Did we really elect Donald Trump?

Republicans can argue until their last breath that Trump objectors are sore losers, but isn’t more at stake than “mere politics”? This phrase has been rendered quaint by such serious issues as Russian hackers apparently trying to tilt the election toward Donald Trump; the FBI’s possibly politically motivated practices; Trump’s initial resistance to the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community; Trump’s refusal to release tax records, which might mollify concerns about his relationship with Russia.

These aren’t partisan issues, or shouldn’t be, as evidenced by the Justice Department inspector general’s decision to investigate how FBI Director James B. Comey handled the probe of Hillary Clinton’s email and private server. The focus will be on Comey’s statement in July that Clinton and her colleagues were “extremely careless” with classified information but that he wasn’t recommending criminal charges — as well as his announcement to Congress just a week and a half before Election Day that, because of new information, he was reopening the investigation.

This fresh look pertained to new emails found on the laptop of Carlos Danger, a.k.a. Anthony Weiner (but, really, why the name change?), estranged husband of top Clinton adviser Huma Abedin. The emails subsequently were found to be inconsequential, but if there were any fence-sitters left at that point, at least many of them probably toppled into Trump’s camp, from sheer exhaustion if not outright disgust.

Let me help you: Eleven days to go and the man who had said there’s nothing to see here suddenly says, Hey, there might be something after all! And no one’s supposed to think this affected the election?

How could it not have? Anecdotally, I can report at least a dozen friends who say, “That was it for me.” But polling, too, suggests a consequential voter shift in the final days of the campaign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/did-we-really-elect-donald-trump/2017/01/13/f657a18c-d9d5-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.af44b4f28477