The Podesta emails: The media is a calling it hacking, but the attack was so unsophisticated, my 3 year old niece could have pulled it off. A bad guy (or guys or girls, to be equal opportunistic here) tricked John Podesta's staff into giving them his password (lucky for them no rich prince in Nigeria contacted them). About 99.99% of the emails were the Clinton campaign being jerks to other Democrats, partisan media outlets pandering to them, recipes, and odd references to pizza, If you were anti-Hillary, they were a smoking gun. If you were pro-Hillary, they were benign. Let's call this a wash.
The DNC emails: Things got way juicier here. The DNC successfully rigged the primary for Hillary. First of all, not a surprise. It just confirmed what everyone already knew. If the New York Times published an article on this type of effort at the RNC, it would have been a Pulitzer Prize winning expose. If the DNC didn't want anyone to know what they were up to, they probably shouldn't have done it. How would I feel if the inner workings of the Republican machine were exposed? I would have loved to have known if they were pulling this crap. Which by the way, they totally were. But only much more publicly. My take away here is that Democrats are much easier influenced by their party leadership that Republicans.
Russian Hackers: Most of my liberal friends think that this means the Russians hacked voting machines. This is because if a headline fits their narrative they need not bother with the actual information in it. What is actually alleged is that there is a memo that discusses Russian involvement in accessing the above two email accounts. Can someone please show us this memo? You'll have to forgive me if I don't believe a story that was passed from a Democratic operative to who knows how many other Democratic operatives to a liberal media outlet. We've been there before*. But if Russian hacking is truly an issue, then using a poorly protected server to perform classified State Department business should be a tremendous concern. (*I'm talking about you Dan Rather)
James Comey: Did an active FBI investigation into an active Presidential candidate have an affect? Absolutely. The question is why didn't it have more of an affect? Hillary won the primaries while still under investigation, Who votes for someone in that situation? And it was due to her own poor judgement that she was being investigated in the first place. Every Federal employee who uses a computer, from the Agency Head to the janitorial staff, takes annual training courses in information security and privacy. I just took mine. It is written for the lowest common denominator and explains in very basic detail what you can and can't put in email email, when you should use government systems for communication (always), and how you should handle protected and classified information. Anyone who says they didn't understand or weren't aware of the rules is an idiot or a liar. Perhaps both.
Identity Politics: When you vilify a specific race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, set of values and/or ideology... don't act surprised when they don't vote for you. It makes you look ignorant if you do.
Lack of a message: Hillary's message: America is great. The other guy is a pig. I'll give you four more years of BHO. If there was more to it than that, I would love to hear about it. The problem was that not everyone wanted 4 more years of BHO. The trend of Republican gains in congress, state legislatures and Governorships were an obvious sign of that.
The Electoral College: The goal line in the Presidential election is the EC, not the popular vote. Just like Wimbledon, the World Series, the NCAA Championships and the Stanley Cup, it's a best of series, not a running total of the scores of every game. Instead of focusing on that, Hillary chose to run up the score on the popular vote in spite of overwhelming evidence from people closer to the problem that she was going to lose key states. Would we be having this same debate if Trump had been dumb enough to go for the popular vote at the expense of the EC?
Vetting: Let's be honest here. Hillary rarely faced any serious opposition in any of her political races. It was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters play the poor saps that make up the Washington Generals. They went into every game knowing it was their job to lose and get embarrassed by the Globetrotter's antics. The notable exception was the 2008 Presidential election, and well... she lost. And perhaps the 2016 primaries, where she was still up against the Washington Generals, but one of them nearly pulled off an upset. (FWIW, the Washington Generals record against the Globetrotters is 1 win to 16,000 losses. I am not making that up.) And just like the 2016 election there was a lot of crying, denial and blaming going on after that loss:
Some children in the stands cried after the loss. The [Generals] celebrated by dousing themselves with orange soda instead of champagne. [Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark] Lemon was furious, saying, "You lost, I didn't lose," but still visited the opposing team’s locker room to congratulate the [Generals]Ethics problems: Let me again refer to the ethics training for dummies I was given. Conflicts of interest are horribly wrong in Government. Perceptions of conflicts of interest are just as wrong. There is way too much information in this area and linking to just one article doesn't even begin to do service to it. Just google Clinton pay to play and reap the benefits. To think someone can see this much evidence and not see it as in issue is horribly naive.
Fake news: I get it, there is a bunch of fake news out there. Most of it is perpetrated by the MSM, but we're only concerned about fake news that swings right. As discussed above, it is Democrats that are more easily influenced, To think that a bunch of teenagers in Macedonia swayed an election is preposterous, but we're going to ask a bunch of left wing sources to censor the news anyway. Censorship is censorship, particularly when it is in the hands of people that are actively banning freedom of religion, speech and books. The irony seems to be lost that these are the same tactics employed by China and North Korea. Or perhaps it isn't lost at all.
The Hillary Problem: Fox News sums it up best:
She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors... No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary.Just kidding. That was actually Michael Moore. And when you've lost Michael Moore... you've lost middle America.
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