Do we feel sorry for her or do we just roll our eyes? Hillary Clinton seems to be taking baby steps towards accepting responsibility for blowing one of the most winnable elections in recent memory. Still, she’s hung up on James Comey and the Russians. Cortney wrote about Clinton admitted to CNN's Christiane Amanpour about the “shortfalls” during her failed presidential bid, but then said,” I was on the way to winning, until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian Wikileaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off.” Amanpour interviewed Clinton during the Women for Women International luncheon in New York City.
"If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president,” she added, citing FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver. Yeah, and to quote Republican strategist Mike Murphy when people say these sorts of things: If Napoleon had nuclear submarines; we’d all be speaking French. The fact is Election Day was on November 8—and you lost.
Second, Comey’s letter and the Wikileaks aspects of the race totally glosses over what Priorities USA found out in focus groups from drop off and Obama-Trump voters in Michigan and Wisconsin. The liberal super PAC, which was created in 2011 to help with Obama’s re-election campaign, found that a large swath of these voters that voted for Obama, but flipped for Trump thought Democratic policies would favor the wealthy. Also, a significant chunk voted for Trump because they couldn't stand Hillary Clinton. These Obama voters that broke for Trump numbered in the millions. The FBI and the Russians have little bearing on these findings by Priorities USA. As for the latter part regarding Comey's letter and the Russians scaring people away, voters already disliked her—with the Wikileaks information maybe pouring fuel on that fire, but it didn’t shift these folks from leaning Clinton to outright rejection. The good news for Democrats is that they can win these voters back, as they also feel that Republican policies, like cutting social programs, would adversely impact them. Trump’s brand of populism, where he bashes both parties, seems to have isolated him somewhat; Obama-Trump voters feel that the president will work to better the middle class, but they don’t feel that way towards Congressional Republicans. For a party that was solid on messaging during the Obama years, the Democrats’ cruise towards the left eventually hit the iceberg. Now, they have to deal with possible blowback over political correctness, safe spaces, trigger warnings, and the nauseating hot takes about privilege from her progressive cohorts. That doesn’t mean this couldn’t happen and the GOP should remain cognizant of that. These aren’t solid Republicans. If Trump screws up, they’ll find someone else.
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Yet, back to Clinton, it’s as if she doesn’t realize that Comey wouldn’t have been an issue if she had just followed the 2009 National Archives and Records Administration rule to preserve all electronic communications. The FBI wouldn’t have been a key part of the 2016 cycle if she didn’t have an unauthorized and unsecure email server from which she conducted all official business as secretary of state and possibly put our national security at risk. Her campaign’s needless trip ups over her explanations for why such a private email system was necessary also didn’t help, rehashing all the 1990s criticism of the power couple. The email server encapsulated that. Her presser to explain it was also an unmitigated disaster, with her flippant response to a question about whether she wiped the server. Remember the “like with a cloth” answer? Clinton has no one else to blame but herself for blowing it. Also, Comey wanted to detail the levels of Russian interference in an op-ed during the summer of 2016, but the Obama White House stopped him. The email investigation did an incredible amount of harm to Clinton’s character with voters, but it was entirely avoidable.
Guy will have a deeper dive into this later today. I suggest you check it out.
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