Hillary Clinton today escaped an FBI recommendation that she be indicted. Many of my conservative friends are furious. Whether they're right to be is not my point here.
My point is that presidential elections are not won merely by staying out of jail, and that Comey's effective indictment of Sec. Clinton as a potential President was devastating. Her behavior -- in her give-a-hoot attitude toward national security and her repeated, flagrant lying about what she was actually doing with her email servers -- was spelled out in breathtaking detail. And, as Comey noted in a little-cited comment near the end of his remarks:
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
Translation: If some State Department flunky sitting at a cubical had done the same thing, he would, at the minimum, get his security clearance lifted and would receive a letter of censure. But the head of the agency did it, and now wants -- ready now? -- a promotion to be President.
Many criminals get away with it, simply because, for one reason or another, they're never brought to court. But Ms. Clinton is, by her own choice, before a different court -- the court of public opinion. In that forum, the evidence disclosed today establishes proof of dishonor, and breach of duty, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Bill, like you, I was a Comey fan. But it appears that he concluded that Hillary violated the letter of the law -- sec. 793(f) -- by her "grossly negligent" handling of confidential email. Yet he is recommending that the AG not enforce the letter of the law, because there is no factual precedent for a 793(f) prosecution under these circumstances, i.e., in other 793(f) prosecutions the offender's were not simply "grossly negligent," but acted knowingly and intentionally.
On the surface, it looks like Comey was trying to pull a Justice Roberts Obamacare routine. Ignore the letter of the law; keep the Dems happy by not recommending charges; and keep the GOP happy by publicly excoriating Hillary. But, in his attempt to please everyone, he pissed off everyone.
The jury will now be the American electorate and the verdict will be delivered on November 8. But regradless of the result, IMO, America loses. Big time.
I suspect the Democrats' prospects are weaker tonight than they were when the day started.
If indicted, Hillary would have had to withdraw. Either likely replacement, Biden or Sanders, does better in the election polls than Clinton.
The result is that Trump is now running against a person who, as I pointed out, would be penalized, not promoted, within the State Department itself. The argument that Hillary is dishonest, brazenly and routinely mendacious, unfit for high (or even middling) office, and particularly unfit to be trusted with the very security she brushed off, is now unanswerable.
At some point, I will analyse whether, on the merits as presently known, Clinton should have been indicted. I suspect my analysis will resemble yours. But I am not going to guess at, or question, Comey's motives.
I think Hillary Clinton will be exhausting as President and I will miss the relative lack of drama of the Presidency of Barack Obama. Still, the likelihood that the US will elect Donald Trump, who mocks the disabled, makes racist statements about federal judges, retweets messages from white supremacists and praises the torture of Saddam Hussein is vanishingly small. We will all probably have to get used to the return of the exciting scandals and pseudo scandals of the Clinton years. I'm tired just thinking about it.
Here are some other prospects that were thought to be "vanishingly small" six months ago: That the UK would leave the EU, that sentencing reform wouldn't get so much as a floor vote in either house; that 49 people would get gunned down in one Jihadist episode in Orlando; and that foul-mouthed Donald Trump would, easily, beat a deep field.
Prediction has become a riskier than usual business.