by Sandy » Fri Dec 16, 2016 1:33 pm
The difference in the combined vote total in thethree states that make the difference between the candidates winning or losing, PA, MI, WI, is, as Chris Hayes said the other night, not enough to even half-fill Lambeau Field, home of the Packers. Could Comey's statement seven days before the election, which turned out to point to more nonsense, but which once again refocused negativity on a non-existent email "scandal" make enough of a difference to sway 35,000 votes across three states in a different direction, or keep just enough people at home to make a difference. Absolutely. Likewise, the wikileaks hacks, which are also illegal, spewed out all kinds of falsehoods and innuendo. 35,000 votes is an infinitesimal number in an election where ten million votes were cast in those three states.
I've grown kind of cynical over the years when it comes to believing that the truth makes a difference to people, especially singularly-focused conservatives, and most conservative evangelicals, when it comes to politics in particular. I read the reports from Gowdy's Benghazi committee, and the conclusions of the FBI investigations into Hillary's private email server. From the comments made here, it's clear that few members of this board read even the news briefings, much less the reports themselves. I suspect Keith did, and perhaps Haruo did as well. Comey knew the contents of the report, and the findings of the investigation into the emails, and then went in and lied through his teeth to Congress for two hours. If there had been even the slightest irregularity related to any federal law associated with that email server, the rabid hatred of Republicans directed toward Hillary would have taken full advantage of it, and they would have brought charges. Trump's apparently magnanimous gesture after winning, not to conduct an investigation or prosecute her, isn't all that generous in that you can't just decide to prosecute someone if they haven't committed a crime and he and his staff know full well the findings of the FBI report. That, of course, didn't keep her enemies, or Trump, or the right wing conservative fake news media from insisting on pushing all sorts of lies. Comey stood with them.
It's hard to gauge how much damage was done by the hacking into the DNC and the various ways all of that information was spread out, including inserted into what Wikileaks was pushing. People tend to believe anything on the internet, and anything that supports their own preconceptions. In the Christian community, we train people to "think with their heart" and check their brains at the door. I know a lot of Christians who would be insulted and offended if you accused them of gossip, who eagerly passed along rude, ugly, nasty memes, fabrications and lies about Hillary Clinton and believed every word of the stuff on wikileaks.
Does all of that add up to flipping a mere 35,000 votes?