Nate Silver analysis: Hillary would have won but

[PsychoBabble]

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Personally not interested in a HRC post-election argument, rather a clear-eyed multi-faceted analysis - just sharing this Silver piece I found interesting. The Comey incident was hopefully a tragic one-off, and I want to focus on what we do next to crush Trumpism because we offer policies and actions and results at the local and national levels that are so much better than Conservative ideas they can't be denied by more than about 20% of the hardcore right. We've got a LOT of work to do. PUDDING is PROOF.

[Cha]

1. Thank you, PB

[PsychoBabble]

3. You're welcome

[Doodley]

2. The most effective $10,000,000 investment Trump ever made, when he bought that letter.

[gordianot]

4. When he used Russian mob money.

[Cary]

15. O'Reilly can do it 2 1/2 times with his sexual harassment winnings!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

23. I doubt if you have a shred of evidence for your claim. Care to provide credible evidence?

[Doodley]

42. I suppose it was just coincidence that Trump gave $10 million in Russian money

to Jason Chaffetz when he leaked the FBI letter that tipped the election.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

49. Thanks for reminding me. Yes, there was something very much like that. . . nt

[still_one]

5. The media ignores the obvious because it implicates them

[PsychoBabble]

6. Yeah, not sure how we get past this issue

[still_one]

43. You are right PB. It's a big problem

[Cha]

9. yes, it's the m$m(emails-normalizing trump), comey, russians, Voter suppression,

etc etc etc.. why we're struck with this maniac with his finger on the button.

[Cary]

13. Hard to argue otherwise

[BlueMTexpat]

19. +1! eom

[brush]

78. I posted this on another thread a couple of days ago

Clinton defeated a much stronger opponent in Sanders in the primaries than trump had to deal with. She won all the GE debates. Her oppo research crew had the trump campaign on the ropes and reeling (Access Hollywood grope tape) until Oct. 28, 2016 and we all know what happened then.

What I'm beginning too wonder is if there is a vast right/centrist/left wing conspiracy piling on Hillary as having run such a disastrous campaign that it couldn't help but lose so they can avoid acknowledging the huge elephant in the room that is the Comey/Putin/Assange/Interstate Crosscheck nexus that stole the damn election.

You see it in books, newspaper and magazine articles, on web sites, many cable pundits are called on to rattle off their bulleted lists of why Clinton lost, you hear it on satellite radio (just yesterday Eleanor Cliff was on the Michaelangelo Senorile show doing that exactly), and none of them ever mention Comey/Putin/Assange/Interstate Crosscheck. It's a total news blackout on the real reasons trump "won" despite having lost by 3m votes.

Why is that? The election was stolen.

What are these people up to, trying to normalize trump and his campaign so that we all just accept the theft? Is that a thing we, the US, does when elections are stolen — Gore in 2000, Kerry in 2004 — we're just supposed to roll over and take it and write books and articles and such to cover it up?

It's totally frustrating to me that no one talks about the real reasons for the lost, the prime and most direct one being Comey coming out with announcing a new investigation on Clinton and not announcing his investigation on trump as well.

They know what really happened just as we do. They don't even have to say the election was "stolen" if they want to be journalistically "safe", just at least cite that Comey only divulged one investigation that the FBI was conducting and not the parallel one of trump as a huge reason for the outcome of the election.

[Cha]

79. Yes, the election was stolen and all the

rhetoric in the world against the Democratic Party running a "loser campaign" is not going to change that.

Thank you for this, brush!

[brush]

82. Cha, IMO Hillary ran an excellent campaign. Comey inserted himself and changed our country's...

history by putting trump in and the media won't talk about it. All they want to talk about is how flawed her campaign was and what a terrible candidate she was. And many DUers jumped on that bandwagon by agreeing, as if trump ran a brilliant, unflawed campaign or something.

Thanks for this thread.

[betsuni]

87. I thought it was an excellent campaign, too.

No huge gaffes, no dressing up in hunter's gear and shooting at animals, no ride in a military tank, no secretly recorded tape calling 47 percent of Americans deadbeats. I especially hate the "hubris" accusation, the "unlikeable" thing, well all of it was fake. It doesn't even make sense to call it a doomed, flawed, etc. campaign because it was her second chance, I'll bet it was organized and planned obsessively. But of course there was no defense against Russian influence, nobody took it seriously. Flooding the internet with conspiracy theories really pays off when there are real conspiracies to be hidden.

[brush]

102. Correct-a-mundo!

"Flooding the internet with conspiracy theories really pays off when there are real conspiracies to be hidden."

[Control-Z]

90. It's time for all of us on DU

and every other place we post to start saying it and correcting anyone who repeats the bs about Hillary being a bad candidate and running a bad campaign.

We need to start making demands. Not for a new election or impeachment but for truth about the election results and installing the rightful winner.

If I hear one more person say that there is no way to know how the election would have gone without Comey, Russians, cheating...and that there is nothing we could do about it anyway, I think I will explode.

All those pink hats know what we know. It's time to use all that power.

[PsychoBabble]

11. Transactional vs. Transformational

In TA situations (much of life, much of business) most of us tend to act in self-protective ways, or to improve our own standing in some way.

In TF situations (education, personal growth, true public service-oriented politicians) we work to assist, promote, and elevate others.

A few large corporations manage to do both. But most ....

There has to be enough cultural shift on a mass scale to change their TA calculus.

HEAVY LIFT.

[certainot]

75. media is enabled, follows, and is pushed around by massive national coordinated

talk radio buzz.

little of this bullshit going back 20 years would have been possible if dems/liberals/left had been paying any attention to the right's best media weapon.

something like this happens and everyone analyzes the symptoms instead of the cause. trump would not even be anywhere near the white house, like bush and palin before him, if democrats hadn't been ignoring talk radio.

the entire email turd is nothing more than a few hundred ignorant coordinated liars on 1000 radio stations going on and on with some visuals on fox and piggybacked by russian trolling.

that's the future of american media if the left continues their stupid attitude toward the low tech media that kicks their internet ass on a regular basis

[BainsBane]

7. On election night I kept saying

FUCK COMEY! I knew, as did many of us.

[Baitball Blogger]

8. This is exactly the reason why, traditionally, law enforcement refused to

report on allegations made against politicians in the days leading up to an election. The assumption was that mudslinging would cause an unfair advantage.

But, we chucked out traditional wisdom a long time ago.

No one should ever say that they didn't see this one coming. There are statutes on the books in some states to prevent this very thing. Shame on you Comey. Shame, shame, shame.

[Honeycombe8]

10. Yet, Trump made recent statement on tv that Comey was/is prejudiced against him during the campaign.

Lying, again.

[Akamai]

12. Thanks for posting! I think this is a good thing to remind people going forward of how the FBI

scuttled her campaign. NY Times had a good article on it, although I think it gave far too much credit to Comey's reasoning.

I sure believe that Comey's historic intrusion into the voting cycle (as well as the Russian hacking, the hatred that the press had for Hillary, voter suppression techniques (with cross check, with bad voting machines in areas serving African Americans, etc.) probalby led to trump's stolen victory.

This was in no way an open and fair election.

[RobinA]

92. I Dunno...

I find Comey's reasoning, well, reasonable. I thought the article did a great job of showing how EVERYONE is paralyzed by the current political climate. No one, not Obama, Lynch, Clinton Bill, or several people on the other side could do what they might normally have done, or might generally think is the right thing to do, for fear of how it would "look" to the screaming partisans on the other side.

[Akamai]

93. It's my understanding that there is a long-standing "rule" that the FBI and other federal agencies

will not release information close to the elections that could tip the elections either way. And clearly, these revelations did that. Even Comey's editorializing about Hillary even when he said that the FBI would not bring a conspiracy the charge against her was incredibly maddening--prosecutors are not allowed to do this generally. But Comey somehow thought he was above this standard.

How about the article noting that the FBI thought that they were kind of safe in releasing the letter because they thought Hillary would win anyway? Doesn't that bother you, that they took Hillary's election for granted? And come at the same time, there was this investigation of Trump going on, none of which we knew anything about.

And finally, the ambiguous statement several weeks before the election saying that this other computer may hold important information, and in the final statement just before the election being incredibly ambiguous and saying something like, "Our views help before are being held in now." This without any clarification of what the FBI views were. This left that open to distortion and lies from Trump and others.

Throughout this election season, as regards Hillary Clinton, Comey continued to tilt the scales against her in those instances in which he was publicly confronting her.

Instead of his ambiguous "our views are unchanged" letter that he wrote at the end, he should have said, "We have no evidence that she is guilty…" At the end, his letter was a Rorschach test which you could interpret the way you wanted. It should not have been so and he said later that he thought that this letter would clarify that Hillary was not guilty of any crime. But that letter did nothing of the sort.

Comey is a well-educated person, well schooled in the law, is certainly able to read and write words appropriately, but here he is guilty, guilty, guilty of ambiguous language and a refusal to clean it up.

[RobinA]

95. It Doesn't Bother Me

that they assumed Hillary would win, given the sentiment at the time it seems reasonable. Hell, I thought she would win, most people did. I can buy that they didn't want to be caught holding an active investigation when Hillary won. The fact that Hilary is (through no fault of her own, in my opinion) such a divisive figure played into this. Had it been, say, Romney, I doubt this would have been as much of an issue. I'm not saying it was the right decision, I just don't have a problem that reasoning it that way was within the realm of possibility. One result of the right turning every move that any Dem candidate makes into a world-changing controversy is that it plays with how they are dealt with by other people including the media. Scream "bias" long and loud enough and eventually most people will be bending over backyards to show how unbiased they are.

As far as the ambiguity of the letter(s), yeah, he made it as ambiguous as possible with full knowledge of what he was doing. According to the article, no one wanted to touch this with a 10 foot pole. Comey is the one that had to, so he said as little as possible while doing his job of saying something. He previously said flat out that the e-mail investigation was over, and got no end of grief for that from several angles, so he wasn't going to make that mistake again.

Keeping the Trump/Russia investigation (which wasn't really big news yet) quiet and trumpeting the e-mail investigation (which had been all over the news for months) looks bad, but the explanations offered by the NYT for how it was handled are plausible to me. Ultimately, I'm a lot more worried about why any sane person would vote for Trump. Like I said about Bush/Gore, it never should have been close enough for letters to Congress or hanging chads to make a difference. Or Russian hackers, for that matter.

[Mr. Ected]

14. The media has become the subject of the news, and not the reporter

It's a cesspool.

I wonder how legitimate investigative reporters like Rachel Maddow must feel, knowing that her very profession may stonewall the perpetuation of her reporting due to its own prejudices and alliances.

I would submit that Americans should be demanding the draining of the swamp both in Washington and in the media...but the general public gobbles up the propaganda and thinks that's already in process...because Trump told them it is and so did Hannity.

[Horse with no Name]

16. Exactly. Was she a flawed candidate? Yes.

But I've never seen one that isn't. She was a great candidate that was beaten by shenanigans. That was why she lost. No soul searching needed.

[loyalsister]

109. Unfortunately she made those shenanigans possible

and believable. For that, I will never forgive her.

[Atman]

17. I sure wish you had provided a synopsis.

I DON'T WANT TO GO TO A TWITTER FEED! You took the time to comment, but you couldn't tell us what the comment was about? Jesus H. I have a Twitter account. Nine times out of then these Twitter links don't even lead to the actual Twitter post. JUST TELL US WHAT THE POST IS ABOUT!

[PsychoBabble]

24. Here you go

Atman, I don't feel the way about twitter that you do, and the key points do show up in my posting for me. When I have posted tweet threads in past, many have responded. This is something I can do quickly in a day that is already pretty full. My links do go to the specific twitter posts. Most CAN get to a feed, but not all WILL stumble across a particular point, which is why I posted this. The final tweet is the main point:

Tweet #1 - original Silver 3% article , plus "obvious that Comey letter cost HRC THE ELECTION"

Tweet #2 - Comey letter created sharp 3 point drop, she lost immediately after by 1% in key states

Tweet #3 - Key point, plus NY TIMES front page photo - Media post-mortems skip over the Comey reality, because it implicates the media's judgment at the time to flog the story.

Sorry it wasn't in a format that worked for you.

[Pluvious]

32. PB you have class, style, and patience

Thanks for your efforts to share with us all.

I admire your measured and instructive response to their rude and demanding provocation.

Times like this I wish we had the option to up or down vote individual posts

Go with Zeus.

(And a tip of the hat from another old time SF buff)

[PsychoBabble]

104. Why thank you, Pluvious

[Atman]

41. Thank you.

You could have just as easily put that in the initial post, but I appreciate your summarizing it for us instead of making me weed through Twitter posts.

[radical noodle]

25. The whole thing showed up in the post

even though it took a minute to load. Don't know why it didn't in yours.

[Blue_Adept]

51. Some people have twitter blocked for them

If it was viewed through a workplace that blocks it, nothing would show for example.

[PsychoBabble]

55. Blue_Adept, I am sure that must be frustrating. Really.

My work has a more open policy that works to my advantage, for sure. On MY end, I often have a choice between a quick post with twitter links, or nothing, because of time constraints. Since many DU'ers DO see them, that has become my preferred default. So even though I realize that I may leave some off the bus, which is unfortunate, I would prefer to stay engaged however I can.

Everyone has their own way of dealing with this issue. When post formatting from someone else occasionally doesn't work for me, I just move on and don't take it personally.

Drama is waaaay overrated.

[Blue_Adept]

66. I feel the same as you

I understand the frustration of those who can't see it, and there are some basic minor workarounds that can be done, but it's just a point where not everyone will see everything. There's a lot of anti-twitter sentiment around these parts, which skews significantly older to begin with.

[NewJeffCT]

73. yes, my work blocks twitter

so, unless somebody posts a summary during the week, I get nothing from those posts.

[democratisphere]

18. It was a whole bunch of things that should have never happened.

Comey, Russians, Fake News, Propoganda, WikiLeaks, Hacking, National Enquirer, drumpf's humongous lies and specially Racism are to blame for HRC's loss.

[m-lekktor]

20. Yeah, Nate Silver did such a marvolous job predicting the last election outcome

I am pretty much going believe everything he says from here on in!

[emulatorloo]

22. So you feel Comey letter had no effect? What are your thoughts on it?

Her numbers did indeed drop after Chaffetz leaked it.

Anecdotally I know a few undecided voters who pointed to the Comey letter when they decided to vote Trump.

[yardwork]

29. Actually, his prediction was very close.

A lot of people seemed to misunderstand Silver.

[LisaL]

31. As I recall he was giving Trump 1 in 3 shot. Which most on DU were upset about, as they deemed it

too high.

[TexasBushwhacker]

53. He was the only mainstream pollster who gave Trump any chance at all n/t

[emulatorloo]

21. Thanks for posting this. Chaffetz played a huge part by leaking Comey's letter.

[PoliticAverse]

69. Indeed. n/t

[brush]

80. This has to be why he's stepping down, knows the FBI is getting close to figuring out what happened.

Don't know if irony is the word but Comey of the FBI sent Chaffetz the letter and is pretending he didn't think it would go any further.

Now he's the one investigating Chaffetz for maybe taking a bribe from trump to leak the letter that Comey is pretending he didn't think would go any further.

And he's also investigating trump who he basically installed in the White House with the letter he is pretending . . . well, we know the rest.

Maybe Kafkaesque is the word.

[cannabis_flower]

26. Of course..

Not the first time a bad news story right before the election. Houston natives know all too well.

http://www.houstonpress.com/news/the-channel-13-exclusive-6567305

Finally, Sylvester Turner is elected mayor of Houston last year.

[PsychoBabble]

28. The ghost of Karl Rove ...

Interesting parallels, interesting read for those with the time today.

ALSO interesting to me that Karl's middle name is "Christian."

Oh, really??

[thesquanderer]

27. Would like more detail...

He says:

Clinton experienced a sharp, 3-point drop in her polls after the Comey letter came out. Then on 11/8, she lost FL, WI, PA & MI by <=1 point.

What I'm curious about is whether she experienced that 3-point drop in the polls specifically in those states. If not, the logic in the conclusion is fuzzy.

[PsychoBabble]

30. Interesting question.

I didn't these particular stats in the original article. Article here seems to have some of that info:

http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/clinton-vs-trump-2016-presidential-polls-today-latest-new-battleground-states-who-is-ahead-leading-winning-florida-iowa-michigan-ohio-north-carolina-pennsylvania-nevada-new-mexico-colorado-pennsylvani/

[BumRushDaShow]

38. Here in PA, the one specific county that I have been harping on

is Erie. For decades, like the SE PA counties (including Philadelphia), Erie was reliably blue... until this year when it "flipped". Some of the other blue counties in upstate PA (which include cities like Scranton) were closer than normal.

However the Erie thing continues to bother me to no end and I just don't see any discussion about it.

[RobinA]

94. I Live

in one of those SE PA counties that flipped, and if I had been out of town on the lead up to the election and on election day I would have been scratching my head. However, and this is anecdotal of course, having been around before and on Election Day, I can tell you that it was obvious something was different. I went to my poll at lunch time to vote and there was a whole different vibe and crowd of people there than there are normally. Obvious Trumpsters were hanging from the rafters and mouthing off in their "Jail Hillary" t-shirts. I have NEVER seen those kind of people in my precinct, which is usually a pretty sedate place. About a month before the election, Trump yard signs turned up everywhere. That was when I started to realize that normal people in my area were actually voting for him. It turned out that these things predicted the disaster in Montgomery County, and to notice them was to be labelled a "concern troll." Based on what I saw, and the fact that I noticed glaring differences in this election BEFORE the outcome was known, not in hindsight, I don't at all believe that the results were not the real results. They voted for Trump in Montgomery County, PA. Why, I don't know, as this county is certainly not the coal miner or the trailer park vote, but the signs were there.

[BumRushDaShow]

96. My sister lives in Montco

and as I understand it, they did go for Hillary. I do live near the Philly/Montco border and someone had put up dozens of Drumpf signs right along the Montco border, although most of the houses around that border region had Clinton/Kane signs in their yards. However another sister lives in Delco and has Trumpbots on her street (although she said they were in "mixed" political couple families), and they proudly displayed their signs (and some still have signs up).

Here in Philly, we produced the minimum of what we needed to (if it had been a typical election) but still had a somewhat weaker turnout than 2012 & 2008. Still, Drumpf had an enhanced vote from the city compared to RMoney & McLame.

[IronLionZion]

99. Has Erie lost jobs and people recently?

I think people moving to find jobs is what made a lot of traditionally blue areas more purple this time. It's in a liberal's nature to move to find jobs.

It might have gotten close enough for them to steal it, or swing it because of her emails.

By the time Comey came out and said they found nothing wrong in there, people had already voted.

[BumRushDaShow]

100. It is not much different in terms of unemployment compared to Philly

Erie (BLS)
Philadelphia (BLS)

(basically in the 6 - 7% range)

IMHO, it was stolen but I obviously can't prove that.

Erie uses a flat panel computerized touchscreen -



http://www.yourerie.com/news/local-news/voting-machines-tested-in-erie-county/599227933

Here in Philly we have a more old-school printed membrane type machine where your touch lights up an LED next to the name (not a computer screen) -

[lefthandedskyhook]

40. This point was addressed

Nate Silver adjusted (conservatively) for this and still concluded that the election outcome was tipped in those very close states by this factor alone

The timing made the difference. Polls were rebounding after Comey retracted by saying that the emails were no longer under investigation, but it did not have enough time to sink in

[brush]

81. The outcome in those states are the most suspicious.

Remember during the campaign trump suddenly changed his itinerary and made campaign stops in those states?

It's been reported that certainly operatives connected to Putin were there at the same time and it's also been reported that the Russians hacked voter rolls also and voters were targeted with fake news emails, facebook and twitter messages by bots.

And if they hacked voter rolls what would stop them from hacking voting machines.

The sudden trump campaign stops in those states IMO were designed to make it seem that that last minute campaigning is why trump won by that small margin.

What's also not often talked about that for trump to win those three states by a combined 70k votes, those votes were counted twice — once for being taken from Hillary's total and twice for being added to trump's total.

[thesquanderer]

108. re: "trump suddenly changed his itinerary and made campaign stops in those states"

There's interesting coverage about that end-of-campaign itinerary shift in this article...

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/mercers/

though not so nefarious!

[brush]

110. Thanks for the link, will save for later. She's the one behind Bannon's influence on trump, right?

[thesquanderer]

111. Yup. It's a long article, but worth it. (n/t)

[lefthandedskyhook]

33. This is not new

Nate said this right after the election. It was true then and it is true now.

[PsychoBabble]

37. Probably true - however his

"Post-Mortem/ Media" post is from yesterday.

He clearly felt strongly enough about not letting it get lost in the noise to bring it up again.

[thesquanderer]

107. re:"He clearly felt strongly enough about not letting it get lost in the noise to bring it up again"

I think it was in response to this NYT article from the day before:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html

[PsychoBabble]

112. Interesting article.

Makes sense.

[Hekate]

34. Good to know Nate Silver is still mulling over the data. Thanks.

[BumRushDaShow]

35. "The Comey incident was hopefully a tragic one-off"

It wasn't just "tragic". It was fatal and we will be seeing how fatal it was in the near future the longer this administration is around.

[LisaL]

36. And what would prevent something like this from being a more than one-off?

Considering how successful it was, and no consequences came for Comey. He didn't get fired.

[PsychoBabble]

44. Not sure anything other than tighter

Legal restrictions/consequences ... plus adhering to ethical standards ... we've discovered in this election how much of our "Democratic Way" is merely historical expectation vs law. Pretty sure GOP not gonna change, for sure not 45.

We are waaaaay more vulnerable to shenanigans than we thought we were.

That feels scary.

[BumRushDaShow]

45. In this case, due to the standard 10-year term of the FBI Director

any "firing" would be looked upon as "meddling" and "trying to cover-up" some perceived wrong-doing. IMHO, this country is still trying to shake off the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover and is having difficulty in the term-limit "remedy" for the almost 40 years that Hoover lorded over that position. And as a note to that, recall that Obama was able to convince Congress to grant Robert Mueller a 2-year extension on the term (putting off a decision until later that resulted in Comey).

[not fooled]

39. And if it hadn't been this, it would have been something else

The whole cabal of them, from McTurtle to Vlad, were bound and determined to prevent HRC from legitimately winning the election.

[BumRushDaShow]

48. Exactly.

They had all sides covered.

[lefthandedskyhook]

57. Sadly true

This was only one piece of the treachery

[Tom Rinaldo]

46. I agree with Silver

After Trump was revealed as a serial molester Hillary had solidified her lead over him. The Comey letter is what enabled him to get back into the race.

[FiveGoodMen]

68. That's certainly what I remember!

I think Trump was polling at 37% just before Comey's treachery.

[NewJeffCT]

74. agreed - it was after the 3rd debate

and most of the polls had her lead increasing after that - the momentum was also in her favor. The letter - and the media blow up over it - stopped the surge in her direction and turned it the other way.

It wasn't just a 3 point drop - the ABC tracking poll had her up 50-38 or 51-38 right after the 3rd debate. I remember that because she had finally broken the magical 50% barrier.

One day after the Comey letter, it was 44-43 Trump - a 12 or 13 point swing. While she regained the lead over the next week, it was only 3-4 points.

If she had continued on that +12/+13 path, the coattails likely would have meant Feingold wins in WI, Toomey loses in PA and maybe 1 or 2 other senate seats swing to the Democrats..., and several close house races go to Democrats and make it at least much closer in the house.

[DinahMoeHum]

47. He who lives by the crystal ball. . .

. . .ends up eating broken glass.

[PsychoBabble]

50. Wry chuckle.

[fleabiscuit]

52. Perhaps a Comey forced motivation to smother a false fire that was going to escape.

Giuliani - Was already telegraphing information on TV that was going to be released.
Hostile HRC NY FBI - Anyone believe all law enforcement is neutral?
Catfishing Weiner's laptop - having information planted took a bit of expertise. Who's?
Russian disinformation / Wikileaks / bots - The tRump cyber army

[DFW]

54. DFW analysis--Hillary DID win

In a country that claims a democratic process, you don't get an acknowledged three million more votes than the next candidate and still lose.

She didn't beat the system, but she won the vote.

[PatrickforO]

58. Comey is a seditionist. He deliberately violated the Hatch Act

by using his public office to influence an election result in favor of his own party.

He should be removed from his position.

[wildeyed]

59. It makes me sick.

They did that hit job on Kerry with the Swift Boaters and now this.

[StevieM]

60. Comey is a disgrace. He was setting out to influence the election going all the way back to 2015.

It is beyond dispute, IMO, that he threw the election to Trump. He interfered on his behalf time and time again, deliberately setting out to destroy Clinton's candidacy.

[uponit7771]

61. 'The Comey incident was hopefully a tragic one-off'...it wont be, why should it?

[PsychoBabble]

62. You may be right; I am hoping that it is, nothing more

[spanone]

63. K&R...

[Initech]

64. Thanks to this election, I'll never trust anything the polls say ever again.

[mythology]

85. Considering the polls were slightly more accurate in 2016 than in the 2012 presidential election

that would be a rather foolhardy choice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/10/how-much-did-polls-miss-the-mark-on-trump-and-why/

Final vote counts show the average of national polls overestimated Clinton’s share of the two-party vote by about one percentage point.

[Lanius]

65. I really hope the Comey incident is remembered as something an FBI director should never

do within a month of an election.

[PsychoBabble]

67. Indeed. History, hopefully, eventually will reveal

WHY it really happened, beyond our suspicions ...

[jimlup]

70. Honestly I don't know if the538's have really been looking close enough

at what happened on November 8th. I think maybe they are still in shock and trying to save face by saying things like "we almost got it right..." I'm still not convinced that anybody but the Russian government knows what really happened on November 8th. Just say'n

[PsychoBabble]

71. Good point ... but maybe not even them completely.

I think they had some specifics in mind, but a lot of the activity was just chum in the water. "Hey, let's see if we can attract a shark!"

They did.

[YOHABLO]

72. As if the Comey letter had any influence at all on those in the know.

I certainly knew they were up to no good, but I bet that a vast majority that voted against HRC were already very suspicious of a relatively made up conflict ... by of course the Republicans. I think Russian hacking may have done more harm. We still don't know to what extent they infiltrated voter data bases in various states. Our system of elections has been rigged for years now.

[Doodley]

76. It may not have won Trump votes, but it suppressed Hillary votes.

[Volstagg]

77. That and Comey

was sitting on the Trump-Russian connection at the same time.

[SunSeeker]

84. Funny how he wasn't worried about being seen as partisan in holding that info back.

Yet he feared it with regard to the stupid emails that weren't even Hillary's!

Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened.

What he did not say was that the F.B.I. was also investigating the campaign of Donald J. Trump. Just weeks before, Mr. Comey had declined to answer a question from Congress about whether there was such an investigation. Only in March, long after the election, did Mr. Comey confirm that there was one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html?_r=0

[Volstagg]

91. Yup

That guy sucks

[SunSeeker]

83. This graph says it all:

[emulatorloo]

101. Thanks for posting that graphic.

Seems some are still in denial about the Comey effect. As I said above it was extremely difficult for me to convince undecideds to vote for Clinton after Chaffetz leaked the Comey letter.

[PsychoBabble]

105. Perfect graph Sunseeker

Thanks!

[mythology]

86. If Clinton hadn't had that stupid email server, we wouldn't have Trump now

No Comey investigation.

Yes I get that Colin Powell had a similar set up, but Powell wasn't running for President later and Powell didn't have the Clinton reputation for secrecy and pushing the legal boundaries that the Clintons do.

Clinton should have done everything above and beyond reproach. Republicans were never able to make the Benghazi nonsense stick, but the email server played right into Clinton's reputation.

[LenaBaby61]

89. If Clinton hadn't had that stupid email server, we wouldn't have Trump now.

Wouldn't have mattered if Hillary were Joan of Arc.

With all of those crazy things that happened during the election, she'd have STILL lost IMHO.

Also, even if Dems DO mobilize to vote in 2018 to get out the vote, would you trust a tRumputin DOJ (AG beauguard leading it) who was supposed to check into extremely IRREGULAR voter suppression, GOP voter-disenfranchisement, voter purging, voter crosschecking on double 'roids AND ruskie interference again if reported to them by the Dems? Even if we vote en mass, what's to stop a tRumputin DOJ from screwing the Dems again only this time during the mid-terms?

As many Dems have said, and I agree, I no longer really trust our voting "apparatus" in this country, especially with tRumputin who can be blackmailed, and I certainly don't trust a tRumputin DOJ with beauregard as it's AG.

[stevenleser]

113. I can't believe people are actually posting nonsense like this. Nt

[C Moon]

88. I will always believe there was more to the loss than Comey:

I was watching Nate's website all night, and each time one of his people predicted what was going to happen, it was shot down. They were pulling their hair out trying to figure out what was going on.
If we don't get to the bottom of this, we can say goodbye to 2018, and 2020.

[Nitram]

97. It has been obvious to me for some time that Comey and the Russians had just enough

influence on public opinion to help Trump squeeze by with a win by the smallest of margins (and without the popular vote). Anyone who doubts this just doesn't have a clue how effective well-timed propaganda can be.

[Dem2]

98. Makes my blood boil that people refuse to see the obvious

The FBI director DIRECTLY as one can do, STOLE the election from Hillary, all the while he was investigating Trump campaign espionage and keeping MUM about it.

Right in front of our noses and we refuse to acknowledge it.

Why?

[Gothmog]

103. Comey is pond scum and lacks any professional or other ethics

[PsychoBabble]

106. So after THIS election I realized ...

I will have to create LEVELS of "pond-scuminess" to cover the wide range of misdeeds. Sad in and of itself.