Many commentators and political pundits have wondered why Hillary Clinton – who's hardly at the top of the public opinion polls for likability and trustworthiness – has so intensely tied her campaign to Obama.  After all, Obama's own popularity and trustworthiness ratings are anemic.  In his final two years, he seems to be sliding into a morass of public unlikability. 

Of course, many lame-duck presidents decline in popularity during the "home stretch" of their presidencies, but Obama seems to be during worse than most.

The highly regarded Rasmussen daily tracking poll for Friday, January 29, 2016 gives Obama a majority-negative ranking for job performance (50%).  Twenty-eight percent of American voters strongly approve of the president's job performance, while 39% strongly disapprove of what Obama is doing as president.  This, according to Rasmussen, gives Obama a "Presidential Approval Index" of negative 11.  It doesn't get much worse than that.

Yet in the face of that staggering disapproval, Hillary has done her best to join her campaign at the hip to the fading, failing Obama presidency.  For instance, she has all but promised to deliver what would basically be a third Obama term, affirming the continuation of all of his hugely unpopular programs.  This past week, she even suggested that the man who shreds the constitution before breakfast with his incessant series of clearly unconstitutional executive orders would make a great Supreme Court nominee.

This strategy seems like a losing one, even within the ranks of Democrat primary voters.  Obama's disapproval rankings are so low that the numbers must include Democrats as well as Republicans and independents.

Why would anyone go so far as to sabotage her own campaign?  Probably because she has an ulterior motive.

When the State Department released the latest drip-drip-drip of classified emails from Hillary's server, I think we finally discovered the reason behind her sure-to-lose strategy.  And we've also discovered that not only is the strategy sure to lose with voters, but it has now also "lost" with the one man it was targeted to court.

Fox News reported:

The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton's emails "too damaging" to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.  

Other sources cite that the classified document experts who have been screening Hillary's emails prior to their public dissemination have hit a brick wall.  As Fox noted, some of her emails are "too damaging" to release.  Not even redaction will sanitize these emails – they are so deeply classified that someone who's previously hacked her email (but didn't realize what he had) could see the redacted email and figure out just how highly classified the original email was, or should have been.

But that's just the start of the damage.  Clearly unwilling to tie himself to Clinton – even in the face of promises to keep all of his pet programs going, and even in the face of an offer to make Obama a Supreme Court justice – the president is cutting his losses.  And here's why.

According to the Associated Press on January 29:

The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton's home server contained closely-guarded government secrets.  (The Obama administration is) censoring 22 emails that contained material requiring one of the highest levels of classification. … The Associated Press learned that seven email chains are being withheld in full for containing "top secret" information.  The 37 pages include messages a key intelligence official recently said concerned "special access programs" – highly-restricted classified material that could point to confidential sources or clandestine programs like drone strikes.

The State Department is also withholding eight email chains, totaling 18 messages, between President Barack Obama and Clinton.  Regardless of subject, these emails are automatically classified at the highest level, "to protect the president's ability to receive unvarnished advice and counsel."

This is exactly what Hillary had hoped to avoid – the president has intervened, issuing statements through his staff that basically throw Hillary under the bus, admitting that wrongs were done and leaving it to her to sort them out.

While the administration willingly threw Hillary under the bus, presidential spokesman Josh Earnest offered her a very limited, very qualified fig leaf.  According to the National Review, when Earnest was asked, "Can you say with certainty and confidence that Secretary Clinton will not be indicted because of this email scandal?," Earnest replied:

That will be a decision made by the Department of Justice and prosecutors over there[.] ... What I know that some officials over there have said is that she is not a target of the investigation. So that does not seem to be the direction that it's trending. But I'm certainly not going to weigh in on a decision or in that process in any way. That is a decision to be made solely by independent prosecutors but again, based on what we know from the Department of Justice, it does not seem to be headed in that direction.

When you pare away the "happy talk," you can see that the White House is no longer standing behind its former secretary of state.  When coupled with their announcement about the above-top-secret classified documents found on her server – including highly classified exchanges with the president himself – it's clear that Hillary is now twisting slowly, slowly in the wind, at least as far as President Obama is concerned.

Apparently, promising to continue all of Obama's most cherished initiatives, as well as protecting his executive orders – and even putting him forth as a nominee for the Supreme Court – was, in the end, not a sufficient set of "inducements" to keep the president from piling on as Clinton tries to survive her self-inflicted email wounds.

Separate reports published January 29 suggested that the FBI director wants to indict Clinton and a key staff member – a "standard" tactic to encourage the staff member to testify against her boss in exchange for immunity.