{"id":31963,"date":"2022-06-24T12:08:39","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T16:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=31963"},"modified":"2022-06-24T12:10:32","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T16:10:32","slug":"the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=31963","title":{"rendered":"The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

The piece is long, and old, but it's well worth reading the whole thing, if you want to see the ultimate reason Roe just got overturned.<\/p>\n

But here's the opening:<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton would probably be president<\/a> if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had \u201clearned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation\u201d into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton\u2019s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.<\/p>\n

The letter isn\u2019t the only reason that Clinton lost. It does not excuse every decision the Clinton campaign made. Other factors may have played a larger role in her defeat, and it\u2019s up to Democrats to examine those as they choose their strategy for 2018 and 2020.<\/p>\n

But the effect of those factors \u2014 say, Clinton\u2019s decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the role that her gender played in the campaign \u2014 is hard to measure. The impact of Comey\u2019s letter is comparatively easy to quantify, by contrast. At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this bit just pissed me off all over again:<\/p>\n

The Times thought it was covering President-elect Clinton\u2019s first scandal<\/strong><\/p>\n

Re-read one of those New York Times front-page stories from Oct. 29 \u2014 \u201cThis Changes Everything\u2019: Donald Trump Exults as Hillary Clinton\u2019s Team Scrambles\u201d \u2014 and you\u2019ll be surprised by how strange it is. It begins by describing the Comey letter in dramatic terms, as \u201cthe kind of potential turnabout rarely if ever seen at this late stage of a presidential race\u201d:<\/p>\n

Everything was looking up for Hillary Clinton. She was riding high in the polls, even seeing an improvement on trustworthiness. She was sitting on $153 million in cash. At 12:37 p.m. Friday, her aides announced that she planned to campaign in Arizona, a state that a Democratic presidential candidate has carried only once since 1948.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes later, October delivered its latest big surprise.<\/p>\n

...<\/p>\n

In the kind of potential turnabout rarely if ever seen at this late stage of a presidential race, Donald J. Trump exulted in his good fortune.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yet the same Times article told readers that this rarely-if-ever-seen turnabout wouldn\u2019t cost Clinton the election. She had banked too much of a lead in early voting, the story said, and it came too late in the campaign. Instead, the Comey letter could \u201ccast a cloud over a victorious Mrs. Clinton\u2019s administration-in-waiting\u201d:<\/p>\n

With early voting well underway, and Mrs. Clinton already benefiting from Mr. Trump\u2019s weekslong slide in the polls, Democrats\u2019 concerns were tempered \u2014 more in the realm of apprehensiveness than panic.<\/p>\n

...<\/p>\n

But the specter of an F.B.I. inquiry could cast a cloud over a victorious Mrs. Clinton\u2019s administration-in-waiting. News had hardly spread when exasperated Democrats and donors were ruefully dredging up painful memories of the seemingly constant tug of congressional investigations on Bill Clinton\u2019s White House.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What the heck is going on here? Why was the Times giving Comey\u2019s letter such blockbuster coverage and at the same time going out of its way to insist that it wouldn\u2019t affect the outcome?<\/p>\n

...<\/p>\n

In a sense, the Times may have made a version of the same mistake that Comey reportedly did, according to the very detailed recounting of the FBI director\u2019s decision that the Times published last month. The newspaper\u2019s editors and reporters thought Clinton had the election in the bag. And they didn\u2019t consider how their own actions might influence the outcome and invalidate their assessment.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fuck you, Mr Comey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The piece is long, and old, but it's well worth reading the whole thing, if you want to see the ultimate reason Roe just got overturned. But here's the opening: Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31963"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31966,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31963\/revisions\/31966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}