New Email Story Is Too Little, Too Late

Ed Kilgore: “Assuming there is nothing literally incriminating in the emails (or nothing that will come out before election day, anyway), the scariest thing for the Clinton campaign involves the conventional wisdom that the candidate who can best avoid media attention down the stretch is likeliest to win. In a contest where both candidates are unpopular, the reasoning goes, you don’t want voters to head to the polls freshly reminded of what they most dislike about you.”

“The final week or so of the campaign looked like it would be dominated by ever-more-shrill statements by Donald Trump about rigged elections and the women peddling ‘fake’ accusations of sexual misconduct against him. The spotlight had largely focused away from Clinton, aside from thoughts about the prospect of her breaking the glass ceiling, which even a fair number of the people intending to vote against her might appreciate. That’s now changed, for the moment at least.”

“But the underlying ‘story’ of the emails isn’t some sort of bombshell, and the odds are that the negative attention and any lingering substantive concerns among voters will be too little, too late to make much of a difference.”