Atlantic’s Goldberg: Dems Feel Like They Are on ‘the Bataan Death March’ to the Nomination

Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” in commenting on the State Department inspector general’s report that found Hillary Clinton violated the agency rules by using a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, The Atlantic’s national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg said, “the whole Democratic establishment sort of feels like it’s on a Bataan Death March to the nomination.”

Partial transcript as follows:

DICKERSON: Well, we’ll — we’ll get to Donald Trump and some of the exciting things that he said. But, Jeffrey, let me ask you about this. We’ve been talking about the past and what this report says about the way Hillary Clinton behaved in the past. But I was talking to Democrats who have her interests so much at heart they are on her team and they are pulling their hair out at how badly this was handled. In response to this, that — that when — when this e-mail story first came out, somebody from her campaign said, well, she had behaved in the spirit and letter of the law. That is both not true. But in this week in response to this, the people I’ve talked to have been shocked at how poorly it’s been handled.

GOLDBERG: Yes, I mean the whole Democratic establishment — to borrow a term from Bernie Sanders — the whole Democratic establishment sort of feels like it’s on a Bataan Death March to the nomination. Obviously because of Bernie, because of a lot of other things. But — but this is just — made them — made them think to themselves that they don’t have this in hand. They don’t — and — and the issue — I was talking to someone this week who said that the issue is that they don’t understand how they’re perceived. To go back to this point that Ron and Peggy were making, they — they don’t understand how it’s being interpreted. Nobody inside is telling them, guys, she has a credibility problem, she has an honesty problem. You have to grab this by the horns or else this summer is going to be very, very long, and possibly to use your word, devastating summer for her. So there’s still a kind of discord or a dissidence between what the establishment is thinking about this handling and — and the way they’re doing it.

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