Without Comey's interference we win. I think that fact is more important than any other.

[stevenleser]

Yes there were other factors that would have contributed to Hillary's win not being as big as it should, but an interference like this from the FBI director is not a normal factor in an election.

I think Comey's interference also explains the polling discrepancies. I think they caused a late break for Trump and late breaks are always hard for polls to take into account.

After that we can talk about sexism, the unfair attacks on Hillary for the last 16 years, inappropriate blaming of trade agreements for loss of manufacturing jobs when automation is the real root cause, and Republican obstruction of Obama's attempts to help more middle class people being perceived as an issue with Democratic policies.

I am happy with the platform on which we ran. I don't see any need for soul searching or big changes. Without Comey Hillary wins and we take back the senate. Why would we change from that? Do we anticipate a Comey-like interference going forward and if so what would a change in policies do to help that?

[LisaM]

1. I think we do need to deal with issues at the local level.

This voting obstruction can't stand.

[ecstatic]

2. Without massive voter disenfranchisement, we win.

That's what we should have been battling all along, not just at the last minute.

[barbtries]

20. yes.

this is huge. everything counts. and I for one cannot rule out that the republicans once again stole the WH.

[Coyotl]

22. Cheaters win.

Last edited Thu Nov 17, 2016, 12:14 AM - Edit history (2)

Voter suppression, voter caging, long lines, less early voting, voter ID, Jim Crow felon laws, .....

and, when even all that isn't enough, drag out the FBI Director to shave another percentage point! And when even that fails, rig a couple of battleground states.

[SharonAnn]

33. Voter suppression and James Comey made the difference. Other things could've been better, but...

Voter suppression prevented Democrats from voting. Few Republicans were affected by this, in comparison.

James Comey fed into the "Hillary is corrupt" meme and people on the fence jumped to the other side.

[duffyduff]

57. We won the popular vote regardless.

You can't fix the IDIOTS who voted for a media-promoted demagogue.

[ThirdEye]

58. This...

... is the only acceptable "if this had been different, we'd win" statement IMO.

It should never have been close, so blaming Comey is bullshit IMO. Same with blaming people who didn't come and vote because it wasn't Bernie Sanders. The race simply should never have been close.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. Correct

She was leading by a hell of a lot more prior to this.

[teach1st]

4. In my opinion

In my opinion it was Comey (number one), voter suppression, and sexism. Yes, as you point out, there are other considerations, but Comey....

[boston bean]

5. I agree. She had momentum and was going to win.

I do believe people felt him not presidential. Then comes Comey and the word "criminal" investigation was
flainted. Gave people a reason to think it ok to vote fora racist.

[sheshe2]

6. Correct.

[duffyduff]

7. Wrong. Comey had little to do with this.

The media are completely responsible for this disaster of a candidate, and they did it in a cynical grab for ratings and ad revenue.

CNN's Jeff Zucker belongs in prison for treason against the United States. The rest of the media bigwigs jumped aboard once they saw the "success" Zucker had in promoting Trump 24/7 on a NEWS network. Every "news" report about the election was all with Trump as a frame of reference. The voters got the shaft.

Most everybody is looking elsewhere instead of what is staring at them right in the face.

The media, especially the cable media, HATED Hillary Clinton. The reason was she wasn't good for ratings and ad revenue. She had to be "defeated" no matter how bogus the allegations. The Comey dump would have been ignored for what it was if the media had not been so much in the tank for Trump.

Had HRC gotten the presidency, those ad revenues and ratings would have dried up. CNN would have had to find another plane crash to obsess over for the next four years.

[stevenleser]

8. That is a secondary factor, IMHO, because even with that she was leading by a lot pre-Comey.

Even with all the media nonsense, and I agree with you, they helped normalize a monster, she still would have won.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

70. In what poll(s) was she leading by a lot pre-Comey?

I believe his email to Congress had a negative effect on her numbers, no doubt, but it's not like she was up by a lot, as least as I remember it.

[MyNameIsKhan]

9. I agree with you, media came to HRC a week before election like hounds... they could have

covered Comey letter but not continue coverage for 4 days straight ... this depressed our turnout...

[Lil Missy]

10. Comey had EVERYTHING to do with her positive momentum coming to a crashing halt.

[stevenleser]

25. Yes, I don't see how anyone could come to another conclusion. nt

[SharonAnn]

34. Absolutely. It affected some of my "independent" minded friends. They were going to support H, but

But they decided that there really was something to the "crooked Hillary" meme.

[Fast Walker 52]

36. the emails created the narrative for the media to jump on her

and Comey really made a difference, though I agree the media was fucking awful

[ucrdem]

11. I'd say so.

This is not the first time his agency has injected itself into a recent election to achieve a similar result but it's got to be the most outrageous. So much for the fiction of objectivity.

[LostOne4Ever]

12. That is only true if you ignore where Hillary lost and how they wanted change. nt

[stevenleser]

38. Nope, she was leading big in all of those places pre-Comey as well. nt

[LostOne4Ever]

47. She was leading BIG and in the middle of an upswing in all those places post Comey as well

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/wisconsin/

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/michigan/

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/pennsylvania/


[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=#009999]Comey had little to nothing to do with the loss.[/font]

[pstokely]

13. HRC was already week in the rust belt

Last edited Wed Nov 16, 2016, 02:42 PM - Edit history (1)

never even targeted WI after the convention, too urban voters stayed home, white voters indifferent to racism went to tRump

[SharonAnn]

35. See Comey and voter Suppression. lather, rinse, repeat.

[Ken Burch]

14. Why would you want us to maintain the status quo, though?

What exactly are you afraid of?

[stevenleser]

26. Why would you change something that works and would have won absent cheating?

Why would anyone want to do that?

[prayin4rain]

15. Yep, Guiliani's errand boy should not get to just shrink back into the shadows. nt

[DemonGoddess]

16. It was a few things

1. Comey
2. voter suppression in key states
3. misogyny
4. racism via the skinheads and their ilk. They couldn't stomach that a white woman wants to address the systemic racism in this country.
5. Evangelicals

[NastyRiffraff]

30. Absolutely

1. Comey
2. voter suppression in key states
3. misogyny
4. racism via the skinheads and their ilk. They couldn't stomach that a white woman wants to address the systemic racism in this country.
5. Evangelicals

All those were factors; I'd add the 48% of eligible voters NOT voting. I'm not sure which was the MOST important, but looking at that list, they all worked together in election Trump. Absent any one of them (especially Comey), and very likely the result would have been different.

[democrattotheend]

75. Agree with all of those, but she also made some mistakes

She should have done more events and not taken the upper midwest and to a lesser extent PA for granted until the end. She should have focused more on jobs and less on Trump. She tried to make the election a referendum on Trump, which is really unfortunate because she had so much to offer.

[Warren DeMontague]

17. I think you're right, but I also think people like Sen. Warren are right when they say

that we should have pushed for a bigger stimulus and a public option when we had the chance, in 2009.

Comey didn't help but neither did the fact that a lot of people in rust belt states who would otherwise be natural Democrats, feel ignored by Washington.

[Sorceress]

18. I completely agree.

There were other factors but we were weathering them and making a surge toward the finish line right when Comey decided to rip open a healing wound. I am so frustrated to see people pointing to everything and everyone but him. HE is what sealed her fate and she, nor anyone else, should be demonized for admitting it.

[andym]

19. Comey's last minute interference tipped the election

I think everyone was watching the polls tighten with trepidation the last two weeks, but the polls didn't completely capture the last minute movement. But there is another factor that you are not taking into account: Trump was a terrible candidate. Perhaps the worst GOP candidate ever. That needs to be factored in, as a GOP candidate without the warts would have likely done much better than Trump did, especially in the Rust Belt, if they were promising "change".

[spooky3]

44. Are you forgetting that he beat out 14 other Republicans

Insiders, outsiders, etc., and all liars? He was just the most entertaining demagogue.

[andym]

48. Not forgetting that he won the GOP primary-- he would have had more problems against the GOP A team

and so likely would Hillary have had more problems eg, Paul Ryan, maybe Nikki Haley

[spooky3]

49. Totally disagree. Both of them have considerable

Weaknesses. Ryan couldn't help Romney win in 2012.

[andym]

54. That Ryan didn't help Romney much means little, often VP candidates dont help much in the GE

LBJ would be the exception that proves the rule.

Also your logic is imperfect even about the remaining field of GOP hopefuls that Trump beat. That's because there is often a paper, scissors, rock effect where candidate 1 >candidate 2; candidate 2> candidate 3; and candidate 3 > candidate 1. In other words the transitive rule does not hold. Kasich might have been an example of this-- he fared badly in the primaries but lead Hillary Clinton by 4-12% in polling during the primaries and would have been a formidable opponent (although not a true "change" bringer, which would have hurt him some).

Some data
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/data-points/poll-clinton-leads-trump-how-would-november-look-without-him-n603496

[closeupready]

21. Completely disagree.

Her loss is entirely on her.

[stevenleser]

40. Nope, the interference by the FBI director is an unprecedented issue for a Presidential election.

It would be one thing if he found actual indictable evidence and was arresting or indicting her.

He actually found nothing.

[closeupready]

55. Nope. I like you, Steve, but you (and her fans here) are simply denying reality.

She was a horrible candidate, on so many levels.

She had 100's of millions of $$$$ in her war chest.

She effectively started running 16 years ago.

She had almost every single media endorsement, and the backing of almost every Western leader.

She had poll numbers persuading even the biggest skeptic that it was going to be a landslide.

And she lost. Not because of Comey.

And I'm not really interested in debating the point, because while I understand past performance can not be taken as a predictor of future performance in the financial industry, it certainly can be used in predicting future political contests, and so I'm pessimistic.

Enough, I'm done. Have a great day.

[stevenleser]

66. And with all of what you write she was up 9 points, way out of the margin of error.

And that is a huge lead in terms of Presidential election history.

What undid that lead? Yes, an interference by the FBI director regarding something that turned out to be nothing.

Every Presidential candidate has plusses and minuses.

Whatever your criticisms of her, she was up by nine points three weeks out. That means all of the negatives you can list had the result of a nine point lead.

[closeupready]

67. A lead so fragile is no lead at all. Mile wide and inch deep, and all that.

Okay, we can agree to disagree. Cheers.

[stevenleser]

68. As it always is or at least should be. We don't worship our politicos and an investigation or threat

of one by the FBI director would take ANY candidate down by six or so points at least.

[BlueProgressive]

71. The FBI interference would never have been possible

if Clinton had never installed that private server in the first place.... and she would be the president-elect right now.

But yeah, the first letter was the final straw that broke her back. However, we should never have been in this position: nominating a presidential candidate who'd spent nearly a year under investigation by the FBI (rightly or wrongly) was ALSO 'unprecedented', and seems a rather fundamental violation of 'Presidential Politics 101'

[oasis]

72. The Bengazi/e-mail witch hunt was GOP manufactured bullshit from

the start. That's Reality 101.

[stevenleser]

76. Nope, the investigation was already finished and the likelihood of getting

new information from Humas emails was close to zero.

As we have seen with Obama, Republicans manufacture outrage from BS all the time. The key is to be smart enough to get that. Keep trying, you may get it eventually.

[BlueProgressive]

77. The real key would be to have been smart enough

to avoid nominating a candidate who spent a year under FBI investigation, and whose negatives flirted with 50 percent. I doubt you'll EVER get that, if you were one of those who insisted that those problems would not seriously hamper Clinton's electability. Plenty of us felt otherwise, and have been sadly proven correct. The rest have been proven quite wrong.

I well understand about most of the outrage being manufactured and overblown, but you need to be smart enough to understand that regardless of any charges actually being filed, the damage was being done, and continued to be done right up to the election. I am not arguing the rights or wrongs of the matter here: I am arguing that it was politically stupid to field a nominee with these weaknesses, and the party did not have to nominate a candidate who would continuously be vulnerable to this line of attack. I guess too many Democrats either didn't care about electability, or weren't smart enough to understand what goes into it.

Hillary Clinton should have been smart enough to avoid such a situation in the first place, a situation that seems to have been caused by an overgrown desire for secrecy and "control".

[democrattotheend]

73. I disagree with that

Late deciders broke for Trump. Comey caused that. She made some critical mistakes, but she would have won if not for the last minute hit job by the FBI and the media.

[TrekLuver]

23. There are many reasons for this loss....and this was one of them.

It sure as hell did not help.

[yallerdawg]

24. Yes, it was all about who got the last great smear in.

Comey and the Congressional Republicans gave the impression they had found classified documents on a pedophile's laptop.

That did it right there. And there was no walking it back 2 days before the election.

And Comey's silence on Russian interference in our elections on behalf of Trump!

[riversedge]

28. And it was the last grand Republican smear-from which she could not recover from.

[cilla4progress]

27. So let's do something about it

I'm ready to take it to the streets

[mainstreetonce]

29. It will not be answered.

If Comey tipped the election. That cannot be proven.

Comey was wrong. Even if we had won .I would say, "Fire Comey"

[stevenleser]

31. Depending on your definition of "proven" sure it can

And I agree with the rest of your point. Wednesday morning Nov 9th at 9am Comey should have been fired regardless of whether Hillary won or not.

[jmg257]

32. I think what it/he did do was give too many people who

just didn't like her a last chance confirmation to "why" they didn't.

People had to overlook a TON of sit to vote Trump...and they did it anyway.

[beaglelover]

37. I agree, but will anything be done about it now????

[DirkGently]

39. We lost because our candidate didn't command enough votes.

It wasn't Comey. It wasn't sexism, or racism, or Jill Stein. Trump got fewer votes than McCain or Romney. We would have lost in 2008 and 2012 with this candidate, who carried baggage from a 30-year political career, who avoided reaching out to the people most in need in this country, who answered "Hope and Change" and "Yes we can" with "Eh, Wall Street's cool" and "No we can't."

Clinton might have worked in a world not this divided. In an economy that had fully recovered. In some imaginary America where a business-friendly technocrat who eventually came around on social issues like marriage equality was marginally more likable than an anthropomorphized middle finger to everything.

It's not everyone's else's fault. It's not anyone else's fault. A strong candidate would have won, and we picked a weak one. "It's her turn, and "I'm not as bad as that guy" turned out not to be a compelling platform.

Next time let's stand for something. That might help.

[stevenleser]

41. Nope, that is just trying to justify your position, not actual analysis. nt

[DirkGently]

42. "Not enough votes" is actually why we lost.

By comparison, Your OP has zero analysis. Less even than your old column savaging Hillary Clinton as the most evil person on earth until you decided you were on her side.

You're just throwing things against the wall. There's no evidence Comey's letter changed anyone's mind or blew Clinton's precarious theoretical lead.

She lost because she wasn't good enough to win. Nearly anyone could have beaten the guy we were up against, who didn't pull as many votes as either of the last two Republican candidates.

She just wasn't good enough.

[stevenleser]

43. Sure, and in a dictatorship 100% of the votes is why a dictator wins. It doesnt tell the story.

But you knew that.

[stevenleser]

59. Yes, and Poland is in Eastern Europe. I can list facts that don't pertain to the discussion too. nt

[stevenleser]

60. This kind of discourse belongs on JPR, not DU. You should stay over there.

At DU, we discuss relevant facts that are current. And the current rules specify we aren't nasty to one another.

You want to call other people ugly names and be nasty, bring up conspiracies or other irrelevant information, stay over at JPR.

[DirkGently]

61. Those ugly names were yours, Steven.

You compared Hillary Clinton to "Karl Rove." I do not think she was the right candidate, but have never made such a vicious comparison.

Oh wait. Are you actually pretending that quote wasn't from your own column? Because if so ... wow.

Maybe you should pluck the beam from your own eye before finding fault with others?

[stevenleser]

63. I'm talking about YOUR discourse. It belongs on JPR not here nt

[nashville_brook]

62. hrm. you want to edit this?

[stevenleser]

64. Nope. Why would I? Nt

[democrattotheend]

74. I think she would have won in 2008

It was a different political climate then.

[KittyWampus]

46. She didn't run one ad (that I know of) addressing jobs. Not one ad talking about Obama's

attempt to get a Job Bill through Congress and Republicans obstructing him.

She didn't campaign once in Wisconsin.

She attempted to "expand the map" unnecessarily and ignored states that were critical.

From a DailyKos post:

adly, some folks in the Clinton campaign weren’t tuned in to that concept. From HuffPost:

In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s staff in key Midwest states sent out alarms to their headquarters in Brooklyn. They were facing a problematic shortage of paid canvassers to help turn out the vote.

For months, the Clinton campaign had banked on a wide army of volunteer organizers to help corral independents and Democratic leaners and re-energize a base not particularly enthused about the election. But they were volunteers. And as anecdotal data came back to offices in key battlegrounds, concern mounted that leadership had skimped on a critical campaign function.

“It was arrogance, arrogance that they were going to win. That this was all wrapped up,” a senior battleground state operative told The Huffington Post.

snip
In Michigan alone, a senior battleground state operative told HuffPost that the state party and local officials were running at roughly one-tenth the paid canvasser capacity that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) had when he ran for president in 2004. Desperate for more human capital, the state party and local officials ended up raising $300,000 themselves to pay 500 people to help canvass in the election’s closing weeks. By that point, however, they were operating in the dark. One organizer said that in a precinct in Flint, they were sent to a burned down trailer park. No one had taken it off the list of places to visit because no one had been there until the final weekend. Clinton lost the state by 12,000 votes.

[ucrdem]

52. The only Hill ad I ever saw on TV was about jobs.

I think I saw it more than once, though I can't remember what I was watching either time. Maybe CNN:

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/statuses/760847322922090496

[guillaumeb]

53. Excellent points Kitty.

Apparently no one in the campaign realized that Michigan and Wisconsin are GOP controlled states!?! GOP Governors and GOP legislatures.
A massive failure of basic planning.

[stevenleser]

65. Nope, see ucrdem's post above. Nt

[DemonGoddess]

69. I saw PLENTY of ads running

by her about JOBS. About going to where clean energy MAKES jobs. About going to tech schools and getting jobs. Many, many, many of them.

[oasis]

50. James "Flakey Jim" Comey was fully aware of the impact his interference

would have. He'll gladly wear the "flakey" label since it masks his deep down corrupt nature.

[guillaumeb]

51. Your assumptions do not seem to take into account the fact that the GOP is:

1) in control of 30 states,
2) in control of the House,
3) in control of the Senate.

Yes gerrymandering is a problem, but Senators are elected statewide. As are Governors.

And while automation is one cause of manufacturing job loss, another is the dismantling and relocation of manufacturing facilities from this country to lower wage countries.

If the Democratic party cannot or will not address wage stagnation and a lack of living wage jobs for working class people, the majority of US workers by the way, how can we assume that this trend of greater GOP political control will not continue?