Hillary Clinton is a long-established face in American politics. Born in Chicago in 1947, she attended Yale Law School. As First Lady to her husband Bill Clinton, she campaigned for women's rights and expanding health insurance. She was elected as a New York senator in the year 2000, and regained her seat with by a wide margin in 2006. After losing the 2008 Democratic Primary to current President Obama, she served as his Secretary of State. As Secretary, Clinton was known for her intense schedule (visiting 112 countries in four years) as well as her focus on human rights (with a spotlight on women's rights) worldwide. She stepped down as Secretary shortly after Obama's reelection in 2012. Now, as the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, Clinton is trying once again to become the nation's first female President. However, despite her impressive credentials, she faces an uphill climb in the coming election due to decades of Republican (and even Democratic) anti-Clinton propaganda, Bernie Sanders' dividing of young Democratic voters, a perceived lack of charisma, and above all the email misconduct that has plagued her campaign from its inception.
As a former First Lady to a President abhorred by conservatives, Hillary Clinton is not new to purported scandals and investigations. However, the two that still have the most teeth deal with Benghazi and her personal emails. On September 11th, 2012, militants attacked a U.S. consulate in Banghazi, Libya, killing three Americans as well as Ambassador Chris Stevens. In the aftermath of the attacks, Republicans asserted that Clinton failed to adequately protect the American base - and worse, that she was presenting the attacks as spontaneous events, despite knowing otherwise. Subsequent investigations determined that the consulate was not satisfactorily prepared for an attack - yet neither were numerous other facilities, and no investigation has indicated any evidence of specific wrongdoing on Clinton's part. The extensive hearings have even managed to bolster some otherwise lukewarm Democratic voters' opinions of Clinton out of frustration at the seemingly never-ending, needlessly expensive Republican investigations.
However, during the Benhgazi scandal, Clinton's State Department Emails were examined. 110 of the relevant emails contained classified information, despite Clinton's prior assertions otherwise. This contradiction has been a considerable blow to her image as a trustworthy candidate. Furthermore, it was revealed that Clinton had been using a personal email account while serving as Secretary of State (with a private server located in New York), which meant that she and her staff decided which emails to turn over to investigators as professional messages and which to withhold as personal. Although the Justice Department announced as of June 6th that it would not pursue criminal charged against Clinton, FBI director James Comey nevertheless stated that, "Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." The scandal will no doubt continue to follow Clinton over the course of her campaign. However, compared to Donald Trump (the presumptive Republican nominee) Clinton does have numerous advantages to emphasize despite the opposition she faces: she has the experience, the qualifications, and the temperament to be President, to name the bare minimum - all of which her opposition lacks.
