QUESTION: Did Clinton lose because of the hacking?

[elleng]

OBAMA: I'm gonna let all the political pundits in this town have a long discussion about what happened in the election. It was a fascinating election. So, you know, I'm sure there are gonna be a lot of books written about it. I've said what I think is important for the Democratic Party going forward, rather than try to parse every aspect of the election.

And I -- I've said before, I couldn't be prouder of Secretary Clinton, her outstanding service and she's worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people and I don't think she was treated fairly during the election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling, but having said that, what I've been most focused on -- appropriate for the fact I am not going to be a politician in about -- what is it, 32 days, 31, 34?

(LAUGHTER)

What I've said is that I can maybe give some counsel advice to the Democratic Party. And I think the -- the -- the thing we have to spend the most time on -- because it's the thing we have most control over -- is, how do we make sure that we're showing up in places where I think Democratic policies are needed, where they are helping, where they are making a difference, but where people feel as if they're not being heard?

And where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte- sipping, you know, politically correct, out-of-touch folks, we have to be in those communities. And I've seen that, when we are in those communities, it makes a difference. That's how I became president. I became a U.S. Senator not just because I had a strong base in Chicago, but because I was driving downstate Illinois and going to fish fries and sitting in V.F.W. Halls and talking to farmers.

And I didn't win every one of their votes, but they got a sense of what I was talking about, what I cared about, that I was for working people, that I was for the middle class, that the reason I was interested in strengthening unions and raising the minimum wage and rebuilding our infrastructure and making sure that parents had decent childcare and family leave, was because my own family's history wasn't that different from theirs even if I looked a little bit different. Same thing in Iowa.

And so the question is, how do we rebuild that party as a whole, so that there's not a county in any state -- I don't care how red -- where we don't have a presence and we're not making the argument, because I think we have a better argument. But that requires a lot of work. You know, it's been something that I've been able to do successfully in my own campaigns.

OBAMA: It is not something I've been able to transfer to candidates in mid-terms and sort of build a sustaining organization around. That's something I would have liked to have done more of, but it's kind of hard to do when you're also dealing with a whole bunch of issues here in the White House. And that doesn't mean, though, that it can't be done, and I think there are gonna be a lot of talented folks out there, a lot of progressives who share my values, who are gonna be leading the charge in the years to come.'

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/12/16/transcript-obamas-end-of-year-news-conference-on-syria-russian-hacking-and-more/?utm_term=.a3f6a252e8bf

[La Lioness Priyanka]

1. No the loss came from comey

Prior to his announcement she was leading 6 to 7 points to a 2-4 point lead

With that small a margin a lot of things mattered that otherwise might not have

[KamaAina]

24. And where did Comey get his (dis)information?

If not from the hacking?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

27. i dont think comey's issue was hacking related

[bettyellen]

28. someone said every time I heard "email" I thought "female".....

The Comey thing had to do with her server, her own emails and whether anything there was classified.

The Wiki crap the Russians pushed were DNC and Posdesta emails.

And lots of people have them confused in their minds as one big jumbo scandal.

[Chemisse]

37. Agreed.

That was the major factor. The hacking was not very effectual. in my opinion.

[libtodeath]

2. Yes it was a major factor.

[Little Star]

4. Why do it if you didn't think it would work?....

Yeah, Comey loaded the gun but Vlad shot the bullet.

[pnwmom]

3. Too bad no one asked him about the discovery that the optical scanner systems

used by 25 of the states have an optional feature that allows cellular connectivity -- including cellular access to the tabulators. IOW, it is not true that none of our elections devices are connected to the internet.

So how do we know some of the election tabulations weren't hacked?

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/voting-rights-activists-pursue-federal-lawsuit-wisc-after-discovering-way-hack-ballot

And too bad no one asked about the post-election discovery that the elections commissions office itself had been hacked. They only discovered this hacker when he tried to sell the information.

How do we know the hack didn't occur BEFORE the election?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-election-hack-commission-idUSKBN1442VC

[KamaAina]

25. Because Barack told us so this.afternoon.

[pnwmom]

39. They didn't ask these questions, so he didn't address them. n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

5. She lost seven states by less than one percent.

We will never know for sure but it is not hard to argue the Putin-Comey Axis Of Evil moved the polls by at least that much.

[BeyondGeography]

6. The way I read that (and I thought it was pretty masterful)

is he found it easy not to blame HRC's loss on the hacking, because it was an eminently winnable election anyway. He avoided the question by focusing his answer on how his Administration worked to make sure that votes weren't hacked, and he was able to say he was comfortable that were no issues with the result.

So he didn't give any partisans why they may have wanted. He didn't say Clinton lost because of the hack. Nor did he say Trump didn't win because of the hack.

[pnwmom]

7. And he appointed Comey, the Rethug, and probably can't admit even to himself

what a mistake that was.

[milestogo]

13. Oh, please.

[pnwmom]

16. You think Russia would have liked Bernie more than Trump?

And that they wouldn't have intervened to help DT if only Bernie was in the race?

I would have thought the Oligarchs would have worked just as hard against Bernie. That, if Bernie had been the winner, they would have done everything they could to sow discord among the Democrats so that Hillary's people would abandon him.

But you think the Russians would have been okay with Bernie. Interesting.

[LenaBaby61]

17. And he appointed Comey, the Rethug ....

And when he appointed Comey, I was NONE too happy about it. Pres. Obama has been a beacon of fairness and grace. However, he's also been too trusting when he should have been MORE partisan. Whenever he reached out to thuglicans with an olive branch, they not only snapped the branch, but tried to cut his hand off at the wrist as well. We know they wanted to make him a one term president. I think about the racism, disrespect, birther memes which STILL exist, yet the President STILL tried to reach out to them and be past civil. *Sigh*

Back to Comey, I kept hearing about how much integrity this guy had even though a thuglican. However in the back of my mind ... I hated that appointment. Imagine tRump appointing a Dem over the DOJ or FBI. Not gonna happen. We see the pro-putin tang, Goldman Sachs, russian-loving, deplorable fools/racists he's stocking his cabinet with.

Well, here we are with a tRump presidency which will destroy the heard earned fought and died for steps forward we've made the past 50 plus years as a society, only to be put in one of those giant sling shots where we'll all be flung/hurled BACK in time into the stone age politically/racially/economically/socially etc.

We are SO screwed, and will be screwed for GENERATIONS to come ...

[hollowdweller]

8. Impossible to know

I think having a private server you did public business on and then allowing your emails to be deleted that were deemed to be non relevant w/o having any third party review them was #1.

[yallerdawg]

18. A 'third party' review her private emails?

There's that higher standard for Hillary.

There's the rightwing line of BS so many people fell for.

[aikoaiko]

10. No, those emails only confirmed the relationship between HRC and DNC

And I was going to vote for HRC for the sake of the nation regardless of that relationship.

[elleng]

11. What does the quoted segment have to do with emails?

[aikoaiko]

12. The Russians hacked emails.

[erpowers]

14. The Media

I think Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college vote because the mainstream media did not focus on issue. If they would have focused on issues Hillary Clinton might have won the electoral college vote. Maybe I just watched the wrong news channel (I watched CBS This Morning during the election), but I saw very little discussion of the actual issues. I did not see the news anchors laying out the plans of the candidates and discussing the plans. I mainly saw the anchors talking about polls. Instead of asking the campaign managers about policies the anchors asked them how they felt about the candidates poll numbers.

In addition, the news anchors, during the election, never pointed that some of Trump's statements about jobs were wrong. It was not until after the election that I saw an article stating that the coal jobs Trump promised to bring back were likely not coming back because it was not cheaper to use other sources of energy. It was not until after the election that I heard someone saying that it would likely take getting rid of both the EPA and Energy Department in order to bring back coal jobs. There was also very little discussion of the idea that most manufacturing jobs had not be destroyed by NAFTA, but by technology. There are a number of things the media failed to discuss.

[mfcorey1]

15. Yes. What Comey did can also be considered as hacking.

[yallerdawg]

19. I think Obama was talking about what has happened to...

the Democratic Party on his watch.

How we get Democrats back in office, starting with a presence in every county in the USA.

I am sure Obama is just as dismayed as the rest of us - that our fellow Americans voted for this horror of a human, and so many others just didn't care.

What happened to Hillary Clinton was the culmination of three decades of targeted, malicious hate.

Nothing - including Russian/Putin hacks - was out of bounds.

[elleng]

21. Yes, yallerdawg, POTUS was talking about

How we get Democrats back in office, starting with a presence in every county in the USA.

[ileus]

20. Nope....FBI boy did it.

[PoliticAverse]

22. What in the released emails do people think cost Clinton the election? n/t

[bettyellen]

29. Wasn't the emails- it was that people pretended it was a criminal thing or she was "hiding something

And both stories the hacking and the servers got all confused and people didn't understand either.... but the media let acting as if it was a huge issue so people felt like it must be.

[PoliticAverse]

31. Not those emails, the DNC/podesta emails that were alledgedly released due to the hacking...

when people claim that the hacking and release of those emails somehow cost Clinton the election
they are implying there was something terrible in them that made a difference and I'd like to know
what they think that was.

[bettyellen]

32. I think we all know nothing awful was in the emails.....

But that many other people did not. I remember Wiki tweeted some out and gave fake context for some stuff making them sound much worse, and that the ones that pushed off Sanders folks were (in context) sent after he'd no chance of winning and that context was important.
So as I said, people combined those emails in their mind w the "illegal" server and suddenly thought there's were emails of her and the DNC doing illegal things and that it was all so much bigger.

I think Obama is correct in saying the media made the story an endless ugly thing and instead of educating voters got them riled up and angry over basically nothing.

[sarcasmo]

23. The media is #1, they covered Trump 70 percent of the time. Comey is #2.

[Chemisse]

38. And they constructed a false equivalency

Between Hillary's emails and Trump's actual atrocities.

[KamaAina]

26. Yes. All of her other bungling didn't help, either.

[doc03]

30. There is no way of proving she did or didn't nt

[UTUSN]

33. Yes, dear-heart/Elleng, very largely *PARTLY* because of the hacking, or, to specify it:

The dripping daily of the stolen e-mails had the effect of DISPIRITING everybody, of UNDERMINING, of taking-the-wind-out-of-the-sails, of SUPPRESSING. And, besides that, she (AND WE DEMS/LIBS) are just not FILTHY gutter/street fighters.

I can pinpoint the moment. When DRUMPF growled at her, "Because I would put you in jail," and she: BLANCHED, FLINCHED. I sort of knew right then it was deadly.

[elleng]

34. POTUS was responding to that question, UTU,

and his response followed his restating it. I agree with POTUS' approach.

Right, we are not filthy gutter/street fighters, so, quoting POTUS: 'What I've said is that I can maybe give some counsel advice to the Democratic Party. And I think the -- the -- the thing we have to spend the most time on -- because it's the thing we have most control over -- is, how do we make sure that we're showing up in places where I think Democratic policies are needed, where they are helping, where they are making a difference, but where people feel as if they're not being heard?

And where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte- sipping, you know, politically correct, out-of-touch folks, we have to be in those communities. And I've seen that, when we are in those communities, it makes a difference. That's how I became president. I became a U.S. Senator not just because I had a strong base in Chicago, but because I was driving downstate Illinois and going to fish fries and sitting in V.F.W. Halls and talking to farmers.'

[TexasTowelie]

35. Shouldn't this thread be posted in the 2016 Postmortem forum instead?

[elleng]

36. This OP is in response to POTUS' press conference today, Towelie.

I hoped DUers would respond to THAT, rather than as Postmortem, but your suggestion is well-taken.