What would be worse, Comey staying or the optics of him being ousted when Hillary is elected?
Seriously. Fuck how it looks.
If Kurt Eichenwald, in his interview with Joy Reid this morning, is to be believed, the FBI and Justice Department internally is furious with Comey for breaking precedent like he has. And the FBI not commenting on investigations is a precedent for a reason. The FBI is largely an investigative body; it's not their job to editorialize or read into what they find. They investigate, they report their findings to the DoJ who then makes a determination, and then they stay silent. The damning thing here is that it was leaked that Comey knew EXACTLY what the fallout from his letter would be,but did it anyway over some nebulous bullshit excuse about "fairness." Well, Comey, fairness is not your fucking job. As Elizabeth Warren would say: Do. Your. Job.
In an election year where one of the major candidates has dedicated his entire campaign to delegitimizing standing pillars of government and the bodies that make it up, what Comey has done will not only have effects on his personal credibility (what credibility? he's scum), but the credibility and integrity of the FBI itself, and sadly deservedly so. Comey can write as many brief letters as he wants about how he really, truly (really you guyzzz!!) didn't want to use the FBI as a partisan tool to effect a presidential election, but that's still exactly what happened. And that's why nobody on either side of the aisle is happy with his actions here, other than Trump loonies.
He doesn't deserve his post. His blatant partisanship-over-integrity approach to operating the FBI would be a clear danger to Hillary's administration, it'll likely be difficult or him to command the respect of Bureau after this, and if the only reason to give for keeping him on after this blunder is the "bad optics" of his ass getting kicked to the curb by a Democrat...well, I just don't see that being good enough. And I'd be surprised if Hillary will think that's good enough.