Hillary: 'I'm ready to come out of the woods'

[karynnj]

197. I would have loved for Hillary to have won, but it is a strech to say that she was cheated out of it

A much stronger case could be made that Gore was and a stronger case could be made that Kerry was. The fact is that all three elections were from a nearly 50/50 country. Both Kerry and Gore were attacked at least as dishonestly as Cinton was. There was absolutely nothing in the actual NAVY record - which was online throughout the election, that showed Kerry as anything other than a very good person. To add insult to injury, Bill Clinton, with his shakier record on Vietnam, actually attacked Kerry in 2005 for not having fought back.

The Comey letters clearly impacted the race and you can argue they were unwarranted - and I would agree. However, given everything we knew of both nominees, it is more likely that the large undecided (and it was atypically large) ended up going mostly with Trump. Exit polls show that of the people with an unfavorable opinion of both - went to Trump.

I suspect that what the Comey letters did was to dishearten many Democrats or independents who had reluctantly lined up with Clinton - and they did not vote. I assume this because I suspect that the shift in the last two weeks might have been more a shift in the likely voter model that is applied to the polled results. My reason to suspect this is that people like Feingold suddenly saw their numbers drop by the same large amount (or more). NOTHING negative came out on Feingold, who was calle dthe conscience of the Senate by people like John Kerry for a reason - he is very clean. Like HRC, he was far ahead - then finished losing by a significant amount.

I think the head of the ticket is the strongest driver in getting the vote out. I suspect that hearing all the Clinton stuff again brought up the Clinton baggage and all that Democrats went through in the 1990s - even if unfairly. The alternative is to postulate something that happened that created a nationwide shift - not just for Clinton, but for many Democrats running for Congress.

NO ONE has been more favored by the party elite than HRC -- she had the inside track to the nomination twice.