Hillary Tells Angry Donors She Lost Because Of Putin, Comey Letter

– Hillary Tells Angry Donors She Lost Because Of Putin, Comey Letter:

When Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine greeted the very top fundraisers and donors to their failed campaign at New York’s Plaza Hotel on Thursday evening, Politico reports that many of them had one simple question in mind: Where’s the autopsy?

 The call for a deep and detailed accounting of how Clinton lost a race that she and her donors were absolutely certain she’d win didn’t begin immediately after the election — there was too much shock over her defeat by Donald Trump, and overwhelming grief. Her initial conference call with top backers, which came just days after the outcome, focused primarily on FBI Director Jim Comey’s late campaign-season intervention.

But in the weeks since, the wealthy Democrats who helped pump over $1 billion into Clinton’s losing effort have been urging their local finance staffers, state party officials, and campaign aides to provide a more thorough explanation of what went wrong. With no dispassionate, centralized analysis of how Clinton failed so spectacularly, they insist, how can they be expected to keep contributing to the party?

“A lot of the bundlers and donors still are in shock and disbelief by what happened. They’re looking for some introspection and analysis about what really happened, what worked and what didn’t,” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and a top campaign bundler himself. “It may take some time to do that, but people are still just scratching their heads.”

Or, in the words of a Midwestern fundraiser who’s kept in touch with fellow donors, “A lot of people are saying, ‘I’m not putting another fucking dime in until someone tells me what just happened.’”

And so, as The New York Times reports, Hillary attempted to explain why she lost…

Hillary Clinton on Thursday night attributed her defeat to a convergence of two “unprecedented” events: the release of a letter by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, shortly before the election, and what she called an “attack against our country” by the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.

Comey didn’t help…

Mrs. Clinton said the letter Mr. Comey released disclosing new questions about emails handled by her private server had cost her close races in several battleground states.

“Swing-state voters made their decisions in the final days breaking against me because of the F.B.I. letter from Director Comey,” she said.

But it was The Russians that were most responsible apparently…

The Russians, she said, sought to “undermine our democracy” through cyberattacks on Democratic targets.

She said the hacking into the Democratic National Committee and into the emails of her campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, were a result of Mr. Putin’s “personal beef” against her, pointing to her accusation that Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections were rigged.

“Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election,” Mrs. Clinton said.

And then, like Podesta (and Obama), she called for retribution…

“Make no mistake, as the press is finally catching up to the facts, which we desperately tried to present to them during the last months of the campaign,” Mrs. Clinton told the group, which collectively poured roughly $1 billion into her effort.

“This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation.”

Purple Reign continues…

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