"I will look into it," said Hillary Clinton at Thursday's debate, when asked if she'd release the transcripts of all her paid speeches.

What's to "look into"? Why not a straightforward "yes"? She said "I'll look into it," and the, opaquely, "I don't know the status, but I will certainly look into it." What "status"? Who even has an idea what that means? Does she not own the rights to her speeches? Perhaps some promise of privacy was made to other participants, but one could cover up their names or edit out their statements. To my ear, the line about "status" sounds like meaningless distancing from the question at hand as she cues up lines she's prepared about how her speeches had nothing to do with anything those who were paying might have wanted from her in exchange for the money.

The example she gives of the sort of thing she said to these big-money folks is "how stressful it was advising the President about going after bin Laden." Stressful! As if Hillary's internal emotional life is what these characters were interested in. Hillary has a way of retreating into the story of her feelings. I was reminded of her move in the 2008 campaign, after she'd lost the Iowa caucuses, assembling a group of women around her in a coffee shop and emoting: "It's hard to get up every day and get ready and get out of the house in the morning."

I'm willing to put up with a little emotional padding. It is hard to seek power and exercise it. It's nothing I want to do, and I appreciate that some not completely evil Americans step up to the work. But we've got to wonder what's their motivation. We've got to be able to look at the evidence, and in this case that means the transcripts of those speeches. What is the meaning of the money that supports her campaign and that — supposedly entirely aside from campaign finance — has made her and her husband very wealthy? She wants to say, they just offered the money, and all she did was show up and say some words, words of her choice, words, for example, about the experience of stress in saying we need to kill bin Laden.

Who can believe that? Without the transcripts, we should — for our own protection and because it's most likely — infer that what is in the transcripts would be harmful to the argument she's making to the great masses of Americans. We should infer that she told a different story to the elite insiders. It was the most reasonable interpretation even before she resisted releasing the transcripts. The inference is stronger now that she's resisted giving us the transcripts. She needs to release the transcripts to refute the interpretation that we are otherwise compelled to make.

Now, let me look at what's in The NYT and The Washington Post. The NYT has "Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Resists Releasing Transcripts From Goldman Speeches," by Katharine Q. Seelye, who says that though Hillary Clinton said she would “look into” releasing the transcripts, "by Friday morning, it did not appear that much looking was underway":

Joel Benenson, Mrs. Clinton’s pollster, gave little indication at a Wall Street Journal breakfast with reporters that the transcripts would be forthcoming. “I don’t think voters are interested in the transcripts of her speeches,” he said....

On Friday, Brian Fallon, Mrs. Clinton’s press secretary...  said that “Bernie Sanders, like Karl Rove before him, is trying to impugn Hillary Clinton’s integrity without any basis in fact.” He labeled this “character assassination by insinuation” and said Mr. Sanders should either show his evidence that the money has influenced her or drop the subject.

Insinuation? It's inference. The absence of evidence is a basis for inference. To withhold the evidence and then demand that we not make an inference is a tricky move, and — ironically — the trick is to impugn the integrity of anyone who makes the inference. Your integrity is impugned for impugning her integrity. Fallon played the Rove!!!! card.

The Washington Post has "Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speech transcripts are now a campaign issue. Why weren’t they before?" by Callum Borchers:

The only time this question has come up before, as far as I can tell, was when a reporter for the Intercept raised it on the rope line after a Clinton campaign event in Manchester, N.H., last month.

Video at the link. Hillary's response, in case you're wondering, was to guffaw in the man's face and turn to people to whom she could just keep saying "nice to see you."

Since the debate, however, the issue is "getting plenty of attention," Borchers writes, collecting coverage from various MSM outlets. And it's up to the media to push it, he says, because Sanders — who really is pulling his punches — will not pursue it. His advisor Tad Devine said "No, we’re not going to push on that." We'll see how far the media push it, but I note that Borchers doesn't mention the GOP candidates. Bernie may have decided, for whatever reason, that attacking Clinton is not the best approach for him, but the GOP candidates can use it, if not now, then later.

If I were Clinton, I wouldn't rest easy if the media drop the matter. It will be there to be used this fall, assuming she gets the nomination. Release the transcripts! There's so much reason to do that now... unless what's in the transcripts is much worse than the negative, albeit vague, inference we must make from the withholding.