120,000 votes between HRC and the White House. If there was no Comey letter on Oct. 28th, could she have reversed that tiny margin?
Also, most successful October Surprise ever? You really have to hand it to the republicans…that was quite the concerted effort.
When Bush won his election by minus half a million votes, that was a “squeaker”. When all the counting is done, Trump will have won by minus a million, maybe two! That’s a “mandate”.
No. OP, everyone does this all the time in football/basketball games: the game was decided by this “one big play”. But there are dozens of other plays which if they had different results could well have changed the course of the game.
Here’s an article: A series of strategic mistakes likely sealed Clinton’s fate
Safe to say that it sure didn’t help. Or is that too far out on the limb?
It’s a pretty simple question. I know both candidates made,numerous mistakes. I firmly believe she squeaks by without Comey’s interference. That was a momentum killer.
Of course, the “momentum” was still based on polls that showed her up on Tuesday, so who the hell knows now?
Comey may have played some part but the real story is the massive collapse of Hillary’s vote in those three states which is the essence of this election and largely being missed by much of the commentary about it.
She got 10% fewer votes than Obama in the three states but what is truly astonishing is that she got 6% fewer votes than Kerry despite the electorate growing by around 14% in the last 12 years. She also got fewer votes than Bush, in the same year, who of course lost all three states.
There was no big Trump surge. He did get 6% more votes than Romney but he actually got slightly fewer votes than Bush in 2004.
Hillary lost voters who have been reliably voting Democratic for more than 20 years. By and large they didn’t move to Trump, they just sat out the election. If Hillary had gotten the same votes as Kerry in each state she would be President-elect. At the end of the day, she was just a weak candidate something which has been obvious for a long time. The real mystery of this election is why the Democratic establishment couldn’t see this when they cleared the field for her in 2015.
Interesting stuff.
Trump only got 1,500 more votes than Romney in Wisconsin. Clinton was down 239,000 from Obama.
A scenario. Of any given number of Clinton voters, there are voters who have already voted, voters who could vote fairly easily, and voters who were likely to face several hours of tedious discomfort. Take as given that those people who really wanted to vote against Trump and could have done, did so.
The Comey stuff comes out, then fades, and then leaps back onto the screen in the last few days. Bricks are shat. Wavering resolve is firmed, all hands on deck. Then the let down, gee, guys, maybe not such a big hairy-ass deal after all. Sorry about that. And the polls suggest that Clinton is recovered, in the lead.
Which is to say that no sacrifice of ease or convenience is necessary, not crucial any more. If its a pain in the butt to go vote, maybe it doesn’t matter so much, Trump will lose anyway. You could still say you voted for Clinton, no one’s gonna know. After all, you were going to.
Not with a bang, but a shrug.
And the way Trump does his hair, the immaculate comb-over, probably no one ever actually saw the 666 tattooed on his scalp.
My feeling is that everyone’s mind was already made up before Comey’s letter ever hit the news and it therefore made no significant difference whatever. Hillary’s putting the blame on Comey because she either can’t or doesn’t want to admit that her own shortcomings are what cost her the election.
nm
I think Comey’s letter decided the election. Along with a dozen other things. That’s the nature of close elections, just as in close games. There are many moments when it could have gone differently. If Clinton had had an economic message, if the Democrats had picked a better candidate, if Barack Obama’s approval rating was just two points higher, if she’d just campaigned in those states a bit more rather than going to Arizona, and most importantly, if she hadn’t tried to evade the FOIA, there’d be no Comey letter and no email scandal to begin with. What a lot of people forget is that it wasn’t just the existence of a private server. It was a private server that she used to make sure NONE of her emails were kept for recordkeeping:
I’m not sure if anyone remembers the most insincere Tweet of all time: “I want the public to see my email.” Which oddly enough, she only discovered this desire after the public became aware that they COULDN"T actually see her emails because of the setup she had. And then her team began an emergency deletion of all the emails they didn’t want the public to see.
exit polls both nationally and in PA, MI, and WI, the states that elected The Donald show that with voters who chose terrorism as the most important issue, Trump won in a landslide.
Wonder what happens if the two had been tied or close to tied on that issue, given how close it was…
Bill Maher and Cory Booker (sigh)
You seem eager to insinuate that dreadful doings were afoot. And that is why the “emergency” deletions took place. But an e-mail has two participants, at a minimum. So, whether the ghastly crime is from Hillary to a minion, or from the presumed co-conspirator to her…there are likely two copies.
How did she get all of those?
I wouldn’t call the email controversy a ghastly crime, just pointing out how bad it looks. Clinton could have reduced the controversy by a good 50% if she’d turned over her emails upon leaving State. Instead, she left State with zero emails kept for recordkeeping. Upon realizing her mistake(if it was one, which is doubtful), she should have just turned the server over to State. I’m sure her advisors told her to do these things, but she ignored their advice at every step, which we have some details on thanks to Wikileaks.
If you want my opinion (opinions, after all, are all we have to answer the question), based on what my friends who voted for Mr. Trump say, if there was one incident that crystalized their vote, it was the comment about “deplorables.” It was a bit like Mr. Romney’s comment about the 47%. Some who were sitting on the fence about Mr. Trump were galvanized into supporting him.
I, too, don’t think Director Comey’s letter had much to do with it. Polls were already moving towards Mr. Trump before that letter. I think that movement reflected the fact that people who had been polling as “undecided” or “soft Clinton” started moving into the “Trump” ranks, where they really were thinking, as they stopped being so “shy”.
If you want a non-campaign reason for the loss in Wisconsin, you don’t have to look further than the effort of the Walker-led GOP there to disenfranchise black voters in Milwaukee. It’s the Milwaukee vote (or, rather, lack thereof) that doomed Ms. Clinton in that state.
I tend to agree. I mentioned this in a pit? thread I believe.
Though I differ a bit on you with the details. While I think the deplorables comment may have caused some people to decide they were more solidy for Trump, I think it also did something else more important. It pissed them off enough to actually GO Vote.
Its one thing to hurl nasty labels at a person’s candidate (not a particularly good idea if overdone IMO, but at least that is something people are sorta used to).
But when you seriously insult the people who are supporters, IMO there are going to be a fraction of them NOW pissed off and motivated to GO while they might not have overwise.
Clinton lost by pretty small margins in a couple of states. So lets take the Trump voters. What percentage change would we need to see in his vote total to swing it the other way?
Lets say it’s one percent.
I can well imagine one nominal Trump voter out of a hundred that couldn’t be bothered before being called a deplorable deciding “fuck that shit I sure a hell am voting against that bitch now” upon being called one. That doesn’t seem like a stretch at all.
If somebody wants to dig out the actual numbers, please do!
Another thing. And lots, if not most of the local posters here, thought this was perfectly acceptable and funny.
Blocking roads and trying to deny access for people wanting to attend Trump rallies. IIRC one rally was actual canceled due to this bull malarky.
Again, it sure would not surprise me in the least that this action ALSO motivated some people that couldn’t be bothered to vote to get out and do so.
So, great work guys. You thought calling out the deplorables and trying to suppress your opponent and his supporters was funny and or the right thing to do.
I ain’t no PhD in human behavior, but it don’t take one to know that calling people seriously bad names and trying to keep them from doing something they damn well know they have the right to is a pretty good motivator for getting to get their asses up and acting.
IMO it probably was enough to bite Hillary in the ass.
True enough, Hillary’s long, long list of outrageous and slanderous pronouncements made her look pretty bad when compared with The Donald’s courteous, generous, and polite behavior. Yeah, that’s on her. Like when he said Mexicans were rapists and murderers, he didn’t even mention the cannibalism.
Nobody was supposed to take that stuff seriously, not until after they voted for him on that basis, right?
The popular vote has never mattered.
Republicans own the presidency, Congress and the majority of governorships. We’ll also get one-- hopefully two or more-- SCOTUS appointments.
Yeah, that’s a “mandate” 