Unsurprisingly, Hillary was off-putting at her press conference. She seemed irritated from first to last. Her humane touches — e-mailing about yoga, etc. — felt forced. She is incapable of pulling off self-deprecating humor, as I think she was attempting when she said that she thought it would be more convenient to use personal e-mail and it turned out she was wrong. This was a performance that has to be heartening for Republicans: As a politician, she’s much more Al Gore than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
On the substance, she said the reason for the exclusively private account is that she didn’t want to deal with the hardship of carrying two devices (see Andrew’s post below on this point). She probably believes that she holds the whip hand in this controversy because, as she revealed at the press conference, she deleted the allegedly private e-mails and she’s not turning over the server, so there’s no way for anyone to double-check anything she says. (Although if she did indeed e-mail classified material, despite saying she didn’t, perhaps that would be ascertainable through government accounts.)
Now, she can say that she’s already addressed the matter, so get ready for the “old news” defense to kick in at any moment. And she will fall back repeatedly on the line from the press conference that she is demonstrating unprecedented openness and transparency, which goes to one of her great strengths as a public figure: chutzpah.