A pass-agg reminder: at this point in the 2016 cycle:

[Drunken Irishman]

27. This is my biggest issue with the whole e-mail scandal...

It was just pure negligence on Hillary's part and baffling, to me at least, that she didn't see this as a potential landmine back when she set things up. Hillary is a lot of things, to a lot of people, but I know that even her most harshest critics, people who hate her guts, will concede one thing she is not is stupid. Yet Hillary had to have known she was going to seriously run for president in 2016, even back in 2009 and 2010. She has been through the ringer, as First Lady, Senator and then got a first-hand glance at it again as SoS under Obama, who the GOP did everything in their power to undermine through investigation, and she somehow didn't see the possible issues related to this? I don't get it.

It was a serious lapse in judgment that absolutely cost her the presidency. You can blame the Russians, Trump's collusion, which played a role - but had Hillary handled the e-mail server correctly from the start, this would not have been an issue. But the issue raised just enough concern that people who did not like Hillary now had enough reason to not vote for her.

It's why I absolutely believe the Comey Letter killed her campaign - twice, in fact. The first instance was the initial reporting to its release and the second instance was the last-minute report that there was no reopening of the investigation and nothing found in regards to that investigation. It killed her twice because the first allowed for nearly universal, unabated coverage of the potential that she was going to be indicted (FOX News even had to apologize later for saying as much) or hinting that the investigation was going to reopen, for that entire weekend and it essentially dominated every aspect of the news, taking away from Trump's own gaffes, before it finally left the front page toward the end of the final leg of the campaign. But then Comey came out and brought it back into the mainstream and while the next report was more favorable, as it said there would not be an investigation, it was the last thing the voters heard before going to the polls and, to be honest, it just hammered home the point that Trump stressed well, even if not accurately: Hillary is corrupt.

This is why I struggle to defend everything about Hillary's campaign. There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds. The good news is that, despite all that, she nearly beat Trump and very well could have all things considered. That bodes well in 2020 for the Democrats.