Russia Likely Did Swing Votes For Donald Trump

[_Kishkumen]

I VOTED FOR HER and have said, many times, that she would have made a GOOD or at least DECENT President. Ignore the fact that I have said many times that she was eminently qualified and highly competent.

And again.

[_Kishkumen]

And yet, after all of that, Kevin writes:

I had no idea who you voted for nor have I seen that you've said anything remotely positive about her, at least not that I could remember.

[_Kevin Graham]

And yet, after all of that, Kevin writes

I admit I should have read all of your posts and all the way through, but at the same time I never said you were some rabid Hillary hater, let alone a "misogynist," which honestly I have no idea where you got that. But I also admit that I just don't get the emotion behind your insistence in calling her an absolute "loser."

And saying she would be "decent president as far as our current corporate imperialist state goes" just sounded like a backhanded compliment to me. You warn that if we ignore the fact that she was weak and such a loser, then this means we're going to repeat making the same mistake. But I'm not sure what you mean by that. I mean, if you agree Hillary had the best chance of beating Trump then what really failed here if not the American people? Blaming her only makes sense to me if we ignore the other factors that most certainly played into Trump's victory.

by the way, if I called you a Bernie Bro, don't take it as an insult. I was a Bernie Bro too.

Anyway, this piece pretty much sums up my view on this issue:

Don't call Clinton a weak candidate: it took decades of scheming to beat her

Years of Republican plots, an opponent deified by television, and FBI smears stood in her way – and she still won the popular vote by more than Kennedy did.

Sometimes I think I have never seen anything as strong as Hillary Clinton. That doesn’t mean that I like and admire everything about her. I’m not here to argue about who she is, just to note what she did. I watched her plow through opposition and attacks the like of which no other candidate has ever faced and still win the popular vote. To defeat her it took an unholy cabal far beyond what Barack Obama faced when he was the campaign of change, swimming with the tide of disgust about the Bush administration. As the New York Times reported, “By the time all the ballots are counted, she seems likely to be ahead by more than 2m votes and more than 1.5 percentage points. She will have won by a wider percentage margin than not only Al Gore in 2000 but also Richard Nixon in 1968 and John F Kennedy in 1960.”

You can flip that and see that Trump was such a weak candidate it took decades of scheming and an extraordinary international roster of powerful players to lay the groundwork that made his election possible. Defeating Clinton in the electoral college took the 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act by Republican appointees to the supreme court. It took vast Republican voter suppression laws and tactics set in place over many years. It took voter intimidation at many polling places. It took the long Republican campaign to blow up the boring bureaucratic irregularity of Clinton’s use of a private email server into a scandal that the media obediently picked up and reheated.

It took James Comey, the director of the FBI, using that faux-scandal and his power to stage a misleading smear attack on Clinton 11 days before the election in flagrant violation of the custom of avoiding such intervention for 60 days before an election. It took a compliant mainstream media running after his sabotage like a golden retriever chasing a tennis ball. It took decades of conservative attacks on the Clintons. Comey, incidentally, served as deputy GOP counsel to the Senate Whitewater committee, that fishing expedition that began with an investigation in a messy real estate deal in Arkansas before Bill Clinton’s presidency and ended with a campaign to impeach him on charges related to completely unrelated sexual activities during his second term.

It took a nearly decade-long reality TV show, The Apprentice, that deified Trump’s cruelty, sexism, racism and narcissism as essential to success and power. As the feminist media critic Jennifer Pozner points out: “Everything Trump said and did was framed in a way to flatter him, and more importantly, flatter his worldview.” The colossal infomercial fictionalized the blundering, cheating businessman as an unqualified success and gave him a kind of brand recognition no other candidate had.

It took the full support of Fox News, whose CEO, Roger Ailes, was so committed to him that after leaving the company following allegations of decades of sexual harassment of employees, he joined the Trump campaign. It took the withdrawal of too many Americans from even that calibre of journalism into the partisan unreliability of faux-news sites and confirmation-bias bubbles of social media.

It took the mainstream media’s quarter-century of failure to address climate change as the most important issue of our time. It took decades of most media outlets letting the fossil-fuel industry’s propaganda arm create the false framework of two equally valid opinions rather than reporting the overwhelming scientific consensus and tremendous danger of climate change.

To stop Hillary Clinton it also took Julian Assange, using WikiLeaks as a tool of revenge, evidently considering his grudge against the Democratic nominee important enough to try to aid the campaign of a climate-denying racist authoritarian. Assange now appears to have so close a relationship with Russia that he often appears on the state-funded TV channel and news site RT. He tweeted protests when Russian president Vladimir Putin’s information was included in the Panama Papers hack and has been coy about where his leaked information on the Democratic National Committee came from.

Many intelligence experts say it came from Russian hackers, and Putin made it clear that he favored Trump’s win. The day Comey dropped his bombshell, the New York Times ran a story reassuringly titled Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link to Russia with its own astounding, underplayed revelation buried inside: “Investigators, the officials said, have become increasingly confident, based on the evidence they have uncovered, that Russia’s direct goal is not to support the election of Mr Trump, as many Democrats have asserted, but rather to disrupt the integrity of the political system and undermine America’s standing in the world more broadly.”

And it took a shortsighted campaign of hatred on the left, an almost hysterical rage like nothing I have ever seen before about any public figure. Some uncritically picked up half-truths, outright fictions, and rightwing spin to feed their hate and rejected anything that diluted the purity and focus of that fury, including larger questions about the other candidate and the fate of the Earth. It was so extreme that in recent weeks, I was attacked for posting anti-Trump news stories on social media by furious people who took the position that to be overtly anti-Trump was to be covertly pro-Clinton. If the perfect is the enemy of the good, whose friend is it? The greater of two evils?

A lot of people seemed to think the Sanders-Clinton primary ended the night Trump was elected. I saw that stuckness from climate activists, anti-racist journalists, civil-rights champions, and others who you might expect would have turned to face the clear and present danger of a Trump presidency. I heard, for example, much about Clinton’s failure to address the Dakota pipeline adequately – which was true, and bad, but overshadowed by what we heard so little about: Trump’s million dollars or so invested in the pipeline and the guarantee he would use presidential powers to push it and every pipeline like it through.

It’s impossible to disconnect the seething, irrational emotionality from misogyny, and the misogyny continues. Since election night, I’ve been hearing too many men of the left go on and on about how Clinton was a weak candidate. I’ve wondered about that word weak, not only because it is so often associated with women, but because what they’re calling her weakness was their refusal to support her. It’s as if they’re saying, “They sent a pink lifeboat and we sent it back, because we wanted a blue lifeboat, and now we are very upset that people are drowning.”

Or, as my brilliant friend Aruna d’Souza put it Wednesday: “At some point soon we need to discuss whether Sanders would have been able to win, but helpful hint: today, it just sounds like you’re saying: ‘The Democrats should have cut into Trump’s lead in the misogynist vote and the whitelash vote by running a white man.’ Let’s come to terms with the racism and the misogyny first, before analyzing the what-ifs – because otherwise we’re just going to replicate it forever. And if you think that the angry anti-establishment vote won (hence Sanders would have fared better), let me remind you that patriarchy and white supremacy are the cornerstones of the Establishment.”

I know that if Clinton had been elected there would not be terrified and weeping people of color all over the country, small children too afraid to go to school, a shocking spike in hate crimes, high-school students with smashed dreams marching in cities across the country. I deplore some of Hillary Clinton’s past actions and alignments and disagreed with plenty of her 2016 positions. I hoped to be fighting her for the next four years. But I recognize the profound differences between her and Trump on race, gender, immigration and climate, and her extraordinary strength, tenacity and courage in facing and nearly overcoming an astonishing array of obstacles to win the popular vote. Which reminds us that Trump has no mandate and sets before us some of the forces arrayed against us.

[_Markk]

A suggestion...maybe if you stopped calling people idiots, stupid, and make crazy blanket statements about people and groups, folks might take you more serious.

I get that is just Kevin Graham...after all, you were calling me a idiot when I was trying to tell you the Book of Abraham was bogus some 10 or 15 years ago.

I will now look forward to your gentle and controlled response

I never once called Kish an idiot. He's one of the smartest persons I've come across online.

Great, but you wrote...

I really have no idea why, but after 20 years of online posting I guess something is just wrong with the way I come across to people. Because you can say the same exact thing I want to say but you can do so without coming across like you're picking a fight.

As and example I went back and opened a few posts from the spirit prison...

What a ____ idiot. You care more about a fertilized egg than you do breathing children who have to see their lives end in such a horrific manner. All because pieces of ____ like you think you have a God given right to a killing machine.

Translation = "Me and my knuckledragging friends would absolutely love the opportunity to circle jerk together at the vision of M1A tanks rolling down the streets of America."

Do you really believe you come across less than a angry young man? Most ever body here has their moments...I know I do, but I doubt if anyone here see's you as a rational poster with anyone that dares have a different opinion or view.

Personally when I respond to one of your posts, and I admit I am guilty of baiting you at times, I expect a few "you're an idiot, racist, dumb ass, nazi, red neck...etc.

I see folks here bait you time after time to get a rise from you, and at times it is very entertaining to watch a sub-genius take you apart. And even if your opinion is solid with merit, you lose because you blow your cool and any objective argument goes to table pounding and ad hom rants.

Like I wrote earlier, you were doing the same thing 20 years ago defending Mormonism, that you do defending your political views...and yet, quoting you...

"I really have no idea why, but after 20 years of online posting I guess something is just wrong with the way I come across to people."

ya think?

[_Kevin Graham]

False equivalence Markk. Like I said, Kish isn't an idiot.

[_Kishkumen]

I admit I should have read all of your posts and all the way through, but at the same time I never said you were some rabid Hillary hater, let alone a "misogynist," which honestly I have no idea where you got that. But I also admit that I just don't get the emotion behind your insistence in calling her an absolute "loser."

My comment about being called a misogynist was not directed at you. It was a response to the experience of being judged as a bad "ally" to feminists for not loving and agreeing with everything a particular female icon such as Kate Kelly or Hillary Clinton says or does. The fervor behind these progressive saints becomes such that any deviation from the party line is taken as evidence of secret hatred. If you're not a "yes person" then you are the problem, so the "thinking" goes.

And saying she would be "decent president as far as our current corporate imperialist state goes" just sounded like a backhanded compliment to me. You warn that if we ignore the fact that she was weak and such a loser, then this means we're going to repeat making the same mistake. But I'm not sure what you mean by that. I mean, if you agree Hillary had the best chance of beating Trump then what really failed here if not the American people? Blaming her only makes sense to me if we ignore the other factors that most certainly played into Trump's victory.

It's the state we live in. With its flawed politics and its flawed politicians. Trump won partly because they are fed up with this stuff. They wanted to say up yours to the usual cast of political characters. Hillary was very much one of those familiar faces of the political establishment. That is part of the reason she lost. And I say she was a loser because she lost the election, not in some larger sense of her personal worth or abilities. She was the loser in that contest.

Hillary was the best chance we had because she was the only person the Democratic Party was going to give us. That does not mean that she was charismatic, a great campaigner, a credible champion of the little person, or what many Americans were looking for in a president.

Anyway, this piece pretty much sums up my view on this issue:

Don't call Clinton a weak candidate: it took decades of scheming to beat her

Yeah, I have very little sympathy by this wound-licking nonsense. In my view a weak candidate is the candidate in a particular race whose liabilities make it unlikely the person will win. It's entirely situational. But when people read those words from me, they take it as my personal jab at Hillary Clinton as a person. I know Hillary type ladies very well. In fact, I tend to really like them. I see their brilliance, their dogged determination, their high ideals, their realism, their ability to get things done. I see a lot there to admire. So, when I say Hillary Clinton is a weak candidate, I am saying that she was a weak candidate in that election, not in the abstract, not in her preparation to be president.

Indeed, I am not saying that Hillary Clinton is a weak person. Or an unworthy person. Or a bad person. No, quite the opposite really.

Unfortunately, we were in a place, as a country, in which Americans were ready to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. They could never be convinced that Hillary was good enough. That she wasn't up to some kind of no good either years ago or right now. She could not be a human politician; she had to be a veritable saint, and any chink in her armor was taken as proof positive that she was an evil monster. Many people preferred to buy a cheap Rolex knock-off from a con man in an alley on the off chance that it would really turn out to be a good deal because they felt the reputable jeweler on 5th Ave. was gouging them.

What do you do with that?

In that situation there was probably nothing that could be done. The Democratic Party was not going to run Warren, not to mention Bernie. They were going to run Hillary. They were champing at the bit for decades to run Hillary. And ours is a two party system. They did the best they could, and I still contend that the odds were not good, and that part of the problem was Hillary. She was not the candidate to run in an atmosphere where the people were fed up with the Beltway establishment.

[_Themis]

Markk, how about you answer a simple question. Did the Russian's hack into HC's emails and release them when they wanted to?

I have to laugh when people like Markk avoid certain questions they know they cannot answer honestly without destroying their arguments, so avoid avoid avoid.

[_Brackite]

Also...did only Hillary voters not have a valid ID so could not vote? The article I read said that there is no way to know...or did I miss something?

Voter turnout from heavily Democratic-leaning Milwaukee County reduced significantly from 2012 to 2016. Milwaukee County's voter turnout from 2012 was about 16.05% of Wisconsin's total voter turnout while Milwaukee County's voter turnout from 2016 was just 14.82% of Wisconsin's total voter turnout.

2012 Milwaukee County Turnout - 492,576
2016 Milwaukee County Turnout - 441,053


See Also This Article:
https://www.npr.org/2012/01/28/14600621 ... -wont-vote

[_Markk]

Markk, how about you answer a simple question. Did the Russian's hack into HC's emails and release them when they wanted to?

I have to laugh when people like Markk avoid certain questions they know they cannot answer honestly without destroying their arguments, so avoid avoid avoid.[/quote]

I answered the question, more than once. The Russians have been trying to upend our elections since WW2.

The Russians hacked emails...and I am sure they do more than we will ever know in every arena as other countries do, and we do to them. It happened under Obama's watch and he even stated it was a joke that they could sway and election. And they may have come from a private server.

What e-mail that were hacked, to you think turned the election to DJT. Start with the worse one...what did it reveal?

[_EAllusion]

It wasn't the content of the hacked emails that was the problem, but how the press choose to cover them.