Clinton team will never understand why they lost: Analyst

US Democrats have failed to accept that Hillary Clinton was a toxic candidate and they made her the captain of a sinking ship, but many of them falsely believe she lost the 2016 election due to alleged Russian hacking and former FBI chief James Comey’s sabotage of her campaign, an American political activist and analyst says.

Myles Hoenig, a former Green Party candidate for Congress, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on the dismissal of the FBI director by US President Donald Trump.  

Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, telling him it was time for a "new beginning" at America’s "crown jewel of law enforcement."

"Comey lost the confidence of almost everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike," Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “Comey will be replaced by someone who will do a far better job, bringing back the spirit and prestige of the FBI."

Comey has been criticized by lawmakers in both Republican and Democratic Parties for his handling of investigations connected to the 2016 presidential election -- the Russia investigation as well as the inquiry into Clinton's email practices while she was secretary of state between 2009 and 2013.

Following Clinton’s defeat to Trump in the November 8 election, the Democratic candidate’s top advisers blamed Comey for her bruising loss.

Clinton underwent a long-running federal investigation over her use of a private email server that involved exchanging thousands of potentially classified emails during her tenure as secretary of state.

She was cleared of any involvement by the FBI, but with eleven days before the election Comey, reopened the case. However, just over a week later, Comey notified Congress that she would not face charges over the leaked emails, but according to Democrats, the damage was done.

Read more:

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• 'Comey's dismissal very welcome decision'
• Clinton loss pertains to 'outside factors'

Hoenig said, “Forty-eight percent of those who voted for Clinton. The Rasmussen poll shows that 44 percent of likely American voters believe that Clinton lost the election due to outside factors, in other words, Russian hacking and Comey’s sabotage."

“How many of Clinton’s supporters voted for her but knew that she was a poor candidate? How many voted for Trump just because it was a vote against Clinton, not necessarily a vote for Trump?” he asked.

“In a way, the Clinton camp and the DNC personify the view of American ‘exceptionalism’. We are right and they are wrong. We are due our victories because it is us, and we are the ‘shining city on the hill’, as Reagan said. We cannot be wrong when we are always right. It is no wonder that karma has taken its revenge on us by giving us President Trump,” he stated.

“The vast majority of Democratic Party operatives and many of its members saw Comey’s investigation as an attempt to derail, what they believed, was a winning electoral strategy. Never mind that much of it was based on Podesta’s emails which showed, when leaked, how utterly contemptible she was as a politician and a candidate,” the analyst said.

“What Democrats fail to accept, and to their future demise, is that Clinton was toxic in many ways and she at the helm made her the captain of a sinking ship. That they want to resurrect her through a resistance that clearly is a cooptation of a real resistance, something Democrats do all the time, will only come back and bite them hard, especially if the [Democratic] Party really believes she’s its future,” he said.

“Regardless of the fact that she did garner a greater majority of the popular vote, far more people voted against her simply by not showing up. They had no reason to,” the activist concluded. 

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