Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/24/but-her-fake-russian-emails.html
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Ain’t subterfuge great? /s
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So Lynch’s meeting with Bill would have looked even worse to Comey than it did to the public.
It doesn’t excuse what he did; there are rules and policies in place for a reason, and it is damn well not the FBI director’s job to have a press conference and scold a presidential candidate. But boy, I sure wish Lynch and Clinton had had the good sense to foresee the optics of a private meeting, even if it was inconsequential.
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So, Comey got played?
Goes without saying, therefore must be said: to the extent this report turns out to be true and correct.
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I am paywalled by WaPo. That’s never happened to me before.
It’s tempting to blame Comey for the election outcome (as Clinton does), but I find it hard to believe anyone was still on the fence at that point. Is anyone aware of a person who claims that last little investigative blip changed his/her mind?
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I believe the assertion is not so much that anyone changed their mind after the October surprise, as that a whole bunch of anti-⊥rump voters simply stayed home in disgust.
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It’s not so much that many people were on the fence so much as enough people were on the fence. Clinton lost in WI, MI, and PA by less than a single percent of the vote. So how many stayed home, went out to the polls, or swapped votes to Trump are reflected in the polls which sank following the letter and bumped when the FBI said they didn’t find anything.
As for Comey’s questionable press conference in July, this is what influenced he decision to extra judiciary paint her as guilty in the press. Not that that’s even an uncommon event with law enforcement, it’s still the actions of sour grapes.
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Somewhere inside this circle --> O is the tiny little old fuck I gave about Come and how trump dumped him. Now I can’t seem to find it…Oh well, it wasn’t that much to start with.
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That generally means that you’ve become a loyal reader, whether you like it or not. #trumprussia has been good to the post. If your browser has a private browsing mode, just use that to read the article. Easier than pruning cookies.
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Security services receive fake information all the time. Disinformation is possibly as important as actual spying (it certainly was in WW2). An organisation like the FBI should be distrusting any information from a Russian or Chinese source as a matter of course.
When disinformation gains traction is when the recipient wants to believe it (e.g. in WW2 the Germans wanted to believe their communications were secure, so were ready to believe Allied disinformation pointing to traitors in the Armed Forces - especially as Admiral Canaris really was trying to lose the war for Hitler.)
In this case, therefore, I conclude that the FBI wanted to believe bad things about HRC - which is to be expected because authoritarian organisations tend to support the most right wing political parties and are most likely to want to keep glass ceilings intact.
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Nobody is likely to admit that the last Comey revelation changed their minds.
We remember our reasoning very differently from how we conduct it - specifically, as being much more based on evidence and careful thought. Sometimes we remember our reasoning as being based on information we didn’t possess until later, or had in fact forgotten at the time.
For the most part, the people who changed their minds and voted Trump because of the October surprise, will remember either having been certain the email thing was a deal-breaker back in August, or that it didn’t actually enter their considerations at all. Some of them will probably remember quite distinctly having voted for Clinton.
Doesn’t mean they’re right.
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Seems like most “but her email!” people were gonna be “but her email!” people regardless of what anyone said.
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Russia pwned us.
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Isn’t it interesting how unreliable Russian intelligence reliably mirrors right wing conspiracy. Wasserman-Shultz manipulating things from behind. George Soros.
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It’s also important to grasp that in an election that close, everything that had more than a negligible influence on the polls “cost Clinton the election”.
If Comey hadn’t tried to influence the election, HRC would have probably won.
Without voter suppression, HRC would have probably won.
If the corporate media had been just a tiny bit less unethical and shitty, HRC would have probably won.
If the establishment Dems hadn’t run a breathtakingly incompetent and tone-deaf campaign, HRC would have probably won.
If Wikileaks/Russia hadn’t publicised the gross corruption of the Democratic primary process, HRC would have probably won. Etc.
There were a thousand opportunities for HRC and the DNC to win this election. They blew every one of them.
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I don’t disagree, and that wasn’t how I was trying to come across. Comey is a unque opportunity to see the impact of an event with statistics, while it is inpossible to measure the impact of propaganda, hacks, leaks, etc. HRC did have many things stacked against her, and so many were the fruits of her own labor that it is unclear what the major contributions were.
That’s also the message in the article I linked from Nate Silver, and why it is the end of a series of articles about Hillary losing the elections.
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Why was the election close though? The ass clown who won isn’t even remotely qualified for the office, and is a walking indictment of the electoral process as well as the American voter.
Hillary didn’t just blow one opportunity, but she squandered many. Not all, but many. But the Comey letter was the nail in the coffin for her.
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