Instead of picking an electable candidate, they fired a shotgun blast and blew off their own foot.

Rather than set­tling a linger­ing ques­tion hanging over this pres­id­en­tial race, FBI Dir­ect­or James Comey’s re­com­mend­a­tion not to pro­sec­ute Hil­lary Clin­ton, and sub­sequent word from At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Lor­etta Lynch that the Justice De­part­ment was clos­ing the in­vest­ig­a­tion, have con­versely am­ped up anti-Clin­ton feel­ings among con­ser­vat­ives, Re­pub­lic­ans, and oth­er crit­ics of the pre­sumptive Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee.

My re­ac­tion is not ter­ribly sym­path­et­ic. If Hil­lary Clin­ton is such a hor­rible per­son, so ill-suited for the pres­id­ency, why didn’t they unite be­hind some­body, any­body, while there was still time to beat her? After Don­ald Trump lost the April 5 Wis­con­sin primary to Ted Cruz, the door was open. But when Trump swept the Acela primar­ies on April 26, win­ning not only Con­necti­c­ut, Delaware, Mary­land, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Is­land, but every county with­in each state, the race was over. The door had slammed shut.

The truth is that Re­pub­lic­ans were not in a mood to nom­in­ate Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Marco Ru­bio, or any oth­er es­tab­lish­ment-ori­ented can­did­ate. They also des­pised Ted Cruz [who is a real conservative] so he would nev­er do. None of the oth­er al­tern­at­ives meas­ured up. They were so angry with the government that they wanted to fire a shot­gun blast at Wash­ing­ton. They ended up shooting them­selves in the foot. They got Don­ald Trump and a gimpy party.

In oth­er words, Re­pub­lic­ans thought send­ing a mes­sage was more im­port­ant than beat­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton and tak­ing back the White House. So I guess Clinton and the White House wer­en’t im­port­ant enough for them to dial back their lofty prin­ciples. The per­fect was in­deed the en­emy of the good.

A na­tion­al on­line sur­vey of re­gistered voters, drawn from a lar­ger sample of 11,705 by Sur­vey Mon­key con­duc­ted June 27 to Ju­ly 3, found that Clin­ton led Trump by 5 points, 48 to 43 per­cent, which was pretty much in line with most oth­er re­cent polls. But when matched against Mitt Rom­ney, the two were tied at 45 per­cent. House Speak­er Paul Ry­an edged Clin­ton by 2 points, 47 to 45 per­cent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich bested her by 8 points, 50 to 42 per­cent. The poll found that while Trump pretty much pulled to­geth­er the Re­pub­lic­an vote, he was at a dis­tinct dis­ad­vant­age among pure in­de­pend­ents and Demo­crat­ic-lean­ing in­de­pend­ents, groups that were happy with Kasich and sat­is­fied with the oth­ers.

We are now start­ing to see Clin­ton widen her lead over Trump. The Pew Re­search Cen­ter con­duc­ted its first gen­er­al-elec­tion poll between June 15-26. In a sur­vey of 2,245 voters, Pew found Clin­ton lead­ing by 9 points, 51 to 42 per­cent. In­ter­est­ingly, 55 per­cent of Trump sup­port­ers con­ceded that they were vot­ing against Clin­ton, not for Trump, with just 41 per­cent ac­tu­ally sup­port­ing the Re­pub­lic­an. As for Clin­ton, 50 per­cent of her back­ers said they were cast­ing a vote for her, but nearly as many (48 per­cent) said they were vot­ing against Trump. A Demo­cracy Corps na­tion­al sur­vey con­duc­ted June 23-28 among 900 likely voters by Demo­crat­ic poll­ster Stan Green­berg found Clin­ton with an 11-point ad­vant­age, 48 to 37 per­cent, with a typ­ic­al Demo­crat­ic can­did­ate for the House hold­ing an 8-point ad­vant­age, 49 to 41 per­cent (the can­did­ate names and parties are in­dic­ated to the in­ter­viewee when known, oth­er­wise just the party is giv­en).

Of course, this elec­tion is not over. It is still about four months away, but the volat­il­ity and un­pre­dict­able nature of the Re­pub­lic­an nom­in­a­tion con­test is now only a memory. Trump has his base and 10 tons of dy­nam­ite will not dis­lodge those voters. But as un­enthu­si­ast­ic as so many voters are about Clin­ton, few of the un­de­cideds seem to be even con­sid­er­ing the real-es­tate mogul. Trump’s habit of be­ing a polit­ic­al and de­cidedly un­funny ver­sion of Don Rickles, in­sult­ing nearly every­one in sight, has mar­gin­al­ized him and min­im­ized the elasti­city of his sup­port. If you are not for Trump now, the odds are pretty good that you aren’t go­ing to be for him between now and Novem­ber. He is either speak­ing for you or he is of­fend­ing you, and seems not much in­ter­ested in per­suad­ing you.

Some long­time Justice De­part­ment and FBI-watch­ers were a bit taken aback by the out-front role that Comey and the FBI played in mak­ing the na­tion­ally tele­vised an­nounce­ment of what nor­mally would have been the job of ca­reer pro­sec­utors. But giv­en the polit­ic­ally sens­it­ive nature and tim­ing of this case, not to men­tion Bill Clin­ton stum­bling onto the front pages of news­pa­pers from coast-to-coast by de­cid­ing it would be fun to vis­it Lor­etta Lynch in her plane on a tar­mac in Phoenix, giv­ing the ball to Comey seemed like the only thing to do. He is, after all, a re­gistered Re­pub­lic­an and the former deputy at­tor­ney gen­er­al un­der Pres­id­ent George W. Bush. The Clin­ton haters are cry­ing that the whole thing was a setup, but where were they when they could have nom­in­ated someone more elect­able and ex­ploited her troubles?

https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/638654