Hillary v. Congress - Round 1

Hillary went head to head with the Select Committee on Benghazi today--a potentially big event following her domination of the first Democratic Debate. The Omnivore was able to listen to a good deal of it,

Net-Net

This will do nothing to convince people that the committee is a political gun aimed at Hillary's head. The questions were pretty much all about her and almost nothing about procedures. The email server did not feature heavily (although wait for Round 2).

Neither side looked awful. The Democrats on the committee were reasonably fawning. The Republicans ranged from composed to hostile--but no one totally blew their lines.

In other words: this probably isn't going to move the needle much.

Specific Observations

Hillary did a good job of not getting ticked off and made some reasonably non-animatronic displays of emotion (she's been working on that). She didn't look tired, like a scold, etc.

The Republicans may take a hit for being somewhat condescending: not with their base--but with women voters for whom aggression vs. Hillary may be a sore-spot.

The Omnivore thinks that Hillary's biggest advantage here is probably that it was boring. Recent polls have shown that Americans have in fact gotten tired of the emails--and this probably goes double for Benghazi.

The big question The Omnivore has is "what's going on with Sid Blumenthal's emails?" The committee spent a lot of time on him--and while he seems like maybe kind of a jerk, it's not clear he was a literal threat to national security. But even more confusing: Team Hillary wanted to release Sid's emails--ALL OF THEM.

The Omnivore is totally unclear as to why Team GOP would not want these emails released? Does anyone know? Has anyone said? What's the down-side?

Conclusions

Thus far it's been circling with no blood drawn. We're ready for Round 2.