We all know about Halley’s Comet. It shows up after length absences, puts on a spectacular display and accomplishes nothing. In this election James Comey has surfaced three times. The first time he said that Hillary lied, that she sent classified information in an unauthorized private server and that she was extremely careless with classified information. He also said he did not think that any reasonable prosecutor (currently working for Loretta Lynch) would prosecute her. Democrats cheered considering the original statement the equivalent of an acquittal. It wasn’t, it a public condemnation just short of an indictment. Republicans should have cheered Comey instead they dumped on him and ironically reinforced the myth that he had exonerated Hillary. Then, two weeks ago, he said he was re-opening the investigation because they discovered e-mails on Anthony Weiner’s lap top computer. Today he said that after reviewing those e-mail, he wasn’t going to change the conclusion he made previously. In other words, we are back to square one.
Democrats, who love Comey before they hated him, love him again. Republicans, who hated Comey, before they loved him, hate him again. Democrats think that Comey cleared, Clinton, again and that this will help her again. Republicans think Comey, who cleared Hillary, then charged Hillary, just cleared her again. All of them are wrong.
Now some are assuming that either President Obama or Loretta Lynch intimidated Comey into making this meaningless statement in a desperate attempt to help Hillary. They may be right about that. Comey was certainly under pressure from all sides to say something. He said nothing, but everyone will assume it is significant. In reality it is only significant in that it is not significant.
Both Democrats and Republicans think this will help Hillary. They could be very wrong about that. I don’t see how this helps Hillary at all. The only people who will think this clears Hillary are those who were already willing to ignore the obvious and assume the ridiculous. But what this did accomplish was to make Hillary’s e-mails the primary topic of conversation 24 hours before the election. That is bad news by Hillary, because there is no good answer about her e-mails and if people are talking about that it hurts her. In many ways it is similar to how Trump was hurt when the conversation was about whether he did or did not sexually abuse women. Even if the Trump campaign was able to discredit every female accuser, which they came close to doing, it didn’t matter. As long as the topic was about Trump and the way he treated women he was losing.
We are down to this. If Democrats show up like they did in 2012, at a much higher rate than Republicans, if Blacks vote 90% plus for Hillary, if Hispanics vote 70% plus for Hillary, if women vote 55% to 35% for Hillary, then she wins. Actually the polls assume all of this and they are still considering this a tie. If it is remarkably different that this, Trump rolls the table. No one really knows. The polls all use obsolete technology and unverified assumptions. The same technology and assumptions were used in England to predict the Brexit vote. Even on election night, after look at the exit polls, the no on Brexit folks were pouring the champagne and celebrating. When the votes were actually counted, Brexit won by a huge margin and Prime Minister David Cameron when was celebrating to resigning. It is going to be an interesting and life changing 36 hours.
TDM