Washington Free Beacon managing editor Aaron MacLean said Sunday that Hillary Clinton appeared to be smelling "smoke in the firewall" with her campaign's visits to seemingly safe blue states, as she tries to hold onto a national polling lead over Donald Trump and win the presidency.
Fox News host Abby Huntsman, noting Clinton visited Pennsylvania on Saturday, which seemed like a safe Clinton state in October, wondered if there was a James "Comey effect," referring to the FBI Director's recent letter to Congress announcing newly discovered emails related to Clinton's private email server investigation.
"Hillary clearly smells smoke in the firewall," MacLean said. "There's no question about it. Timing is everything. This race has had a clear pattern over the course of the past few months. We've gone from periods where Hillary is clearly up five, six, even seven in the national polls, to periods like right now where the race seems to be close to something like a statistical tie."
MacLean said that if the election season was longer, it could potentially swing to a wider Clinton lead again, but the point of no return might have already passed with the election in two days.
Asked if Trump could flip any traditionally blue states like Pennsylvania, MacLean guessed that state leaned toward Clinton, but places like New Hampshire that went for President Obama twice could wind up in Trump's column. However, MacLean said he'd like to see the polling that's sending Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.), Clinton's running mate, back to this home state of Virginia on Monday.
Virginia is another traditional swing state that seemed to safely be in Clinton's column.
"These are not confident moves," MacLean said.