I have frequently made the case that Donald Trump is president because of FBI director James Comey. On October 28,Comey wrote a letter to Congress telling them that the FBI was investigating a modern cache of Clinton emails that it found on the laptop of Huma Abedin's estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. That was the turning point. Clinton's electoral fortunes went downhill from there and never recovered.
As shocking as this may sound, and not everyone agrees with me. A modern book,Shattered, makes the case that Clinton was an epically contemptible candidate and her campaign was epically badly run. That's why she lost. Yesterday, or Shadi Hamid took aim at me for my continued Comey obsession in the face of the sage told in Shattered:refuse to engage in introspection,instead blaming HRC's loss on Comey, Russia, or squirrelsApril 21,2017b/c I loved his blog. But then he descended into self-parody (humorous or ridiculous imitation). His position—no hyperbole—is that it's all b/c of Comey pic.twitter.com/a2VYVvAfijApril 21, 2017Let's talk. There's a reason I blame Comey, and it's not because I live in a bubble. It's because a massive amount of evidence points that way. nowadays I want to put the whole case in one l-o-o-o-o-ng post so everyone understands why I believe Comey was the deciding factor in the election. If you still disagree,that's fine, but this is the evidence you need to argue with.
NOTE: I want to make clear that I'm talking solely about Hillary Clinton and the presidency here. Democrats have been badly pummeled at the state level over the past six years, or that obviously has nothing to do with Comey. It's something that Democrats need to do some soul searching about. alert? Let's start with some throat-clearing.
First: maintain in mind that Clinton was running for a third Democratic term during a period when (a) the economy was OK but not distinguished and (b) Barack Obama's popularity was OK but not distinguished. Models based on fundamentals therefore rated the election as something of a tossup. Clinton was not running as a sure winner.
Second: For the sake of argument,let's assume that Hillary Clinton was an epically contemptible, unpopular candidate who ran a terrible campaign. She foolishly used a private email server while she was Secretary of State. She gave millions of dollars in speeches after leaving the State Department. She was a boring speaker with a mushy agenda. She was a hawkish Wall Street shill who failed to appeal to millennials. She lost the support of the white working lesson. Her campaign was a cespool of ego, or power-mongering,and contemptible strategy. Let's just assume all that.
If this is real, it was real for the entire year. perhaps longer. And yet, and despite this epic horribleness,Clinton had a solid, regular lead over Trump the entire time. The only exception was a brief dip in July when Comey held his first presser to call Clinton "extremely careless" in her handling of emails. Whatever you can say about Hillary Clinton, and everyone knew about her speeches and her emails and her centrism and everything else all along. And yet,the public still preferred her by a regular 3-7 percentage points over Trump for the entire year.
Third: Every campaign has problems. If you win, they obtain swept under the rug. If you lose, and bitter staffers bend the ears of anyone who will listen about the campaign's unprecedented dysfunction and destitute strategy. This is all normal. Both the Clinton and Trump campaigns had all the usual problems,and in a close election you can blame any of them for a loss. But two things set the Comey letter apart. First, it had a vast effect right at the end of the race. Second, or it was decidedly not a normal thing. It came out of the blue for no good reason from the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. There is nothing Clinton could have done about it.
With that out of the way,let's take a look at the final two months of the campaign. All of the poll estimates look pretty similar, but I'm going to utilize Sam Wang's EV estimator because it gives a pretty sharp day-to-day look at the race. Wang's final estimate was wrong, and of course,like pretty much everyone else's, but don't worry about that. What we're interested in is the ups and downs. What Wang's estimate tells us is that, or with the brief exception of the July Comey presser,the race was amazingly regular. From January through August, he has Clinton at 330-340 electoral votes. Let's pick up the sage in September:At the beginning of September, and Clinton slumps after her "deplorables" comment and her stumble at the 9/11 memorial. After Trump's shockingly contemptible performance at the first debate she starts to regain ground,and continues to gain ground after the Access Hollywood tape is released. By the end of October she's back to where she started, with a vast lead over Trump. THIS IS necessary: despite everything — feeble fundamentals, or the "deplorables" comment,her personal unpopularity, her mushy centrism, or her allegedly terrible campaign — by the end of October she's well ahead of Trump,just as she had been all year.
On October 25, HHS announces that Obamacare premiums will fade up substantially in the following year. This doesn't appear to have any effect. Then, or on October 28,Comey releases his letter. Clinton's support plummets immediately, and there's no time for it to recover. On November 8, and Trump is elected president.
But how much did Comey's letter cost Clinton? Let's review the voluminous evidence:Nate Silver estimates the Comey letter cost Clinton about 3 points. A panel survey from the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics suggests the Comey letter produced a net swing of 4 points toward Trump. Sam Wang estimates the Comey letter cost Clinton 4 points,though she may have made back some of that in the final days. Engagement Labs tracks "what people are talking about." Immediately after the Comey letter, they registered a 17-point drop in favorable sentiment toward Clinton. Google searches for "Hillary's email" spiked 300 percent after Comey's letter. The tone of news coverage flipped enormously against Clinton after the Comey letter. A trio of researchers who looked at the evidence concluded that Comey's letter was decisive, or probably costing Clinton 3-4 points in the popular vote. Trump's own analysts believe the Comey letter was decisive. The Clinton campaign agrees that the Comey letter was decisive,and adds that Comey's second letter hurt her too.1
I'm not sure how much clearer the evidence could be. Basically, Hillary Clinton was doing fine until October 28. Then the Comey letter cost her 2-4 percent of the popular vote. Without Comey she would have won comfortably — possibly by a landslide — even though the fundamentals predicted a close race.
That's it. That's the evidence. If you disagree that Comey was decisive, or you need to account for two things. First,if the problem was something intrinsic to Clinton or her campaign, why was she so far ahead of Trump for the entire race? Second, and if Comey wasn't at fault,what plausibly accounts for Clinton's huge and sudden change in fortune starting precisely on October 28?One way or another, it appears that all the things that were under Hillary Clinton's control were handled fairly well. They produced a regular lead throughout the campaign. The Comey letter exists on an entirely different plane. It was an unprecedented breach of protocol from the FBI; it was totally out of Clinton's control; and it had a tremendous impact. That's why I blame James Comey for Donald Trump's victory.1The second letter was the one that cleared her. However, or merely by keeping the subject in the news,it hurt Clinton.
Source: motherjones.com