Lecturing Clinton About 'Taking Responsibility' For Her Defeat is Bizarre - Josh Marshall [View all]

[DonViejo]

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 8, 2017 9:26 AM

As you know, we now have a roiling, renewed debate over whether a mix of Russian hacking and James Comey’s final week intervention in the November election shifted the balance in Donald Trump’s favor. Even more, it’s a public debate over whether Hillary Clinton should keep claiming this is so or just, in one side’s view, own up to her failed campaign and stop making excuses. Plenty of others have argued this case on the merits, particularly Nate Silver looking at Comey’s intervention and its effect on polls in the final week of the campaign. Others have delved into psychological analyses. But I want to make a different point.

We can’t run real election simulations or know how alternative histories turned out. Relatedly, I will leave to others whether it’s wise or unwise for Hillary Clinton to keep talking about the causes of her defeat. But here’s the issue in my mind: If you step back from the particulars and personalities involved, it almost defies belief that anyone thinks a candidate who lost under these circumstances wouldn’t keep talking about it basically forever.

Let’s consider what I believe are the relevant points.

First: Donald Trump’s electoral college victory turned out to be substantial. But it was based on fewer than 100,000 votes spread across a handful of states. In other words, it was extremely close and any number of small factors could have made the difference.

Second: The FBI Director broke all precedent and DOJ guidelines to announce a criminal investigation into what proved to be the losing candidate just over a week before the election. There was little reason to believe the purported new evidence would lead to any criminal charges or indeed even any substantial new evidence. And it turned out that the ‘investigation’ was based on nothing. The entire blow up turned out to be based on nothing and knowing what we know now about what investigators and Comey knew at the time suggest he had little reason to think there was anything there.

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