Kevin Graham wrote: Weak candidates typically don't win the popular vote by 3 million, despite having the media, Russian interference and the Comey letter pushing hard against them. Bernie wasn't going to get more votes. He would have gotten mine, but he wouldn't have won.
You are speculating. Many Sanders fans in states like Wisconsin and Michigan ended up voting for Trump. Winning only by 3 million is a weak candidate because her rival was Trump. I mean, Obama defeated Mccain by 9 million votes and Mccain was more popular than Trump.
subgenius wrote:The goal of this Russian interference wasn't for a particular candidate to win
That is an extraordinary stupid statement. There is no reason for Russians to be involved at all unless they want a particular person to win or a particular person to lose. I think we can both agree that Putin and his cronies are not our friends, so we should look at why they did get involved. Also they didn't hack into HC's emails to help her out.
yet evidence shows they were fueling both fires... so stupidity is likely relative.
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
You are speculating. Many Sanders fans in states like Wisconsin and Michigan ended up voting for Trump.
Wisconsin??? There were though some Sanders supporters in Michigan and Pennsylvania that ended up voting for Trump. But Wisconsin ended up being won by Trump mainly through voter suppression by that state's strict voter ID law that went into effect for the 2016 election. Trump was able to win Wisconsin without getting any more votes than Romney there four years earlier.
There was sustained coverage of hacked emails that were the result of Russian espionage laundered through Wikileaks. This drove negative coverage of Clinton directly, primarily by generating breathless press coverage that provided fertile ground for Republican campaigners to mislead about them. Secondarily, it also likely combined into an uber "EMAILS!" scandal in low-information voters minds who were just aware that there was constant shady press talk of Clinton and emails.
It's hard to know how much this moved votes either through persuading swing voters or depressing Clinton turnout, but it is worth noting that certainly during the campaign Republicans behaved as though it were a significant issue that would move votes. Given that Clinton lost by a tiny fraction of votes in 3 states, it is quite plausible that it was sufficient to be decisive. The margin was so small that even tiny factors would be enough to be decisive. It would be more than a little surprising if the second most sustained negative story of the campaign didn't move a a few votes.
You reduced all of this the separate issue of Russian social media influencing which you then further reduced into a single instagram account. While you're short-shifting the potential influence of a social media disinformation campaign (which plausibly could be a drop in the bucket), you just completely ignored the most significant act of Russian influence in the election.
Like SG wrote...Donald Trump...yes Donald Trump...the guy with the bad hair and reality show beat the field on both sides of the isle. If you really believe it was becasue of Russia...then no one will change your mind.
The article is poor reporting and feeding those that need an excuse how DT became president.
Truth is the "field" GOP, Democrat's, and Sanders missed and rampantly still miss why he really won.
If the Democrat's can't figure that out, and continue to blame it on everything but their message...who knows, Trump just might have another run.
Kisk...Donald Trump!
Don't take life so seriously in that " sooner or later we are just old men in funny clothes" "Tom 'T-Bone' Wolk"
As far as bang for the buck for votes goes, for me the champion is Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen. Imagine if the story of Trump having an affair with a porn star 4 months after the birth of his youngest son had broken prior to the election. Think that could have swung 30,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin?
So as far as money swinging votes goes, the $130,000 that Cohen paid Stormy Daniels could have been some of the most effective campaign money spent in American political history.
And imagine if it had come out before the election not only Trump's affair with a porn star but Trump's lawyer setting up a corporation whose sole purpose was to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 for her silence? Ironically it sounds like a National Enquirer headline, except The Enquirer payed the Playmate Karen McDougal for her story and then buried it.
So some of the most effective money spent in this campaign was hush money paid by Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels and the "catch and kill" of David Pecker, President of American Media, owner of the Enquirer, and a "personal friend" (his words) of the President.
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Kevin Graham wrote:Weak candidates typically don't win the popular vote by 3 million, despite having the media, Russian interference and the Comey letter pushing hard against them. Bernie wasn't going to get more votes. He would have gotten mine, but he wouldn't have won.
A strong candidate would have won against a complete buffoon like Trump. Popular vote and electoral college. To beat a fool like Trump in the popular vote isn’t all that much to brag about.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Kevin Graham wrote: Weak candidates typically don't win the popular vote by 3 million, despite having the media, Russian interference and the Comey letter pushing hard against them. Bernie wasn't going to get more votes. He would have gotten mine, but he wouldn't have won.
You are speculating. Many Sanders fans in states like Wisconsin and Michigan ended up voting for Trump. Winning only by 3 million is a weak candidate because her rival was Trump. I mean, Obama defeated Mccain by 9 million votes and Mccain was more popular than Trump.
I don't agree with Kevin's assertion. We just don't know enough to know what would happen in a counterfactual scenario. It is the case that Sanders never had to run against the right-wing attack machine. There's some really bad oppo research on Sanders that never made it into any significant media coverage cycles. So the assumption that he'd definitely do better where Clinton failed is presumptuous. I suspect Sanders might've done a little better because the media seemed more primed to want to get Clinton's scalp than what Sanders might get, but we'll never know. Part of the disparity in Clinton and Trump coverage is that there was widespread assumption that Clinton had it in the bag, so "both-sideism" became really focused on trying to nail Clinton to the wall. Sanders could've run afoul the same issue even if he lacked the taint of the Clinton name.
Obama beat McCain because George W. Bush was the most unpopular president since Hoover and he was a Republican. America was in the worst economic panic since the Great Depression in the middle of the election. If anything, Obama underperformed the fundamentals. That might have something to do with McCain being the one Republican who could be seen as running somewhat independent of the Republican party. This is not in any way comparable to 2016.
Markk wrote: Like SG wrote...Donald Trump...yes Donald Trump...the guy with the bad hair and reality show beat the field on both sides of the isle. If you really believe it was becasue of Russia...then no one will change your mind.
The article is poor reporting and feeding those that need an excuse how DT became president.
Truth is the "field" GOP, Democrat's, and Sanders missed and rampantly still miss why he really won.
If the Democrat's can't figure that out, and continue to blame it on everything but their message...who knows, Trump just might have another run.
Kisk...Donald Trump!
It should go without saying that Trump appealing to Republican primary votes is a different animal altogether from Trump winning a general election. The logic that he beat Republicans in the primary, therefore he would be a strong candidate in the general is so flawed that it's kinda disqualifying when you make it.
Since you simply assert that the truth is Russian interference had zero influence on the election outcome - meaning it wasn't sufficient to move under 100k votes in MI, WI, and PA - it's hard to reply. I supplied some reason to think that very well might not be true. I guess what I can say is that this really is a radical thesis that widespread negative coverage of a candidate over a period time doesn't impact voters basically at all. I'm skeptical.
Kishkumen wrote:A strong candidate would have won against a complete buffoon like Trump. Popular vote and electoral college. To beat a fool like Trump in the popular vote isn’t all that much to brag about.
Without Russian interference, voter suppression in Wisconsin and the Comey letter she wins rather easily and all three of those factors are entirely out of her control. So does she suddenly switch from being a weak candidate to strong candidate due to circumstances beyond her control? That's what I'm struggling with here.
Take out Comey violating DoJ policy to scold Clinton while not charging her and the subsequent Comey letter right before the election and Clinton almost certainly wins a solid victory. Does that mean she's a strong candidate? Or is it that she's weak because she and she alone was susceptible to this kind of nonsense?