HRC would be POTUS except for conspiracy against the United States.

[triron]

Link to tweet

What will history say?

[FiveGoodMen]

1. "What will history say?"

History is written by the victors.

What it will say depends greatly on whether the Nazis win.

[mythology]

2. I don't think that argument is very persuasive if you look at the polling data

From 538:

Clinton’s standing in the polls fell sharply. She’d led Trump by 5.9 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s popular vote projection at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 28. A week later — after polls had time to fully reflect the letter — her lead had declined to 2.9 percentage points. That is to say, there was a shift of about 3 percentage points against Clinton. And it was an especially pernicious shift for Clinton because (at least according to the FiveThirtyEight model) Clinton was underperforming in swing states as compared to the country overall. In the average swing state,3 Clinton’s lead declined from 4.5 percentage points at the start of Oct. 28 to just 1.7 percentage points on Nov. 4. If the polls were off even slightly, Trump could be headed to the White House.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/

If the Russian influence, along with other various things, only got Trump within 6 points, Clinton would most likely have been elected president. But after the second Comey announcement, she dropped to virtually the same percentage lead she had in the actual voting. I know it's unpopular to say around here, but if she didn't have that stupid server, she would almost certainly be president today. She knew how much Republicans hated her and she knew they would go after her on anything. When she was clean like on Benghazi, she was fine. But the server fed into the perception that Clinton wasn't trustworthy, that she edges the line of legal. Does it suck that as a woman she needed to be perfect? Yes, but as a black guy, so did Obama.

[Cha]

3. I don't care that you're denying reality.

[triron]

4. Thank you Cha.

[karynnj]

8. Actually, it states reality well

It is hard to decompose the effect of each thing that happened. It speaks of the Russian etc effort holding HRC to 6 percent - close enough that the Comey letters lost her the election. You could say that the Comey letters' impact might have been exaggerated because of the background created by Trump and the Russians.

It is impossible to deny that the Russians had an impact, but it is also impossible to know what the situation would have been without the interference. The election was so close that there is probably a list of at least a dozen things that would have led to a different result.

As pointed out, if there was no server issue, there would have been no letters. EVERY poll showed the shift that occurred at that point. I would argue, that even if she felt the need for the private server, she should have never mixed private and government email -at least keeping them in seperate folders. She then should have given all the government ones to the State Department. There were FISA and Congressional requests for them while she was secretary. It was reckless to think the SD could or would stonewall for 4 years plus.

It goes without saying that the Trump administration does dozens of worse things before breakfast each day. However, the server story including the Comey letters undeniably had an impact and without them, Clinton would be President.

[StevieM]

5. I agree that Comey was a much bigger factor than Putin. But if she didn't have a private server

they would have made up a different scandal to use against her.

More importantly, the FBI would have publicly investigated her for something else.

[karynnj]

9. That is conjecture

The Republican Congress would have tried, but note they failed to get any traction on anything on Obama.

[joshcryer]

7. Russia's interference probably amounted to 50k votes.

Which is what Trump "won" by if you do the data.

But you're not wrong and Comey's email almost certainly had the largest impact.

[JI7]

12. Comey had influence because of the Russian attacks

[TheFrenchRazor]

10. true, but our entire government is a joke. Trump is president; that says it all. nt

[WhiteTara]

11. Will there be history?

The world reached earth resources day on August 1, 2018. Last year it was August 2nd. That means we've used up the world's finite resources allotted for the entire year and now we're eating to next years resources for the last 5 months of the year.

We have polluted almost all the waters in the world, melted the polar ice caps, stripped the land of forest canopy protection, murdered most of the sentient creatures on the planet and foment war constantly with madmen running each nation into ruin. I'm old, history will end for me soon enough, but will there be any life left after the oligarchs are finished with us?