Autopsy - The Blame Game

This is a rather difficult aspect of the Clinton Campaign autopsy to get into. This difficulty is not based on anything more than the sheer number of scapegoats that are being pointed at, while failing to acknowledge that there were always problems.


There are many people being blamed for Clinton's loss in the General Election. Where does all the blame really belong? For her supporters and the Clinton campaign it goes towards the one percent of those who voted for Jill Stein. It goes to Comey and his days long review of new emails found on Anthony Wiener's laptop. It goes to the Russians for hacking DNC emails. It goes to Wikileaks who released said emails.


Sadly I believe that any official autopsy of the Clinton Campaign in 2016 will likely end there. But the truth of it is much more difficult to pinpoint. To be sure, all those likely played a small role in the loss, but ultimately the blame falls on Clinton and her staff. If you happen to be a Clinton supporter reading this please pay attention to the following.


People voted for Jill Stein because they did not agree with Clinton. They feel, and they were not entirely wrong to feel as such. However, even if every person who had voted for Stein had voted for Clinton, the outcome would have been the same. You see, in the blame game, it matters very little about actual facts. It doesn't matter that even with all of Stein's voters going “blue no matter who,” Clinton would have still likely loss in many of the battle ground states. Even with Stein voters she still won the Democratic Party strong holds, and many of the states that generally swing blue. Also as mentioned, Stein barely got around one percent of the vote, and even within states that barely went red, they were never within the margin of Trump's victory. Yeah, the blame of Stein supporters will continue on for years, constantly being used to muddy the waters of this election.
Comey's review of potential new email information tied into a previous FBI investigation of Clinton is also being used in the blame game. Now, this one, for what it is worth, is just wrong. The fact is, if you or I had done what Clinton is accused of, we'd already be under the jail. But, Clintons are not treated like you or I. That said, Comey's review of potentially new information in regards to a already existing case is not new, new information is reviewed on old cases daily. Closed investigations are reopened. There are a few times when nothing comes of it, the case was already tried after the defendant was already cleared, and new evidence against the defendant is unusable, or the potentially new evidence is a dead end. Comey for his part, wanted to ensure that all parties were well informed of what his investigators were doing. Sure, it might have been a partisan ploy, but it is more likely that Comey wanted to give the appearance of actually doing his job. Something that he had been accused of not doing properly.

There are also the Russians, and their part in the blame game. Yeah, it is now a widely common thought process among the Clinton supporters that Russia hacked the DNC emails in order to influence the election. Forget the whys and hows of this, but the Russians did it. However, I have seen no solid evidence that the Russians hacked into the DNC emails, and even if they had, it should be disturbing that said emails even exist. Yeah, it shouldn't matter who was doing the hacking, these emails exist. Believe them or not, the fact that the DNC nor Clinton were able or willing to debunk them says it all. They decided to red bait the country by saying the Russians did it all. Russia got all the blame for the leaked emails, Russia was the bad guy here. Yet, never once were the emails discredited, never once were they even defended.

Then we have the Wikileaks email releases. There is a part in the blame game for them. You see, once they had the emails, did their part to evaluate and authenticate the emails, they released them to the public for consumption. Clinton and her supporters believe that they should have never been released, that it was criminal behavior, and I will give them that. Look, it is illegal to hack emails, it is illegal to disseminate their content to third parties. However, the legality of the act is not my concern, as it is already settled, the problems is that said emails even existed. Yes, I agree with Sanders when he said that the emails within his campaign likely had derogatory comments about Clinton. They probably laid out plans of attack against the Clinton campaign. There were probably many things contained within the Sanders emails that would have changed opinions about him and his campaign staff. Yet, within the Clinton email drops, we are shown potential collusion between the DNC and her campaign, collusion between her campaign, the DNC, and the Media, lines of attack that questioned Sanders religious beliefs, questionable actions in regards to pay to play, and appointments within the campaign. It was more than a little infighting between staff, how to get around a gaffe, or even how to get around Sander's policy concerns and ideas.

As it stands, as the Trump presidency nears fruition, and as it eventually progresses we are going to get a longer and longer list of people to play the blame game. There is, however, two groups that I do not see taking the blame in mass. First, I see nothing indicating that the DNC will take any responsibility for anything that happened. People resigned after rumors started that the DNC rigged the primary, in their own response to a lawsuit filed against the organization, they stated that they are under no responsibility to ensure that a primary is fair, they also stated that they were not liable for any notion contrary to that fact. They basically said, we can do anything we want in a primary because we are under no obligation to be fair or honest, because people should know that we aren't. Second, I do not see Clinton owning any part in the blame game. As far as she is concerned, we should have completely ignored any potential baggage she has, and we should do so because the GOP has attacked her for over thirty years. As a candidate who promoted herself as a “progressive who can get things done,” she should have known that the GOP so detested her, that they would have done nothing with her. Speaking of which, if I knew that I had people out on a witch hunt, doing everything they could do to utter destroy me, I would have done things different, I certainly would do everything in my power to not give them more ammunition to use against me. Clinton, for her part in the blame game, did none of that, if anything she willingly did everything within her power to ensure they could attack her at every avenue. Finally, we have the Clinton die hards. They take a front row seat in the blame game. Since April of 2015, they have done everything in their power to present Clinton as the inevitable president elect. They insulted, they bullied, they pushed people away from their candidate from the very start. Some of them went as far as to tell people,via social media at other places, that they did not need people who were not strongly behind Clinton, or did not even like her. They get the front row because as soon as it became clear that Clinton had lost the election, they were immediately out in force to blame anyone who did not vote for her.

Added Content:
So, while I was busy moving things out of the place I'm living in, another player in the Blame Game was added to the list.  Go figure?  So, who is this mysterious individual(s)...?  Social Media, yes you heard it here last.  Social Media is to blame.  While I haven't had time to fully read the plethora of articles, it seems that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube users are mostly to blame, with a nice sampled portion going to people who write blogs, along with those people who publish "fake news."  To prove the point of why these groups should be blamed, a Huffington Post writer created an article that said Sanders still had a path to the White House, and it caught like fire.  Now, I will be the first to admit Click Bait articles have been a major problem for a while, well, since the Internet became readily accessible to the masses.  Hey, back in the day it was random emails from people you knew linking to articles that were insane, but now, now this stuff can be propagated within minutes, put on whatever social media outlet you are using, and from there it will take a life of its own.  Now, click bait is a problem, people running with it is also a problem, but if you are having to fall back to attack social media users, bloggers, YouTube personalities, you don't have much of a case to make.