FBI’s Hillary Clinton Email Bombshell Will Be Felt After, Not Just Before, ElectionIt’s hard to predict the revelation’s effect on the presidential race, but its long-term effect on Washington won’t be good
By Gerald F. Seib
Wall Street Journal (excerpted - click on link for full article)Updated Oct. 31, 2016 11:07 a.m. ET
FBI Director James Comey dropped a bombshell onto the home stretch of the 2016 presidential race Friday, and it’s hard to know exactly what impact it will have on the election.
On the other hand, it’s relatively easy to predict what the effect will be on how Washington works after the election. And it won’t be good.
The bombshell, of course, was Mr. Comey’s disclosure to Congress that he is examining a new set of emails related to Mrs. Clinton. The emails, numbering perhaps 650,000, were found on a laptop used by former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner and his estranged wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and the disclosure revived a line of inquiry previously thought to have been closed with minimal damage to Mrs. Clinton.
That constitutes an October Surprise of the first order. A canvass of wise political operatives in both parties shows a high level of uncertainty about the effect it will have on a race that had seemed fully baked and ready for removal from the oven.
Certainly it isn’t good for Mrs. Clinton. The biggest impact may simply be that it shifts the attention of voters away from Mr. Trump and the question of his suitability for office, which was a good focus for Democrats, and instead onto Mrs. Clinton in the campaign’s final week. As Chicago Mayor and Clinton supporter Rahm Emanuel puts it: “It was always about Trump. Now it’s about her.”
That may allow Mr. Trump to reclaim his hold on some voters who had drifted away from him, thereby raising his vote. But that probably won’t “meaningfully affect” the level of Mrs. Clinton’s vote, says former Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. In other words, it could tick the Trump vote up without ticking the Clinton vote down.
In a campaign in which a historic number of voters is disgusted at both candidates, the disclosure may just increase the number of what analysts in both parties have come to refer to as “nose holders”: People who will hold their nose and vote, if they vote at all. “This election has had a historic number of nose holders,” says Scott Reed, a Republican operative who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. Mr. Comey’s move “has the ability to dampen turnout even more.” ...
In that case, the acrimony of an angry campaign will carry into a new administration and a new Congress. That isn’t an inspiring picture either.
Perhaps the real bottom line is this: An already ugly election may have become even less likely to produce an uplifting outcome.
