{Originally posted to the Commentary Magazine website}
Talk to a partisan Democrat today, and you will be assured the party has turned this whole James Comey story around. For the offense of notifying Congress of the discovery of more evidence in the Clinton email scandal, Democrats have taken to attacking the FBI director’s credibility, in some cases demanding his resignation. To the left, this is a winning move. Their ire is righteous, their cause is just, and it all might gin up Democratic enthusiasm to vote in eight days. To outside observers, however, Democrats look neither upright nor self-assured. They look like they’re panicking.
Rarely are has the shine so speedily worn off of figures once so lauded as the very essence of dispassionate legal virtue as Comey. On Friday, the FBI director revealed to Congress that he had recently been informed of the existence of emails related to Hillary Clinton’s illicit “homebrew” server on computer devices belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her estranged husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner. For the sin of these vagaries revealed just two weeks prior to a presidential election, Democrats who once sang Comey’s praises are calling for his head.
In a typically restrained public letter, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid accused Comey of violating the law and of demonstrating a “clear intent to aid one political party over another.” House Judiciary Member and Representative Steve Cohen called on Comey to resign. Former DNC Chair Howard Dean insisted the FBI director now shares the same objectives as Russian President Vladimir Putin; presumably, the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Four Senate Democrats wrote that Comey’s letter to Congress is “being used for political purposes” and that the FBI should provide evidence to clarify Friday’s revelation no later than Monday afternoon.
This is the same person who luxuriated in cascades of Democratic praise just weeks ago. He is a “wonderful and tough” figure, said Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine. “This is a great man,” averred House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “No one can question the integrity, the competence,” of the FBI director, insisted Minority Leader Reid. The 180-degree pivot that Democrats are trying to pull off here is more a heel-turn than an about-face.
What’s more bizarre in the Democratic Party’s actions is the fact that the email scandal may have had all the effect it’s going to have. A Politico/Morning Consult poll taken over the weekend found little change in the public’s voting plans resulting from the revelations on Friday. A CBS News battleground poll over the weekend similarly discovered that, even among Democrats, few perceptions of Clinton had changed after Comey’s bombshell. And why should they?
The email scandal has been with us for 20 months. The entire time, Democrats have been telling the nation that it is a politicized affair. Even the mere prospect that this tenet of faith may be contradicted by Comey has sent Democrats into fits. They look rattled, and the voting public can smell fear. That, more so than the vague notion of new details in the Clinton email case, could affect the course of the race.
To borrow a cynical element of the Clinton scandal management playbook, the email scandal is, in some senses, old news. It was long ago priced into voters perceptions of the Democratic nominee. When Clinton really swooned in the polling was following her collapse outside the 9/11 Memorial in New York City in combination with her contention to a group of donors that fully half of Trump’s supporters were irredeemably bigoted. Those two events were information. They seemed to validate Clinton’s most readily dismissed detractors and led voters to reassess her fitness for office. Until the FBI produces a classified document from Anthony Weiner’s lurid hard drive, the email scandal will still be old news. Democratic reactions, however, are not. That’s what will keep this damaging story fresh.