Hillary blames FBI Director Comey for her loss

[Cliff Varnell]

17 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Pat: The FBI and NYPD knew in April that Huma's emails were stored on Weiner's laptop. I believe FBI agents working with NYPD withheld this information from Comey until the last moment, forcing him to act.

 

Forced him to act?

He could have checked those e-mails in the time it took him to write his letter to Congress.

Comey aided and abetted the political assassination of Hillary Clinton.

[Cliff Varnell]

Donald Trump's landmark accomplishment was to turn three cable news networks into a 24/7 reality TV show.

People binge-watched it and ratings for CNN/MSNBC/Fox soared.

It's amusing to see people who never watched The Donald J Trump Show Starring Donald J Trump try to present themselves as experts on the 2016 election.

Just say'n...

 

Edited November 15, 2016 by Cliff Varnell

[David G. Healy]

On 11/13/2016 at 1:40 PM, Glenn Nall said:

 

Cliff.

The country's democracy operates on the Electoral College. Not the Popular Vote. Always has.

For a reason.

You knew that, right?

 

there's a few schools of thought on that. The primary reason, in my humble opinion, the electoral college gave the southern states (after the civil war) equal footing in presidential elections. 

[Sandy Larsen]

6 minutes ago, David G. Healy said:

 

On 11/13/2016 at 2:40 PM, Glenn Nall said:

 

Cliff.

The country's democracy operates on the Electoral College. Not the Popular Vote. Always has.

For a reason.

You knew that, right?

 

there's a few schools of thought on that. The primary reason, in my humble opinion, the electoral college gave the southern states (after the civil war) equal footing in presidential elections. 

 

That is my understanding as well.

I think that this election will make it clear that the electoral college no longer makes sense.

[Kirk Gallaway]

No,  I understand that Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were the architects  of it when there were 13  states in 1788 or so. Each state had their origins and traditions and were very independent of each other and didn't want one state to become so populous that they started ruling the others. It made more sense when there were so few states. 

[Sandy Larsen]

First, it is silly to think that the Comey e-mail incident didn't hurt Hillary. Of course it did.

Second, given what Pat Speer said, that Rudy Giuliani knew the Comey incident was to take place before Comey himself knew -- if shown to be true -- is pretty much proof that the incident was politically motivate. (I can think of only one way this could have been an innocent mistake, and that is if Comey misspoke on the timing of his becoming aware of the issue. That he must really have been aware of it earlier, before Giuliani was.)

Third, regardless of that, Cliff Varnell has made an excellent point that the eleven days it took for the FBI to handle the issue indicates that it was politically motivated. I believe that Cliff's argument is sufficiently strong to conclude political motivation.

I hope that Doug Caddy is right, that the Senate will look at this issue carefully in the event that Giuliani is nominated for anything. And I hope it is investigated to see if the Hatch Act was violated.

The one thing I want to add to the conversation is this: I believe that the reason Trump got so many votes, even from the groups he denigrated, is that the lower economic classes suffered so terribly as a result of the Great Recession of 2008. Millions of workers lost their jobs as unemployment rose to10%. Good jobs continued to be exported to third-world countries, and wages continued to stagnate or even drop. Policies of Barack Obama saved the world from another great depression, but the thing many people noticed was their lives becoming worse.

This happened under Obama's watch, and he and the Democrats were blamed for it by many. In spite of Trump's despicable campaign rhetoric, these people decided to vote for him  hoping that his policies would improve their lot in life.

One more thing... Trump surely got the vote of nearly every hateful person in America.

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, David G. Healy said:

there's a few schools of thought on [having an electoral college elect the president]. The primary reason, in my humble opinion, the electoral college gave the southern states (after the civil war) equal footing in presidential elections. 

 

33 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

No,  I understand that Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were the architects  of it when there were 13  states in 1788 or so. Each state had their origins and traditions and were very independent of each other and didn't want one state to become so populous that they started ruling the others. It made more sense when there were so few states. 

 

Both David and Kirk are right, but David's timing is wrong.

One reason the electoral college was chosen over the popular vote was that the large number of slaves in the South wouldn't be represented by the popular vote (given that slaves could not vote), but would be by the electoral college. The electoral college, therefore, gave Southerners more influence than the popular vote would have.

Of course, this was decided long before the Civil War, not after.

[Ron Ecker]

The electoral college still serves a purpose in that it can prevent large populous areas that can amount to voting blocs from dominating other, less populous areas that might not be so motivated by common concerns.

That said, it can have unfortunate consequences. As I recall, Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000. If that alone had decided the election, we and the world would have been spared the huge mistake of the U.S. invading Iraq with all of its consequences.

Only time will tell if we would have been better off going by the popular vote in 2016. But Newt Gingrich being an historian, I think it would be a good idea for Trump to establish a new federal agency, the Department of History, with Newt as its first secretary. The secretary's main responsibility will be to warn the president when history is about to repeat itself.

 

[Dawn Meredith]

18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Good point Pat, the Palace File is an overlooked book.  It really shows the perfidy Nixon was involved with on Vietnam.

Dan, I never criticize anyone because they have not written a book. I appreciate people who post on this case here and at other places.  I always hold out the example of Charles Dunne.  To my knowledge he never wrote a published article or a book. We did not always agree, but he was astute and knowledgeable.  A much better writer and researcher than many book authors.

.

 

RCD is probably the most knowledgeable person on this subject that I am personally aware of. Sure wish he'd come back to posting, I would visit here far more often just to read his brilliant prose and uncanny knowledge.

As to the election loss, people crying over Killary need to listen to one of the many internet radio shows that discuss the emails involving "pizza" and "hot dogs".  If that does not make you ill then you need to go back to first grade to learn deep politics 101. Comey could have gone much farther, I personally think his Sept. 28 press conference was to alert people to these very emails then allow researchers to dig and post.   

[Dan Doyle]

11 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Let me insert the meat of my argument since CV so pointedly cuts it out:

Because you have late breaking voters, does not mean they were motivated by the FBI announcement.  The Trump campaign always predicted that there were a lot of people who were not going to declare they were ready to vote for Trump, but actually would vote for him.  This is called historically, the Bradley Effect.  It goes  back to the Tom Bradley/ George Deukmejian governor race in California. The Republicans were confident they were going to win, even though all the polls had Bradley winning.  Finally, one of their pollsters said, "We will win because we know many whites will not admit they will not vote for a black candidate."  The guy got fired for telling the truth, because that is what happened.

Now, how many women do you think would want to admit they were voting for a candidate who had a history of being a sexual groper and once said, "Got to grab their P-----ies!"?

Not many.  But that is what happened.  I am astonished by that one myself.

Now, this is also a guy who said he was going to deport 11 million illegals back to Central America.  How many Latinos do you think would tell someone they were going to vote for Trump under those circumstances?  Again not many.  

But again, Trump got a surprising 26 per cent of the Latino vote. And he got the majority of the white female vote, which is incredible.

So what the Trump polling revealed and what Nate Silver predicted, a huge uncertainty factor, and a very discounted undercurrent for a reluctant Trump voter, this was all real.  And its stunning to me how the arrogant, and self righteous  liberal blogosphere--TPM, Huffpo, and Daily Kos among others--continually denied this existed.  And now that they were shown to be oh so wrong, they fly like geese toward the Comey excuse because they don't want to admit just how misguided and blind they were in misleading all of their millions of liberal readers. 

Its hard to tell the truth sometimes.  Because you had so much invested in a wrong cause. And your modus vivendi necessitates that you continue to hide that wrong cause from your clients. The Liberal Blogosphere has turned out to be a giant mirage.

 

The Bradley Effect is and was real whether you say it with a straight face or not. People will not always tell the truth to pollsters.  Nate Silver understood this and he got pilloried by Huffpo.  He was right and Huffpo apologized.

IMO, the Liberal Blogosphere has now become as bad, as agenda driven, and as debilitating as the  MSM.  

 

Jim,

I have to say something when the The Bradley Effect is invoked.  The Bradley Effect is just a theory without a proof, empirical or otherwise.  How do you read someone's  thoughts?  It's conjecture much like your criticism of PSD...not that I'm a defender of his.  Political scientists and professional pollsters came up with this theory to cover their asses and avoid taking the heat for their bad polling methodology.   Speaking of which, from what I've read, the real problem in the polling for this election was that pollsters were limited to using landlines and online sampling, which skews the sample. Most folks who have landlines also have caller ID( also true for cell phones) and may avoid the sampling call because they don't recognize the number(telemarketing!).  Online polling is also problematic because the potential sample-ee may not be interested in taking the time to fill out the questionaire. 

Bad or outdated polling methodology is the culprit here not some wu-wu theory like the Bradley Effect.

[Sandy Larsen]

16 minutes ago, Dawn Meredith said:

....Killary....

How juvenile.

Not everybody is a sucker for such internet hooey.

[Thomas Graves]

Just now, Sandy Larsen said:

How juvenile.

Not everybody is a sucker for such internet hooey.

Sandy,

I agree with you on this.

--  Tommy

[Sandy Larsen]

12 minutes ago, Thomas Graves said:

 

13 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

How juvenile.

Not everybody is a sucker for such internet hooey.

Sandy,

I agree with you on this.

--  Tommy

I wonder if we expect too much of people, Tommy. Like a little common sense and decency?

Edited November 15, 2016 by Sandy Larsen

[Thomas Graves]

2 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I wonder if we expect too much of people, Tommy. Just a little common sense and decency?

Sandy,

That's why I like you so much.  At least you've got the decency part down.  (lol)

--  Tommy

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

3 minutes ago, Thomas Graves said:

Sandy,

That's why I like you so much.  At least you've got the decency part down.  (lol)

--  Tommy

 

Edited November 15, 2016 by Sandy Larsen