If Only...

Hillary supporters have been slow to accept that they simply had a bad candidate who ran a bad campaign. They prewfr to blame outside influences, usually the Russians and the FBI. Let's examine those.

Many are acting as if Russian involvement in the election was a complete surprise. Actually, the White House was sating that the release of DNC emails came from the Russians well before the election. The White House knew about it in July and Congress was briefed in September. No one made a fuss, probably because we've been hacking their emails, too. We've also been influencing elections for decades. Just last Summer, President Obama warned the British to vote against the Brexit.

What are the Russians accused of doing? Making private emails public. They didn't change vote tallies or remove voter registrations. They let us know what the Clinton campaign said in private. What did we learn? Mainly that the Democratic party and the MSM were biased in favor of Hillary Clinton. We also found out that highly-placed people in the Clinton campaign have a low opinion of Catholics and Evangelicals. These groups were already supporting Trump (which is why the low opinion) so that did little damage.

I have a challenge to Hillary supporters: show me which email or set of emails you think did the damage. I want actual proof meaning a drop in the polls after those documents were released or later polling naming the contents of those emails. Without that, then the talk of President-elect Trump being a Russian puppet and the election being a bloodless coup is just silly (I'm looking at you, Keith Olberman).

Remember, the RNC was not hacked. Apparently the Russians didn't try as hard. That may be because they wanted Trump to win but it might also be that they, like the rest of the world, assumed that Hillary would win and wanted to hurt her. Even if they had hacked the RNC, they kept the Trump campaign at arm's length. The Republican establishment was against Trump. Any emails from the RNC servers would probably have helped Trump by showing that the establishment was against him.

As for the FBI, let's remember that the FBI probe didn't happen in a vacuum. We already knew that Hillary had used a private server which was poorly-secured and contained classified information. The FBI investigation was to see if any laws had been broken. It was Hillary's decision to use a private server and to delete 35,000+ emails from it before turning the rest over to the State Department. This tainted her candidacy from the start. If the FBI hadn't gotten involved then Congress would have pressed for a Special Prosecutor and that would have looked worse.

A lot of information leaked about the investigation. The rumor was that agents who worked on it felt that Hillary should have been charged. The private meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch just days before the results were given gave the impression that the fix was in. That was Bill's mistake and a majority of the country was unsatisfied with the FBI's ruling that Hillary should not be charged.

Reportedly there was an open revolt in the FBI when more emails came to light. It may have hurt Hillary when the case was reopened but it would have hurt her even more if it got out that there was a trove of letters and they hadn't taken due diligence. The way it played out was probably the least damaging.

Let's face it, Hillary's use of a private server was a terrible lapse in judgement and there was no way it wasn't going to hurt her. If it hadn't been the FBI then it would have been leaks that evidence was suppressed. The only way to stop it would have involved a huge conspiracy including threats of retaliation to whistle-blowers. And wouldn't that be a great way to win the election.