Hillary Clinton's Book

[ToddStarnes]

But has she *beat the CIA*?

[spacemonkey]

Everyone else's fault except mine, she says.

[ToddStarnes]

That's like trumps favorite saying

[Kane]

[ToddStarnes]

https://www.economist.com/news/united-s ... toherparty

[exploited]

That is an incredibly poor article. I wonder how hard it is to miss the mark that badly.

Consider the e-mail issue. It damaged her campaign, not because of what she did, which was fairly common practice, but because of how she behaved in response to it. She acted like a guilty person for absolutely no f**k reason at all. First denied sending classified e-mails, lied about the number of devices she used, lied about getting permission, then refused to apologize, then blamed her sending classified e-mails on various practices that of course had nothing to do with her, then defended her decision to make herself look even more guilty by deleting 33,000 emails, then finally apologized months later. All while hiding out from the press. She could have admitted to it and apologized from the start, and spoke candidly about some of the very real problems in the State Department, but no. It was like she wanted people to not believe a goddamn thing she said about it.

Then consider fake news. You know who fell for that? Republicans. Literally that's it. There were no moderates or liberals talking about pizzagate or Seth Rich. These theories existed entirely on one side of the political spectrum, and were roundly rejected by just about every independent, moderate or liberal in the country. So to blame her loss on fake news is really disingenuous considering that none of these people were ever going to vote for Hillary Clinton anyways.

The basis of Clinton's loss was her refusal to engage with the press or take responsibility for her actions, her extreme lack of charisma and a horrendous campaign strategy that ignored vast swathes of the country. That is why she lost, it really isn't difficult to understand.

[ToddStarnes]

Nah. She was a shitty campaigner for a variety of reasons but the media and Coney f**k her out of a win. Especially Comey

[exploited]

I disagree. The media did a fine job uncovering the facts and Comey did an even better job with his even-handed, incredibly fair conclusion, which held her to be extremely careless but not criminal. It never would have even got to that point if she was honest from the start - there would have been no need for an investigation if she had just played it straight. But she didn't. She forced the media and the FBI to dig up the truth, and in the process made a giant nothing into a giant something. Totally unnecessary, IMO. Had she not lied, had she not deleted e-mails and destroyed devices, had she simply been honest about it, there was no real issue. At worst she would have taken a minor hit for a small amount of time, but she'd have months to make up for it. Instead it got dragged out.

When you are campaigning for the Presidency, the last thing you want to do is be disingenuous about something like this. All she had to do was say "Yes, I used a private email server, which is fairly common. I did not properly comply with FOIA regulations, and I was wrong to do what I did. When I am President, the first thing I will do is modernize our classification laws and our digital infrastructure, and I will enact strong rules that prevent something like this from happening in the future. I was wrong and I apologize fully and hope that the voters will understand I made a bad mistake, but I have learned from it. Which is something my opponent will never do."

I mean, it isn't like the criminal probe was ever going anywhere. I don't think anybody really believed that she would be charged and put on trial. At least I never did. I can see how that fear would influence her behaviour but that is yet another miscalculation on her part. It just wasn't a serious issue, but she certainly made it one.

[ToddStarnes]

Destroying devices? You mean she failed to comply with the more rigorous state dept processes to destroy devices? I didn't think that was a big deal.

Deleting emails that had been classified as non responsive to the requests also didn't strike me as a big deal.

The data is pretty clear on the hit she took when comey made his announcement a week or so before the election. Totally unprofessional on his part IMO.

[exploited]

You are correct that neither was a big deal. But this is about optics. And the optics were f**k terrible. After all, your argument rests on the premise that the letter cost her the election.

At the end of the day, this is on her. She didn't hand over all the e-mails. She lied. And as a result, something that could have been handled early and relatively painlessly in the campaign was instead dragged out for months. When it is a week before the election and the FBI is still finding f**k e-mails, that is a serious problem. Don't want that to happen? Then hand over the e-mails. It really is that simple.

So, really, if you want to say it cost her the election, that is fine, and looking at the data, I think you're right (I had forgotten about Nate Silver's article on this). But that really doesn't change the fact that the letter was 100% avoidable. There would be no letter had she not made the decisions she did. So to say Comey cost her the election simply isn't accurate - Clinton cost herself the election. I really don't understand how a person of her intelligence thought it would be best to drag this out.