Democratic insiders haven't hit the panic button yet, but Hillary Clinton's burgeoning scandal over her use of a private email server while secretary of state is leaving them with a bad case of political heartburn.
In interviews Thursday, Democrats based in Washington insisted that their faith that Clinton would win the party's 2016 nomination and be elected president hasn't been shaken. But when a campaign holds an emergency conference call with party insiders and media surrogates to quell nerves and offer messaging guidance, as Team Clinton did late Tuesday evening, people are bound to worry that a situation dismissed as Republican shenanigans might be worse than feared.
"There's a little nagging worry in Democrats that probably won't go away and probably will only grow larger," Jimmy Siegel, a Democratic strategist who produced campaign ads for Clinton's 2008 presidential bid, told the Washington Examiner. The concern is "that somehow, some way, the script won't go according to plan."
"It is concerning to watch the drip-drip-drip of the story, with the 'it's nonsense' response from the campaign," added a Democratic operative backing Clinton. "It feels terrifyingly similar to the partisan dynamics of the Swift Boat mess of 2004. I really hope I'm wrong."
