@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Once again. This is not normal. This is unprecedented.
Well, it's not normal for the US to be on the
receiving end of this kind of intrigue at this scale. Normally they're the ones perpetrating it.
Meanwhile, this sounds about right:
Quote:But weighing whether Russia’s intervention altered the outcome of the 2016 race was beyond the scope of the review that the nation’s spy agencies completed this week. And Clapper testified in a Senate hearing Thursday that U.S. intelligence services “have no way of gauging the impact . . . it had on the choices the electorate made. There’s no way for us to gauge that.”
The election outcome was - as any election result, especially one as close as this one - the result of a confluence of different developments, motivations, strategies, etc. It seems clear that the Russian government tried to influence the outcome, and Wikileaks certainly played a role in disseminating information that was damaging to Clinton. Would she have won without that interference? Considering how narrow the margin was in a couple of decisive swing states, probably. But similarly, the Democrats probably would have won if other things went just the other way. That includes strategic mistakes of Clinton's own campaign.
There is no one magic answer that explains why Trump won, and if there has been one unproductive debate on the liberal side of the body politic since early November, it's been people brashly contesting each other's claim of having identified 'why Trump won'. His appeal to racism and bigotry played an important role, but it doesn't explain all. Sexism played a role, but it doesn't explain all. A sense on the part of low-income swing voters that the Democrats alienated and abandoned them played a role. The desire to give the entire establishment a hearty **** you, as observed by Michael Moore, played a role. The cultural polarization between metropolitan and small-town America, and how the math of that works out in the electoral college, plays a role. The electorally disadvantageous distribution of Democratic voters on the US map, with millions of them concentrated in ueber-safe blue states even as traditional swing states slip away from the party, plays a role. The media's overwhelming coverage of Clinton's foibles while many of Trump's issues were, at least for a long time, brushed aside as Trump just being Trump (cause he wasn't going to win anyway) played a role. Whether you consider them nonsense or justified, the drip-drip-drip of the investigations on Clinton's private email server, culminating in Comey's dramatic statement, played a large role. Remaining bitterness within part of the Democratic-leaning electorate over the primary outcome played a role. Clinton being the viewed more unfavorably than any Democratic presidential candidate in modern history played a role -- her only saving grace was that Trump was viewed even more unfavorably, but that didn't help her when the voters who viewed both of them unfavorably ended up plumping to Trump en masse. Her campaign strategy of focusing on negative campaigning, and concentrating that negative message on cultural outrage over Trump's primitive behaviour and remarks, instead of focusing on bread and butter issues, played a role. Overconfident campaign investments in states that turned out to be a bridge too far while Midwestern states considered safe were neglected played a role. Etc etc.
What is it they say about successes having many fathers but failures being orphans? In reality, failures by necessity have many causes too. It'd be stupid to dismiss evidence of racism and bigotry being defining motivations for part of the Trump electorate, for example, yet also stupid to pretend that it explains it all. Likewise, it'd be dumb to dismiss all evidence about Russian meddling, as vague as some of it may seem, but it's also dumb to pretend that hey, we caught the culprit: the Russians elected Trump! One of the most foolish things the Democrats could do now would be to eschew difficult questions about why they failed to appeal to key swing constituencies -- why they lost a significant part of their erstwhile base which shifted red, and at the same time couldn't quite persuade enough voters from constituencies newly shifting blue -- by embracing the easy answer that the Russians stole the election. The Russians seem to definitely have tried, fairly successfully, to
influence the election, and speaking from over here in Central-Eastern Europe I can confirm that this is genuinely alarming. But it remains only one piece of the puzzle, and blaming Clinton's loss on the Russians is comforting enough that Democrats/liberals should be wary about its appeal.
/gets off of soapbox
