and enjoy a few rides down the tubes.