In 2014, it was ebola. In 2016, it was e-mails.

[BlueStater]

Pretty funny how, after months and months of the news media and Republican politicians being unable to stop talking about these "serious" issues, we never hear a peep about them again after early November, am I right?

[DetlefK]

1. Gotta grab them ratings! Moneymoneymoney!

[RandiFan1290]

2. DU had a couple Ebola experts in 2014

They trashed Obama everyday then went silent about it and moved on to the next distraction.

One was from the PNW

[karynnj]

3. I saw more people posting the information that came out from Obama, the State Department and other

departments. The fact is that Obama marshalled forces quickly and efficiently and the entire episode IS a great example of government doing a spectacular job in both ending the threat in the US and helping an area in Africa without a good medical community step up to contain and then eliminate ebola in their countries.

The small number of people infected in Africa that returned to the US were treated in a few hospitals that were ramped up to deal with it. Only the one man who went to that area and returned to Texas led to a few cases - of medical staff - where ebola was spread in the US. Parts of the media gave it FAR MORE coverage than the numbers warranted. However, the print media did a pretty good job explaining what was being done. Some of the TV coverage was of various real medical experts speaking of the risk and what happened.

What hurt us was the timing. This started a few months before the election. It was exploited by people like Christie and the Governor of Maine. By early 2105, it was clear that intelligent action had managed to prevent a US epidemic AND helped Africa end its epidemic -- and for the future, they have potential vaccines and the knowledge of treatments that worked. This is a pretty big success story. The problem was that it was only fully known in early 2015.

I would not equate this to the email problem. Ebola was terrifying and many actions by elected people in the states flamed the fears of voters. Many Republicans got away with fostering the idea that the Democrats would be too lax to protect people from ebola. This was appealing to people's fears, in 2016, the equivalent would not be anything related to HRC's emails, but the fears whipped up that refugees would include ISIS terrorists and that Mexicans were rapists and were free to enter the US.