December 27, 2016

To Whom It May Concern,

Matthew Yglesias, a well-known political writer, has recently authored a plaintive letter to you, the future historian. He wants you to know that everything went disastrously awry in 2016; the media was consumed by petty trivialities, and in their obsession paved the way for the ascendance of Donald Trump, a unique historical menace. A more responsible media would have resisted the temptation to become transfixed by the issue which came to be known as “The Emails”—they would’ve instead stayed single-mindedly focused on beating back the Trump threat. That the public came to view “The Emails” as a legitimate concern will go down as a catastrophic failure — an unforgivable dereliction of journalistic duty.

Now, future historian, hear me. I know Matthew’s letter was published in the outfit “VOX,” which might on its surface seem reputable, given the slick-looking explanatory “cards” that appear across the website. And I know that my letter is published on lowly “Medium.” While VOX “explains the news” to you, I merely offer my own piddling thoughts. But I hope you’ll read on nevertheless.

Matthew writes, in his signature wry style: “No matter how stupid it sounds, and no matter how much political and journalistic elites on all sides of America’s toxic politics began trying to ignore it as soon as the votes were counted, the dominant issue of the 2016 campaign was email server management.”

Let me assure you that this is completely false, and Matthew knows it to be false. He is simply engaging in a practice known to our contemporaries as “trolling,” which can be broadly defined as employing exaggerated or incendiary rhetoric to provoke a desired response. Matthew doesn’t genuinely believe that “email server management” was the “dominant issue of the campaign” — he simply believes that the candidate to whom he was so passionately devoted, Hillary Clinton, was unfairly maligned, and he seeks to underscore that point by attributing her woes to something which would appear quite trivial to the untrained eye, i.e. “email server management.”

The “dominant issue” which Yglesias references here would be better described as “Hillary Clinton’s severe legal problems.” By adopting the shorthand “email server management” descriptor, Yglesias minimizes the issue as ultimately frivolous. This was the same tactic Yglesias and his cohort resorted to for 1.5 years as a means of shielding Hillary from email-related criticism; their denial of a problem led the various interest groups which comprise the Democratic Party coalition to coalesce around Hillary Clinton — a fatal error, as the election of Trump demonstrates.

Consider this, historian. If, in the abstract, you heard that a major political party was set to nominate a candidate under federal felony criminal investigation — that the candidate, as well as his/her closest associates, were subject to a year-long, highly complex, and manpower-intensive investigative effort — certainly you would find this notable. It wouldn’t even particularly matter what the specific details of the investigation were — the mere fact of the investigation occurring at all, as well as the nominating party’s apparent obliviousness to it, would alone compel substantial interest. Then, of course, you would want to follow the ins-and-outs of the investigation, because they bear directly on the candidate, who is vying to become commander-in-chief of the most powerful state in world history.

Perhaps Yglesias should have acknowledged from the outset that even if he objected to the investigation on the merits — that is, even if he thought it was fundamentally baseless or unimportant — the very fact of it occurring would have major political implications, and probably be a significant liability for Hillary. If the ramifications of it were better understood by Democratic voters, she may have never been nominated in the first place. Instead, the Democratic Party could have nominated somebody else, ideally somebody not being doggedly pursued by the FBI.

Yglesias continues,

Clinton, as the boss, chose to spare herself the inconvenience involved by simply ignoring State Department guidelines and using her own phone and her personal email address.

This came to light some years later and sparked a politically motivated investigation into whether the use of personal email account violated not only State Department IT guidelines but also federal law regarding the handling of classified information.

Ponder that for a moment with me, historians. Hillary Clinton ran for president in part by heralding her wonderful experience as Secretary of State — she was eminently competent, so the story went, and this qualified her to be the nation’s chief executive. Indeed, many prominent Democrats including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama went so far as to declare Hillary the “most qualified candidate of all time.” Even more qualified than Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wow!

And yet, Hillary flouted the regulations and protocols of the very department she led. This was confirmed by the State Department own’s May 2016 Inspector General report, which Hillary refused to comply with. The report condemned Hillary, who ran the department just a few short years prior. So on the one hand, Hillary’s leadership of the department was supposed to serve as evidence that she was unbelievably, shockingly qualified, but on the other, the department’s own investigative authority was publicly chastising her for incompetence and deceit. Interesting.

Yglesias: To convict someone under the relevant statutes, prosecutors have to show malign intent, which was pretty clearly not present, even though it turned out that some of Clinton’s email traffic did contain classified information. For this reason, FBI Director James Comey told the American people that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Clinton.

While it is true, as Yglesias notes, that Comey posited that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against Hillary, he also said the following: “There is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information.” In other words, so said the FBI director, there existed “evidence” that the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee committed multiple felonies having to do with national security. Other lower-ranking persons had been convicted on just such “statutes,” but Hillary — for reasons that weren’t entirely clear — got away with really serious offenses. Ordinary folks get thrown in prison for the most minor crimes every single day, but here’s Hillary getting off scot-free even though the FBI had found potential evidence of her guilt. Understandably, Americans are sick and tired of a two-tiered criminal justice system, whereby wealthy elites like Hillary can hire high-powered lawyers to rescue her from punishment, while Joe Smith has the book thrown at him for driving on a suspended license.

As you can see, historians, the fundamental reason why people were exercised about this was not subpar “email server management.”

(And by the way, the “email server” in question housed government records which federal law mandates must be properly preserved for the edification of future historians like you. Referring to this saga as “The Emails” has always been a way to trivialize what was at stake: “The Government Records Scandal” sounds a little more weighty.)

Yglesias writes on, “If that sounds far too boring and unimportant to have conceivably dominated the 2016 presidential campaign, then it is difficult to disagree with you. And yet the facts are what they are. Indeed, by September 2015 — more than a year before the voting — Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza had already written at least 50 items about the email controversy.”

One reason why the email issue continually got so much “play” was because the Clinton campaign and Hillary herself repeatedly lied about it. Her media allies joined the effort by flagrantly misleading the public about the nature of the investigation, first insisting that it was a mere “security review” and not even criminal in nature. Naturally, when information came out confirming that the candidate was indeed under active felony investigation, this received a fair amount of coverage. And why wouldn’t it? Hillary was the first major party candidate ever to have faced such an investigation, so of course this would garner substantial media attention. Indeed, historians might wonder how a party could have looked past such a liability and nominated her anyway, with minimal opposition save for one insurgent socialist who had to be egregiously bullied out of the race.

It turned out that the new discoveries were an awfully flimsy basis for a subpoena, and the subpoena turned up nothing.

Here Yglesias perpetuates what Clinton loyalists hope will become a firmly-entrenched narrative, which is that FBI acted maliciously when it reopened its email server investigation on October 28, 2016. First, the idea that there was “awfully flimsy basis” for the FBI seeking the warrant to search Weiner’s computer is far from settled. Of course the Huffington Post (linked here by Yglesias), which did a horrible job all campaign season-long and are thereby complicit in the mass media failure, quoted a few purported experts who confirm their biases. (Also, “subpoena” is the incorrect legal term — FBI agents filed an affidavit which prompted the issuance of a warrant — but that’s par for the course for VOX.) As it stands, there is no good evidence that Comey acted improperly — rather, he acted in accordance with the pledge he’d made to Congress.

That the search of Anthony Weiner’s laptop “turned up nothing” doesn’t negate the grounds on which the FBI sought the warrant. Put another way: the FBI had ample reason to seek a warrant, which was then approved by a magistrate, whether or not their resulting search produced criminally-actionable evidence. Yglesias also fails to note that the agents who recovered Weiner’s laptop operated under the aegis of Preet Bharara, the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney who has famously gone after both Republicans and Democrats.

He triumphantly concludes, “email server management, rather than any deeper or more profound root cause, was the dominant issue in Donald Trump’s successful rise to power.”

It makes sense that Yglesias should want this narrative to take hold. First, he was a leading proponent of the notion that “economic anxiety” could not possibly explain any facet of Trump’s appeal—he continually complained that the media was unduly focused on trying to find “profound root causes” such as the immiseration of the nation’s manufacturing base to explain why Trump gained the support he did. Attributing Trump’s victory to “email server management” rather than any structural dynamic serves the dual purpose of 1) exonerating Hillary Clinton and 2) vindicating Yglesias’s longstanding theory of the 2016 race.

Yglesias proclaims that “The Emails” have receded from public view, thus confirming their essential triviality. But they’ve only receded because Hillary lost the election. Had she won, the furor would’ve been stronger than ever. Hillary is no longer as relevant as she was several months ago, so it makes perfect sense that her legal problems would no longer feature as prominently in the media.

Dear historian, I hope I’ve ably described how a certain subset of the U.S. Commentariat tried to deflect blame for their culpability in the rise of Trump — they are truly engaging in “revisionist history.”

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