Senate Minority Leader Reid : Comey's actions handed the presidency to Donald Trump
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Late-deciding voters breaking for Trump DID cost Hillary the race.
There are a dozen different factors that contributed to Hillary's loss this year, and the fact that the race was close enough for Comey's announcement to make a difference is proof of a too-flawed candidate and/or flawed campaign long before it came to that. But, that doesn't change that Comey absolutely did cost Dems the election.
Probably, but the people in the margins in several swing states decided extremely late, and those margins were puny.
Comey's actions actively harmed our republic. No excuse for his actions and history should condemn him.
I will never understand how she was a bad candidate. Other than being flawed and ignoring thr WWC is favor of women and minorities, she took up many of Bernie's campaign fights and she had years of experience.
This revionsist history of Clinton being terrible at everything is tiresome. Especially when you look at the fact that her favorabililty didn't plunge until her "scandals" became 24/7 news.
This revionsist history of Clinton being terrible at everything is tiresome. Especially when you look at the fact that her favorabililty didn't plunge until her "scandals" became 24/7 news.
Melon Husk
Member
Absolutely. Isn't it well known that her popularity wasn't as wide as Obama's? She was more popular than Trump, but she was not the people's president.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Yeah, throw me in the camp that this election was so close, that changing one of a hundred things could have swung it. It's so frustrating that Comey did something like this. A lot of people fucked up this year, and now we all have to pay for their mistakes.
IamDodongo
Member
It's okay to acknowledge that Hillary's campaign made many mistakes.
However, that does not excuse our FBI director deciding to inject himself into the election and influencing things. This absolutely does need to be addressed.
However, that does not excuse our FBI director deciding to inject himself into the election and influencing things. This absolutely does need to be addressed.
Lights and Waves
Member
You stay saying this same exact thing in every political thread, but I still don't think you quite get just how much his supporters LOVE the fact that he does and says horrible shit.
For his supporters, he ran the best campaign in history.
Numerous factors we've never seen before were an influence - FBI announcement over nothing, foreign governments interfering, numerous congressional investigations that proved nothing Clinton personally did or could have done would have prevented deaths in Benghazi, fake news and a population dumb enough to believe it, and the constant bombardment of email leaks.
To play Devil's Advocate here- Can we really trust polling data this cycle?
It seems a lot of people weren't honest about their support for Trump.
I do concede that it's the best evidence we have, and even it was half the number you provided that's still a significant portion of voters.
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
With a better/less flawed candidate, there wouldn't have been such a massive amount of undecided voters.
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
Comey's actions likely caused Clinton to ultimately lose the election. It was as unprecedented by a public servant that is supposed to stay out of politics. You never announce something this potentially volatile without having first analyzed and verified the information unless you are purposely trying to purposely interfere.
I can still overall criticize Clinton for several things she did or didn't do.
Her campaigning was restricted to very short visits in cities where she would quickly jet out to then sleep in her home bed every night.
Her campaign should have seen something was wrong. I was legit worried before election day which people tried to downplay. If you drove state to state from cities to small towns you'd see nothing but a flood of Trump signs and ads. In rural smaller towns it was literally just a plethora of only Trump signs, which isn't that surprising, but even in more liberal towns there was an overwhelming amount of Trump signs in comparison to Clinton. The ratio was close 200:2. These were areas that had Obama signs all over the place in 2008 and 2012. There was no enthusiasm.
She set herself up into some kind of hyperbolic time chamber for a week before the debates and everyone was praising her for how prepared she was going to be against an opponent that doesn't plan at all. Believe me, being prepared is super important, but some of that time should have been spent campaigning.
No? This is objectively not true.
Her favorability was in the toilet from the start. I need to look for the exact numbers, and they may very well gotten worse as the cycle went on... But she was not popular from the word go.
Okay, so do you deny that there were a lot of undecided voters? Or people that simply didn't vote? Or people who voted third party in protest?
I don't get your point. No shit dyed in the wool Republicans were going to vote for the Republican candidate, hence why his numbers were only slightly above Romney's. There was a significant portion of the country that was going to vote for him no matter what, but that certainly wasn't the majority of the country. It was her job to get the rest out, and she failed. If you can't recognize that she was a flawed, weak candidate from the word go, then you're living in an alternate universe.
Escape Goat
Member
The media for giving Trump free air time, glossing over Trump scandals in favor of the Clinton emails. The media's hands are dirty in all of this too.
There were a lot of factors. This election should not have been this close. It was Clinton's race to lose but here we are with Trump to be our 45th President.
He ran the worst campaign in the history of the country...for liberals. For Trump's base and Paul Ryan-esque Republicans, it was the biggest political feat achieved in decades. They aren't turned off by racist language or sexual assault allegations (or confessions); they either lap that shit up or pretend not to hear it while continuing to endorse him.
Her favorable numbers were in the 60s while she served at State and afterward. It was in the summer of last year, when every single Clinton story revolved around emails, that her numbers began to drop off.
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
Uh, its not even about the effect. How can you trust a man who puts personal gain ahead of the nation's security? Thats what the term corruption is used for.
Iorv3th
Member
It's only significant if Comey was the reason they decided to vote for either one. Unless there is exit polling that shows people voting for trump because of that letter we can't say for certain it would have turned the other way.
This is also true.
I think the media's coverage of the Comey story might have had a worse effect than his statements.. CNN just fucking stuck with it the whole week.
The polls were off by like 2-4%, and only in swing states with similar demographic makeups. The narrative that polling in general was completely wrong isn't supported by the data.
Gentleman Jack
Member
If you can come up with a way that modeled the late polling's margin of error, I'm all ears, but even at +/-10% you're talking about roughly 100,000 voters per state. The margins:
Code:
Wisconsin: 22,177
Michigan: 10,704
Pennsylvania: 44,307Maybe I'm missing some other significant event in the election that happened between October 26th and November 8th. Can you point it out to me?
Exactly. So many factors played into it unsurprisingly. But you have people that are upset when data presented in these threads show that these factors contributed to swinging the undecideds which definitely played a part.
Fingers in ears every damn where. Its ridiculous.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/193913/clinton-image-lowest-point-two-decades.aspx
At no point did Clinton's favorability dip below 48% until 2015 since 1991. She was seen as favorable during her run with against Obama and even more so during her time as SoS. She was not considered horrible until republicans latched onto Benghazi and emails and began smearing her to their fullest.
Wait, what?
Look at the thread title. We're discussing the idea that *one* factor lead to her defeat.
In fact- That's exactly what most people are arguing. She was a flawed candidate for many different reasons, and while the Comey fiasco is one of them, it would be silly to disregard the others.
National polling data was actually pretty accurate, despite the prevailing media narrative. I believe it was even more accurate than in 2012, actually.
State polling data was decidedly off, but the nature of those polling errors would suggest that the number of undecided or swing voters may have been even higher than estimated, not lower.
Isaac Otherworld
Member
I wasn't aware spending an entire month doing nothing but extremely luxurious fundraisers with the superwealthy qualifies as reaching out to women and minorities. The official campaign strategy was to ignore poor and working class voters in favor of picking up moderate republicans in suburbs.
She's a bad candidate because a majority of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of her. Some of it is her fault. Some of it isn't. Some of it isn't fair. But the American public as a whole did not like her. She's be the single most disliked person to run in modern history if it wasn't for Trump.
I've been seeing reports that there weren't ads being played in heavily minority communities, Milkwalkee in particular, until the final week of the election. I can tell you that having personally done phone banking and canvasing a lot of the data we were given was bad. At least 20% of the people I talked to were Trump supporters, which is disastrous when you're doing GOTV. I've heard it was like this in Pennsylvania as well, though I'm not sure how it was nationwide.
There were problems on every level.
Generalpsyduck
Banned
Its everyone's fault except Clinton huh.
Vestal
Junior Member
Not this shit again.
Of course!
It wasn't that she was a bad candidate because of her corrupt influences, could not inspire anybody because she obviously didn't mean what she said through her 'public position', had the democrats essentially throw the primaries for her and give her a basic coronation because a lot of them themselves don't stand for anything but monied interests and who was footing the bill, and her family just happened to be the center of the money pit.
It was because of ONE GUY a week or whatever before the election. If he had not done that, literally all the people who didn't vote for her or down ticket candidates would have voted for her and everything would have been sunshine and rainbows!
Lol. What a shitshow. This is why the Democrats at large haven't learned a single thing after 900 congressional seat losses over 6 years, and virtual irrelevance in the United states government. No self introspection at all.
Bernie is wasting his time trying to reform these people and this party. I give him credit though, he's trying his damnedest. Its funny that many of them even still largely blame him for trying to hold them accountable for their own actions during the primaries.
It wasn't that she was a bad candidate because of her corrupt influences, could not inspire anybody because she obviously didn't mean what she said through her 'public position', had the democrats essentially throw the primaries for her and give her a basic coronation because a lot of them themselves don't stand for anything but monied interests and who was footing the bill, and her family just happened to be the center of the money pit.
It was because of ONE GUY a week or whatever before the election. If he had not done that, literally all the people who didn't vote for her or down ticket candidates would have voted for her and everything would have been sunshine and rainbows!
Lol. What a shitshow. This is why the Democrats at large haven't learned a single thing after 900 congressional seat losses over 6 years, and virtual irrelevance in the United states government. No self introspection at all.
Bernie is wasting his time trying to reform these people and this party. I give him credit though, he's trying his damnedest. Its funny that many of them even still largely blame him for trying to hold them accountable for their own actions during the primaries.
IamDodongo
Member
No one is making this argument, so don't heap so much straw
I mean, you even used "sunshine and rainbows"
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/clinton_favorableunfavorable-1131.html
Her unfavorability was high going into her run... No, it wasn't greater than 50%, but by the time 2014 began her unfavorability was 40%. That's not a good starting point going into a national election. It did of course ratchet up once she began her campaign, but did anyone honestly expect that it wouldn't?
Melon Husk
Member
I agree with Reid that is was a factor, but that's a bit rich.
I mean, we can make a list of all factors
-Weak education standards
-Substandard national media
-Filter bubbles and fake ads
-Hillary's weak populism
-Democrat echochamber
-Corney influence
-Russian propaganda
-Voter suppression and gerrymandering
-What else?
and discuss for months which had the most importance, but it surely wasn't the fault of one sole factor.
2016 ain't over yet.
Melkezadek
Member
More Bernie worship. Every time.
Ironically, the same people will claim that "Hillary supporters" are "sheep". People just can't let it go.
Yea, let's ignore everything that's coming to light because we hate her so much. Beyond childish and the lack of empathy to those who will now suffer because of her loss depresses me.
It can be both.
Was Clinton a perfect candidate? No.
Was Trump a perfect candidate? Holy fucking shit no.
Did Clinton lose the electoral college by a relatively small portion of the popular vote? Yes.
Comey's actions were morally wrong. That's reason enough to criticize him. The fact that it's also plausible that he swung enough votes to change the outcome of the election is just the icing on the cake.
It's useless to argue with these people, they are just as bad as the alt-right zealots who blame everything on illegal immigration. The only difference is they don't actually vote. Everything is Clinton's fault, even all of the Bernie Approved™ candidates getting shellacked up and down the ballot. It's funny how they blame everything on Clinton's candidacy or campaign, yet ignore the fact that Bernie lost the primary because he was a shitty candidate that had no clue how to run a proper campaign.
Isaac Otherworld
Member
I'd add that the campaign ground game was not the masterpiece of machinery it was hyped up to be. It was quite poor in several places where it really mattered, at least.
But yeah, this proper and more accurate autopsy of the campaign than saying "Bad candidate!" or "Comey!"
Bernie Sanders campaign had serious problems, starting with the fact that he never thought he had a real shot at potentially winning the primary until the primaries were started to his terrible outreach to African American communities and leaders. The campaign wasn't even fully staffed until it was basically too late because he was originally supposed to be a message candidate hoping to pull Hillary to the left.
Bernie Sanders is currently the most well liked politician in the country. He has a higher approval rating than Obama who is incredibly popular for a leaving president. Clinton walked way from the party convention with a 50% approval rating high for her. Bernie walked away from it with 68% approval rating.
A lot of times, the runner up in the primary traditional viewed as a major contender to lead the party in the future.
Bernie is the most popular, which means by definition he has the most fans and people that like him. Of course he's looked to by many as someone who should lead the democratic party going forward. You look silly, grumbling "How dare that popular person be popular! Look it's someone that likes him! Ew!"
EatinOlives
Member
Agreed wholeheartedly. There was a whole lot of fuckery going on in this election, even beyond just Comey's bullshit, but sadly a lot of people are more interested in trashing Hillary as a candidate than actually realizing said fuckery.
All of this is true.
Not a Bernie Bro by any means, but his message strongly resonated with a lot of people. Instead of pointing fingers (and no, I don't believe accusing Clinton of being a bad candidate or running a bad campaign is pointing fingers) the party should refocus their message and move forward. What I don't want to see is the party elite burying their head in the sand and looking to a convenient scapegoat on tap to justify an embarrassing defeat.
What does that look like, exactly? What he did was unprecedented and absolutely had some non-zero effect on the election. Russia undoubtedly influenced the election for the worst as well.
Now that this agreement is out of the way- Now what? Does that means we ignore the other flaws and warts that she had and learn nothing from the defeat? I don't get it.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Oh, man. Nevermind, I think I'm just gonna keep avoiding post election threads.
Unless there is reconciliation between Bernie supporters and democrats, the democrats will lose every single election from here on out. The divide is getting worse, not better post-election as both sides blame each other.
Since this is a gaming forum, I see it metaphorically like democrats used to be gaming fans vs non-gaming fans. Now Bernie/Hillary spat split democrats into Sony & MS fans vs non-gaming fans and the only way to ever stop republicans is for the Sony & MS fans to work together as one unified team again and that will be hard.
my mistake. You were reading unfavorability numbera. I was reading favorability numbers
Vicetrailia
Banned
Comeys actions were significant. Republicans clinging to emails this whole time was of course ingenious even if it's not actually significant. But the perception is, and it's more powerful than anything she could do to combat against it, despite of course negating the issue for most liberals. Next time we know better.
EatinOlives
Member
And you don't think ignoring the amount of external fuckery from the election including but not limited to Russian intervention and the FBI is "burying their head in the sand"?
All of these were factors, including Hillary's low-energy campaign and defaulting to "eh, they'll vote for the not-crazy candidate" overly relaxed attitude, but this wasn't the only piece at play. Focusing on solely the candidate shows bias, because the election was a lot more complicated than "she was a bad candidate".
Investigations into Comey's motivations and proper punishment, retaliation against Russia, keeping these factors in the mindshare of the American voter instead of going "yyyup" and sweeping it under the rug. When's the last time any of this shit was a top headline in the 24-hour cable news networks? All they're focusing on is Trump's circus of cabinet picks, just more masturbatory "oh my god he did what????" nonsense.
Dems to stop using emails?
I think that the party (especially Obama) has made an effort to acknowledge the types of people that Trump appealed to. Politicians are making calls for unity, not crying foul.
That does NOT mean that we should forget what Comey did. He stuck his fingers in the democratic process, licked them, then stuck them back in. He made a huge contribution to the misinformation and rumormongering that plagued this election cycle. His actions aren't justifiable, and they should never be forgotten.
Haha... Wow. You sure about that chief?
Novemeber 27th, 2014. There's just one of many dates that have her above 40%.
You mean how Hillary adopted the meatiest chunks from Bernie's platform into hers, fired the DNC chair, and elevated him (an independent) to a prominent seat in the Democratic caucus? There was plenty of reconciliation, the problem is it was totally one sided and the Senderistas were only interested in total capitulation.
I guess anything that's already happened is supposition. It's like we couldn't assume that Jill Stein or Gary Johnson voters would have leaned towards Hillary Clinton in a few key states.
It was the responsibility for the press to question everything. The FBI director's timing should have taken way more scrutiny. A lot of the television press acted as mouthpieces to help sew distrust with her as a candidate. Even innocent, words are damaging whether they are factual or not ... whether they imply something or not. "You steal" "You're a crook, croney, rapist, murderer" even if you're not, proven not, but spoken in a deplorable manner against your opponent, will damage someone.
Donald Trump ran that campaign. He used words as his weapons. Tagged derogative names on opponents, and made accusations that came across as simple to understand for an uninformed voter.
but the entire campaign has been deflect and project. Give a bullish, evasive answer and then insult or accuse your candidate without anything to back it up.
The democratic party isn't without blame either. It seems they were being eaten away by petty politics surrounding the primaries and nominations.
With Russia and the FBI ... the thing deserves an inquiry. At the very least, this needs to be internally investigated to restore faith in our democracy and the integrity of the constitution and election of our officials.
It was the responsibility for the press to question everything. The FBI director's timing should have taken way more scrutiny. A lot of the television press acted as mouthpieces to help sew distrust with her as a candidate. Even innocent, words are damaging whether they are factual or not ... whether they imply something or not. "You steal" "You're a crook, croney, rapist, murderer" even if you're not, proven not, but spoken in a deplorable manner against your opponent, will damage someone.
Donald Trump ran that campaign. He used words as his weapons. Tagged derogative names on opponents, and made accusations that came across as simple to understand for an uninformed voter.
but the entire campaign has been deflect and project. Give a bullish, evasive answer and then insult or accuse your candidate without anything to back it up.
The democratic party isn't without blame either. It seems they were being eaten away by petty politics surrounding the primaries and nominations.
With Russia and the FBI ... the thing deserves an inquiry. At the very least, this needs to be internally investigated to restore faith in our democracy and the integrity of the constitution and election of our officials.
Check my edit.
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