Blame for Hillary’s campaign loss

There must be someone to blame.

Hillary appeared a shoe-in, particularly running against the wild card candidate of “The Donald”. How did she lose when she was a slam dunk? The Democrat party autopsy is ongoing.

For myriad reasons, Hillary Clinton has a lot of explaining to do to the high dollar donors. If she wants to remain in politics, then she will need their backing again and their money. She has much less power or influence to peddle.

Of course, Hillary Clinton isn’t going to admit to herself or to her donors that she was a poor candidate from the start. There has to be some other reason!

“We have to understand what happened here.”

ABC News reporters at 1 AM on the night of the election were stunned as the states tipped over to Donald Trump. Those waiting for Hillary’s victory speech in the Javits Center were “bewildered” and “shell-shocked”. “We are so confused. The numbers were so wrong just all across the country.” says a reporter. Yes, they are wrong because Hillary was supposed to win.

George Stephanopoulous

“Something no one would have predicted even a day ago.” “Been a surprising evening in so many ways. In some ways an entire industry blind-sided.”

“Historical, unprecedented. We’ve said that word, unprecedented, from the very beginning.”

“I  thought Trump would win the Republican nomination based on “data” and that Hillary would win the election based on “data”.  Well, the data was wrong. Something went majorly off in all of the expectations everybody on both sides had.” (CFR member)

Matthew Dowd

“I think this is the biggest miss that the world has seen.”

“I think a country; blind-sided. An industry and a country blind-sided. Let’s just look at the expanse of it. This is from nearly every single media association that did their own polling. They weren’t in some conspiracy. They did their own polling converged on a 3 or 4 point lead. The Clinton campaign did their own polling. They were confident they were going to win this election. The Trump campaign did some semblance of polling and they were not confident they were going to win this election. Every single state poll out there… accumulation effect. I think that we are going to be asking a lot of questions for the days that are following us how was this missed.”

Martha Raddatz

“I think it had to be more than secret Trump voters, people who wouldn’t say they were voting for Trump. I didn’t find very much of that. I didn’t find really anybody who wouldn’t say “I’m voting for Trump”. But there is something else going on here that the data is missing and the polls are missing. ”

“You know who didn’t believe those polls? Donald Trump’s voters. They went out there, they listened to him saying this is not over. They didn’t listen to us. They didn’t listen to anybody else about the polls. They went out and voted.”

“I think we all got it wrong. It would be good for the Democratic party to look at what happened. Maybe we weren’t listening well enough to those voters.”

Bill Crystal

“You don’t have a historic anomaly of this magnitude and then everything goes back to normal.” “We are in uncharted waters.”

https://youtu.be/PUaxKUoYVlE

Whack-a-Scandal

Let’s face it. Hillary, unfortunately for the Democrats, was a poor choice of candidate. She had already been passed over in 2008 by a charismatic junior Senator and community organizer. Hillary added to her resume in the last 8 years. Many said she was the most qualified to be President, but that isn’t necessarily why people vote for a candidate. The years of being a junior Senator put her on par with Obama’s experience before becoming President in 2008, but saddled her with the Iraq War vote. Her years as Secretary of State only added more baggage to her pile. Private email server and Benghazi became two new issues. Investigations have definitely been a Whack-a-Mole problem for the Clintons.

When it comes to Hillary Clinton the investigations and scandals are never really over, and they somehow always manage to get worse.

Abigail Tracy (Vanity Fair October 28, 2016)

Hillary’s turn

Many voters actually resented the attitude that Hillary was supposedly owed her turn to be President after waiting patiently doing other duties. Rumors said she had made a pact with Bill Clinton in Arkansas that he would be President first and then it would be her turn. After watching the Bush family oligarchy, then this was believable.

Rumors also spread since 2014 that Hillary had snapped at a freelance reporter in California during a campaign stop saying “It’s my turn. I’ve done my time, and I deserve it.”

Martha Raddatz, ABC News reporter, on election night told of an interview with a prior Obama voter.

Q: Have you ever voted Republican?

A: I have not, but I am this year. I’m voting for Trump this year.

Q: Why are you voting for Trump?

A: I don’t trust Hillary at all, she wanted to be a politician her whole career, so staying in a marriage for that is something that bothered me a little bit.  

Q: Does anything bother you about Donald Trump?

A: Well, you know what… they are both horrible. I don’t know who to pick, but they are both horrible. I’m going with Trump and I think he will pick an amazing Cabinet because he wants to win.

Meme generators ran overtime.

Image result for Hillary was my turn

Voters are sexist

Trump over performed with white men. Democrats blame the uneducated white older man for wanting to prevent a woman from taking office because they are afraid to lose their privileged patriarchy. Yet Hillary didn’t do as well in getting votes from Hispanics and African Americans as expected. There were “secret” Trump voters who lied to pollsters or wouldn’t say that they were voting for Trump, which could have skewed the polling results.

Having personally run into rabid angry Democrats who lash out if you suggest even a hint of tolerance for Trump or saying anything negative about Hillary, then I can definitely understand this sentiment to stay silent about your vote.

Surely the women would vote for Hillary over Trump, right?

There were a couple of people who wouldn’t tell me who they were voting for, but a lot of them were college educated women and … uh… who knows if they were the secret Trump supporters. – Martha Raddatz ABC News on election night

Why bother

The consensus was that Hillary would win. The polls said she would win. The New York Times reported that “Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was so confident in her victory that her aides popped open Champagne on the campaign plane early Tuesday.”

Perhaps Hillary fans were so sure she would win that they decided to just stay home. Maybe they couldn’t vote for Trump, but why bother voting for Hillary when she was an obvious shoe-in? Some couldn’t vote for either candidate, as neither were great options. Some went to third parties or just opted out completely. After the results, there were angry protesters marching with “Not My President” signs in the streets below Trump Tower in New York City. Asked whether they had actually voted, many had not. So how many Hillary votes were lost for failure to even show up?

The electoral college

Rather than figure out how this happened, perhaps just change reality. There were attempts to get the sworn electoral voters to give her the vote with the arguments that Trump was so awful that it was their patriotic duty to go with the next worst candidate.

The sting of her loss is all the more painful because Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and is technically a “winner”, even though she isn’t going to be the next President by losing the electoral college. The fault is the archaic electoral college. The debates about the merits of the Founders setting up the “electoral college” in the US Constitution begins anew with many siding for keeping and many siding for switching to the popular vote or even some combination of methods. Perhaps if she had campaigned harder in the close states, then the electoral college would have tipped more in her favor? Would she have actually won or would it just be an even closer race? In the end Hillary had 5 “faithless electors” and Trump had 3 with all being for other people.

How did some Trump / anti-Hillary fans feel about celebrities calling for electors to go with Hillary?  Mark Dice has nearly 900,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and his fan base always loves a good ridiculing of such Hollywood celebrities.

It was the Russians

“Blame the Russians” didn’t manage to get traction, though that theory continues to be pushed. Learning various shenanigans from the leaked Podesta and DNC emails released from Wikileaks has yet to be shown to have altered the outcome, though perhaps a few disenfranchised Bernie Sanders fans opted out of supporting Hillary. Surely the leaks didn’t help Hillary Clinton.

Image result for it's the russians

Holding your nose

The many stupid things Trump said and tweeted somehow bounced off. If Trump had lost, then the analysis of his loss would have been easy. Bottom line was that many voted against Hillary and what she stood for and personally against her. His supporters focused on making sure Hillary Clinton wasn’t the next President. The Republican base held their nose and voted against Hillary. They got out their vote with stronger turnout than came out to support Romney in 2008.

http://www.hellertoon.com/main.html

Can’t blame the weather

If there had been bad weather, then that could have been blamed.

Fewer days on the road

Her being sick and failing to be able to campaign as hard never gets mentioned. She spent precious campaign days preparing for the debates. The pundits told us that Trump lost the debates, but that opinion could itself be debated.

Obama campaigned for Hillary. He said her Presidency would be a “continuation” of his legacy. The election of Trump was a rejection of the Obama administration policies, as well as the Republican establishment. There was also a rejection of the globalist agenda.

Late Deciders

Polls showed more undecided voters deciding in the last week had voted for Trump. Were these polling numbers any more accurate than her presumed margin for winning the election? If not, then analysis of the flawed polling data is also flawed.

David Muir, ABC News, speculated on election night that this poll would “fuel arguments that the FBI Director’s announcement affected the final days of this race.”  Director Comey sent a letter to Congress 11 days prior to the election about 650,000 new emails found in an unrelated case that were being reviewed. The unrelated case was related to the Anthony Weiner divorce with his wife, Huma Abedin. She was a friend of Hillary Clinton and also the Vice Chair of Clinton’s 2016 campaign and also worked in the 2008 campaign.

Early voting was already underway. How many of these undecided early voters were swayed towards Trump by this news, who weren’t already moving towards Trump? The news that Clinton supporters would be listening to, such as MSNBC, overall would likely have a different spin than the news that Trump supporters would be listening to, such as Fox News or InfoWars.

Mika Brzenzinski (CFR member) on MSNBC “Morning Joe” on 10/30/2016:

“Everyone talks about how what Comey did is outrageous. This was a great credible man with great integrity a week ago. So don’t really get that. What if there really is something? We are not going to say it was so outrageous.

The bottom line is this all goes back to the server. Something she shouldn’t have done. Something that was way more than a mistake. Way more! And this is a self inflicted massive wound. I just kept thinking how I’ve been on my horse going after Republicans and the Republican party. You nominated this guy. You nominated Donald Trump. How could you do that? 

When I’m thinking Democrats nominated someone who was under an FBI investigation for having a private server among other things. So here we are! Here WE are!”

There was also more going on, including Hillary Clinton using foul mouthed rappers for an event, which was mocked and turned off many. Trump was pressing hard flying from place to place to campaign.

Hillary was cleared again on 11/06/2016. The election was on 11/08/2016.

Very likely undecided voters went into the polling booth not knowing who to choose, as both were awful choices. Someone had to be blamed and couldn’t be Hillary.

It’s Comey’s fault

Hillary Clinton on 11/12/2016 said the the 10/28 Comey letter to Congress about new emails was the critical factor for why she lost the election. Unless the data can show more detail and can be more accurate than the polling overall predictions, then this appears to be looking for a scapegoat and jumping to conclusions.

ABC News Late Decider poll results

“There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” Clinton said on the conference call. But, she added, “our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless — proven to be — stopped our momentum.”

“we dropped, and we had to keep really pushing to regain our advantage, which going into last weekend we had. We were once again up in all but two of the battleground states, and we were up considerably in some that we ended up losing. And we were feeling like we had to put it back together.” – Vanity Fair in their quote of “The New York Times”

Comey is now going to be investigated

FBI Director James Comey is now going to be investigated for his re-opening of the Hillary email investigation so close to the November election. He really had not choice, except to release the information. He then cleared the doubt was quickly as possible.


Time line:

Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State

Leaked over time by Wikileaks

https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/  From Wikileaks: On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The final PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016.

https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton Hillary Rodham Clinton served as U.S. Secretary of State from January 21, 2009 to February 1, 2013. The FBI conducted an investigation into allegations that classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on a personal e-mail server she used during her tenure.

Politico.com: Clinton aides kept tabs on anti-Trump elector gambit

The Atlantic: What the WikiLeaks Emails Say About Clinton

BBC News: 18 revelations from Wikileaks’ hacked Clinton emails

The Guardian – WikiLeaks emails: what they revealed about the Clinton campaign’s mechanics

Investigated by FBI and Department of Justice determined outcome ( July 5 and 6, 2017)

FBI: Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System

July 5, 2016 “After a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision. What I would like to do today is tell you three things: what we did; what we found; and what we are recommending to the Department of Justice.”

Statement from Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Regarding State Department Email Investigation July 6, 2016 “Late this afternoon, I met with FBI Director James Comey and career prosecutors and agents who conducted the investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email system during her time as Secretary of State.  I received and accepted their unanimous recommendation that the thorough, year-long investigation be closed and that no charges be brought against any individuals within the scope of the investigation.”

Not everyone agreed with the FBI decision

The Intercept: Washington Has Been Obsessed With Punishing Secrecy Violations — Until Hillary Clinton

Published on Jul 5, 2016

On Fox News – ‘The Kelly File,’ former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom says FBI Director James Comey’s decision makes ‘no sense’.

Email investigation re-opened 10/28/2016

Letter by FBI Director to his staff

Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff distributed an internal memo on Thursday detailing why it thought the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had played a role in Mrs. Clinton’s loss. (from New York Times)

Letter (text) to Congress by Comey 10/28/2016

Politico.com: FBI Letter to Congress

How Trump supporter viewed Comey letter

Vanity Fair: F.B.I. RENEWS CLINTON INVESTIGATION AFTER WEINER SEXTING PROBE TURNS UP “THOUSANDS” OF NEW E-MAILS (they used all caps in their headline) 10/28/2016

Hillary response 10/28/2016

Published on Oct 28, 2016

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke on Friday night from Des Moines, Iowa, addressing the FBI’s recent decision to reopen her email case.

Open Letter from Former Federal Prosecutors and High-Ranking Officials of The U.S. Department of Justice

Open Letter from Former Federal Prosecutors and High-Ranking Officials of The U.S. Department of Justice

Politifact / Meet the Press: Mook said, “There are Justice Department policies against doing something like this so close to an election.” 10/30/2016

“650,000 emails to sort through” 10/31/2016

Published on Nov 1, 2016

MSNBC: Rachel Maddow reports on a new set of stories about the FBI investigating aspects of the Donald Trump campaign and ties to Russia, and FBI director James Comey’s reported reluctance to reveal Russia’s role in hacking for fear of influencing the election.

Published on Nov 6, 2016

Fox News: ‘The O’Reilly Factor’: Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points 11/6

Hillary exonerated a second time 11/6/2016

DailyMail UK: 11/6/2016 FBI announces no change in decision on Hillary emails

FBI to be investigated by DOJ Inspector General 01/12/2017

NPR: 01/12/2017 Pre-Election Conduct Of FBI, Other Justice Officials

Other links on topic:

10 Reasons Why Electoral College is a Problem (six parts) from 2012

Salon.com: Why Donald Trump won — and how Hillary Clinton lost: 13 theories explain the stunning election

Vanity Fair: Clinton Blames Comey for Loss

The NYTimes: 11/13/2016 Hillary Blames Comey for Loss (usually requires a paid subscription to view more than 10 times a month)

Rumors about Hillary claiming “My Turn”

Wikipedia: Huma Abedin She worked on the 2008 and 2016 campaigns and is a friend of Hillary Clinton. (Democrat)

Wikipedia: Anthony Weiner NY politician (Democrat)

Wikipedia: FBI Director James Comey (Independent / Republican)

Wikipedia: DOJ Attorney General Loretta Lynch (Democrat)

Inspector General DOJ Michael Horowitz

The Guardian: ‘I never thought Trump would win’: meet the Americans who chose not to vote

https://weather.com/forecast/national/news/election-day-november-2016-presidential-senate-race

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) current public membership roster