JPR folks out themselves. They dont want to believe in Russian interference because of...

[karynnj]

50. They are entitled to their opinions and this is NOT saying that there was NO Russian interference

It is possible - but pretty extreme and not very logical - to argue that all of the Russian interference - the accumulation of leaked DNC and Podesta emails AND (very likely) the micro targeted excepts of these and completely made up stuff, did not shift enough votes (or potential HRC vote from people who were swayed not to vote) to make up the differences in those rust belt swing states. If you look back to their posts here - where they cited the DNC leaks as reason not to vote or not to vote HRC - they might themselves be examples of votes lost due to Russian influenence.

In addition, they are ignoring what could be called oportunity costs. If the campaign did not have to deal with the drip of new stories from the Podesta email nearly every day, did they have a last few weeks' positive message that they would have concentrated on rather than messages that were more defensive and attacking Trump as unfit (which he is)?

It is impossible to go back and assign measures to the impact of various negative things that happened in the campaign. Not to mention, each thing that had an impact interacted with all the others. Obviously, if there never was an issue with email and thus, she never had to deal with the issue itself, the various IG and FBI investigations etc , she would never have been vulnerable. That issue and how she dealt with it damaged her favorables and the preception of her honesty and trustworthiness. Whether fair or not, that happened.

Yet, note that she was still far ahead as she headed into her convention. Her convention made her even stronger, but one unresolvable question is whether the leak of the DNC emails shortly before the convention actually prevented her from consoladating even more support. Here, the JPR people were in the forefront of people who thought those leaks important AND (if I am correct on who posted both here and JPR) led them to question if after those leaks they could vote for HRC.

One comment to them is that to argue that the Russian interference made the difference, you do NOT need to prove that nothing else held Clinton back or even that it was the biggest cause of her loss -- just that the interference hurt.