The Clinton campaign shared my skepticism. Pre-Comey, Trump was getting 77 percent of Republican voters; in 2012, Romney had garnered 92 percent. Even post-Comey, they doubted that Trump could make up all of the difference.
Still, the guru of electoral statisticians, Nate Silver, was now giving Trump a 35 percent shot. It was all about turnout, after all—in senatorial races, too.
My sources agreed that Comey had made it harder for Democrats to retake the Senate.318 This was particularly true in red states like Missouri and Indiana, where a bigger margin for Trump could defeat down-ballot Democrats—including the promising Jason Kander in Missouri, representative of the new generation Democrats need so desperately.
Even Russ Feingold was sweating it out in Wisconsin—a promising sign for Trump—and New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Nevada were now toss-ups. In Florida, the restless void that is Marco Rubio was poised for reelection, no doubt primed to embrace right-wing obstructionism as his latest path to the White House. That the GOP would maintain control of the House—albeit with a smaller, but more toxic, majority—was a mortal lock. A Hobbesian Congress loomed before us—much like the current one, but worse.
One could see this in the last days of the campaign. On the stump, the candidates and their surrogates scrambled across the map in an effort to turn out their base and, in Trump’s case, flip a state—including, remarkably, deep blue Minnesota. In the meanwhile, a New York Times poll showed that eight in ten voters said the campaign had repulsed them.
No great surprise. In the supposedly disastrous event of a Clinton presidency, Trump and his fellow Republicans promised us indictment, impeachment, investigations, and the perpetual obstruction of Supreme Court nominees. To break the monotony, they quoted from emails hacked by the Russians. Only half kidding, Barack Obama told a crowd in North Carolina, “I hate to put a little pressure on you, but the fate of the republic rests on your shoulders.”
Not if they can’t vote—other forces were at work. That morning, the state’s NAACP was in court attempting to stop three counties from throwing African-Americans off the rolls—including, in Obama’s telling, a one-hundred-year-old woman who had lived at the same address and voted regularly ever since she had the right. When it came to turnout, the GOP was leaving nothing to chance—though, on Friday, a federal judge intervened to block its efforts to suppress voting in North Carolina.
Over the weekend, one could sense that the fundamentals of the race were beginning to reassert themselves, and Clinton was about to go up on the airwaves with a strong positive ad. The most respected commentators, pollsters, and statisticians remained confident that she would ultimately prevail. And then, on Sunday afternoon, Comey dispatched another letter to Congress.
It was, in its own way, as remarkable as the first. The FBI had now examined all the emails on Abedin’s computer. “[B]ased on our review,” Comey reported, “we have not changed our conclusion that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”
The gravity of Comey’s misjudgment was now clear: he had transformed the campaign and potentially changed its outcome—over nothing. In the nine days of uncertainty between his gratuitous initial letter and its tardy successor millions of votes had been cast; millions of words printed and spoken; countless charges hurled about Clinton’s criminality. The proliferation of baseless speculation fed by Republicans conjured imminent indictments and shocking new discoveries. It was too late for Comey to undo what he should never have done.
Why, one was left to wonder, didn’t Comey simply take those nine days to find out what the facts were? His letter did not say. Nor did it change Trump’s behavior in any way.
Quite the contrary—the Trump campaign accused Comey of caving in to political pressure. According to Trump, his opponent was looking at the prospect of a criminal trial, and Comey was effectively perpetuating a cover-up. “You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days,” Trump brayed at a rally. “Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it, and now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on November 8.”
Watching this, I thought again of what one of my sources had said about the impact of Comey’s letter.
It wasn’t just that Trump could actually win. Gaming out the electoral map, he saw a scenario that rendered a tie in the electoral college—or, almost as bad, an unresolved outcome that turned on recounts and disputed ballots, bringing Trump’s prediction of a rigged election to corrosive life. What then would happen, he asked me, to public faith in our democracy?
That was the state of the race when on Monday morning I sent in my final pre-election piece to The Huffington Post—written with a sense of urgency informed by, among other things, what I had heard but could not yet write.
The Imperative of Voting for Hillary Clinton
NOVEMBER 7, 2016
What kind of country do you want?
That is the question each of us must answer tomorrow. Many millions of our fellow Americans will answer “Donald Trump.” This column is for everyone else.
First, reality. The only way to defeat Trump is by voting for Hillary Clinton. One can no longer assume that she will win—James Comey’s unprecedented and unwarranted intrusion in the election, though belatedly exposed as worse than pointless, may nonetheless alter its outcome.
Indeed, millions of Americans have already voted under the influence of Comey’s misjudgment—his letter of correction, stating that the Huma Abedin emails contain nothing new, came ten days too late. For voters to stay home tomorrow or cast a protest vote may well enable the most unstable and unqualified presidential candidate in American history. With respect, that is not a rational choice.
I appreciate that many voters wish their choice were different. Some question Clinton’s honesty and candor. Some wish she were more progressive or less tied to established institutions. Some want a political party that embraces their political beliefs without compromise or ambiguity. Some on the right think her too reliant on centralized solutions. Some object to the dynastic implications of electing a former first lady. And some flat-out just don’t like the Clintons.
One’s moral purity is not on the ballot tomorrow. Nor is one’s personal vision of a perfect world. The stakes are far more profound—in an imperfect world, what choice is best for us, our children, and the future all of us share.
In that light, only one choice makes sense.
For progressives, the issues are enough. Only a President Clinton will work to combat climate change, reduce gun violence, reform the immigration system, and fight terrorism with reason instead of xenophobia. Only Clinton supports pay equity for women, raising the minimum wage, making public colleges and universities tuition-free for all but affluent students, and reducing the crushing burden of college debt. Only Clinton will appoint progressives to the Supreme Court.
Only Clinton proposes to lower the price of prescription drugs. Only Clinton promises to rebuild our infrastructure. Only Clinton supports LGBT rights. And only Clinton pledges to secure our fiscal future by taxing those who can most afford it, rather than plunge us into further staggering debt through tax giveaways to the wealthy.
For progressives, this may not be perfection, but it is surely a down payment. And achieving a meaningful part of this agenda will require all the support she can get.
Moderates may view that agenda with misgivings. And some traditional Republicans, including principled conservatives, may believe that it cedes too much to government and grants too little credence to local and individual initiative.
Let me simply suggest that your recourse is to congenial candidates in down-ballot races—not to President Donald Trump.
Because of Trump, this is no ordinary year. He is certainly no moderate or, by any reasonable definition, a conservative. On issues, he is an ignorant creature of impulse who calls climate change a hoax; embraces an economic plan that would explode the deficit and, in the opinion of experts, thro
w us into a recession; lacks even a primitive understanding of counterterrorism or the uses and limits of military power; and speaks cavalierly about nuclear proliferation and nuclear weapons. Pick any issue—all are potentially existential.
But as disqualifying as these positions are, they are mere signposts of a personal and psychological unfitness so profound that he would do the country that all of us care about—regardless of our philosophical preferences—terrible harm.
A frequent rejoinder from those who oppose Clinton is “she’s no better.” The basis for this flat assertion may involve careless handling of emails; or an overlap between the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton’s personal finances; or a supposed absence of candor regarding Benghazi; or a general belief that she is calculating, above the rules, and, when it serves her, untruthful. Or all the above.
For critics, these are more than sufficient grounds for objecting to Clinton as a candidate. But what then? For to assert a moral equivalence between Clinton and Trump is to substitute emotion for a mature comparison of what we know about both.
First, Clinton. Over twenty-five years she has been so battered by partisan charges that one tends to forget that the charges themselves came to little or nothing. This creates a remarkable dynamic—each new charge creates a presumption of guilt unjustified by the underlying facts.
The Abedin emails are but the latest example. One can deplore Clinton’s use of a private server, or conclude that the Clinton Foundation—whose many good works are indubitable—is too closely linked to the Clintons’ private business activities. But there is no evidence of “pay to play”; no sign that she subordinated her work as secretary of state to personal interests; no objective evidence that the Republican FBI director, Comey, failed in his duties when, in July, he called her email practices careless, not criminal.
Here Comey’s reckless and precipitous letter of October 28 is the perfect illustration. Having enabled Trump to cite his letter as evidence of Clinton’s criminality without a shred of proof, Comey now reports that the actual contents of the Abedin emails were innocuous—as logic always suggested they were.
In casting their vote, Americans are left to sort all this out. But, in doing so, it is well to consider a few other things. A record of service to the underprivileged well before Clinton rose to prominence. Her deep preparation for the presidency. The skill, stamina, and knowledge she displayed in debate. Her steadiness under pressure. Her ability to surmount adversity. Her record of bipartisan cooperation as a senator. And, unlike Trump, a general disinclination to complain about criticism.
All that adds up to the inner resources and emotional balance one would want in a president. And Trump?
Abysmally ignorant. Chronically narcissistic. Emotionally unbalanced. Temperamentally unstable. Indifferent to our political traditions and institutions. To his core, morally repellent.
Any sane consideration of his disabilities places this election in a category all its own. This is not a choice between philosophies or parties. It is a profoundly moral choice for every voter—whether to enable, or oppose, the election of a president who will endanger and degrade us in every conceivable way.
He is a risk to our national security. He is a demagogue who divides us by race, religion, and ethnicity, turning Americans against each other. He traffics in scapegoating and xenophobia. He is a misogynist who, by his own account, revels in groping and abusing women. He slanders those who displease him and threatens to turn the power of the presidency on his critics. He has no regard for the rule of law.
He lies incessantly. He concocts bizarre conspiracy theories. He plucks his information from the darker recesses of the Internet. He advocates torture. He refuses to commit to respecting our election results. He tells his followers that American democracy is rigged against him. He tried to delegitimize our first black president with racist lies. He bragged about conversations with Vladimir Putin that never occurred.
His inner world is barren of any concern but self. He cares nothing for others—not family, party, or country. He judges people based on whether they satisfy Trump’s need for adulation. He is so susceptible to manipulation that an antagonistic foreign power—Putin’s Russia—has siphoned thousands of hacked emails through Wikileaks in order to elect him.
Despite all this, polling suggests that a significant, perhaps critical, number of Americans—including millennials—will stay home or cast a protest vote. This deserves the most serious consideration: in a close election, votes that are effectively cast aside may decide the winner by default. And so a word for potential third-party voters or non-voters, particularly in closely contested states.
In themselves, their sentiments are easy to grasp. Some are disappointed that Bernie Sanders fell short; some are drawn to Gary Johnson or Jill Stein; some believe that America is stacked against social justice in favor of the wealthy; some distrust our societal institutions.319 Some feel all that at once.
Understandable, surely. But should one allow such frustrations, however deep, to impel what amounts to casting half a vote for Donald Trump? When the future of our country is at stake, does conscientious objection at the polls suffice?
Consider Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who are working hard to elect Hillary Clinton. The path of reason, they argue, lies with electing the best—and only real—alternative to Trump, in order to advance the policies they believe in. This is not the year, Sanders says, for third-party voting. As Warren puts it, “I understand the frustration, but channel that frustration into making government work, not into throwing away your vote . . . [T]he answer is to seize the system and make it work for the people, not to just turn it over to the bigots and billionaires.”
They are right. A vote for Johnson or Stein may best express one’s core beliefs. But, in the worst case, casting such votes in battleground states could elect Donald Trump.
For what purpose, in this year, does one take such a risk? And, in addition, the reality that third-party candidates will lose may insulate some protest voters from considering in depth who, or what, they are voting for. So it is well to ask what abstract moral principles such voting represents.
Start with Gary Johnson. By now, it is widely known that Johnson has little grasp of foreign policy. Less known is his disinterest in climate change, his call for abolishing the Department of Education, his plan to phase out the progressive income tax, and his opposition to gun control.
If one is going to vote on principle alone, best to find better principles—unless these are the principles one thinks America needs more of. In which case, one must ask oneself whether they are worthy enough to risk electing Donald Trump.
Which brings us to Jill Stein, whose candidacy is more likely than Johnson’s to help Trump by siphoning votes from Clinton—particularly crucial in states where the outcome is in doubt. For there is no doubt that the Green Party has a consistency of vision that results in a consistent level of support: just enough, among many other factors at work in 2000, to give George W. Bush the state of Florida and, as a result, the presidency.
My Green Party friends argue they should not be blamed for a system that, in their view, revolves around choosing the lesser of two evils. I respect this feeling, and their point is fair enough if stated in a vacuum. But what if one of the two electable choices in 2016—Trump—is monstrous? So let us pause to consider whether, despite this, those drawn to the Green Party must feel morally compelled to cast a vote for Jill Stein that effectively helps Donald Trump.
For those to whom the answer is not clear, Stein herself deserves the scrutiny one applies to the remaining candidates. To start, she’s a bit of a political eccentric who encourages vaccine skeptics and opposes the Green Party’s call for universal broadband on the theory that wireless signals could damage kids’ brains. More broadly, her appeal rests on a call to political and moral clarity in the service of progressive principles.
As a candidate, she denounces without compromise the banking industry, Wall Street, defense c
ontractors, the pharmaceutical industry, big tobacco, and energy companies that contribute to global warming—and, in her narrative, the major parties for representing them. As she puts it, “I’ve long since thrown in the towel on the Democratic and Republican parties because they are really a front group for the 1 percent, predatory banks, fossil-fuel giants, and war profiteers.”
As a private citizen, however, she invests in those very same industries. As The Daily Beast reported, her financial disclosure statements reveal that much of her considerable wealth is invested—directly or through mutual funds—in big oil, the financial industry, major pharmaceutical companies, the tobacco industry, and defense contractors. In extenuation, she says, “Like many Americans . . . my finances are largely held in index funds or mutual funds . . . Sadly, most of these broad investments are as compromised as the American economy—degraded as it is by the fossil-fuel, defense, and finance industries.”
It is true that the mutual funds, not Stein, direct her wealth to the industries she attacks. It is also true that she could put her money in other investments—such as socially responsible index funds or clean energy funds—more consistent with the moral stance through which she seeks our votes. Despite this, she asserts that “I’ve not yet found the mutual funds that represent my goals of advancing the cause of people, planet, and peace.”
God save Hillary Clinton should she ever say such a thing.
My point here is not to single out Stein. Candidates are people, not saints, and inconsistency between their public positions and private conduct is hardly unknown in politics. But when Stein’s political reason for being is uncompromising moral clarity, her personal contradictions make the protest vote she asks for less morally meaningful than she suggests—even in the abstract.
But the moral and practical consequences of this election are far from abstract. Yet Stein argues that it makes no difference who we actually elect—and, therefore, that she represents our only chance to vote against the corporate malefactors she invests her wealth in. Says she, “I will have trouble sleeping at night if Donald Trump is elected. I will also have trouble sleeping at night if Hillary Clinton is elected.”
Fever Swamp: A Journey Through the Strange Neverland of the 2016 Presidential Race Page 38