2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumNew York Magazine: McConnell chose the Republican Party over protecting his country
Trump, McConnell, Putin, and the Triumph of the Will to Power
"Even the most cynical observer of McConnell a cynical man to his bones would have been
shocked at his raw partisanship. Presented with an attack on the sanctity of his own countrys
democracy by a hostile foreign power, his overriding concern was party over country."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/trump-mcconnell-putin-and-the-triumph-of-the-will-to-power.html
Of the many things that resulted in Donald Trumps election, from Hillary Clintons own errors to James Comeys extraordinary insinuations against her in the contests final stages, Russian hacking played a meaningful enough role to tilt a razor-tight contest. Russia successfully riled up Bernie Sanders die-hards against the Democratic Party by leaking minor intrigue that fueled their suspicions, aggravating a Clinton liability with young voters that never healed. They also dribbled out enough emails in the succeeding months to keep stories using the word emails in the lead of Hillary Clinton news, adding more smoke to the haze of scandal that permeated coverage of her campaign.
We now know with near-certainty that Russia did this with the goal of electing Trump president. During the campaign, this reality was not quite certain enough to be reported as fact. Trump, of course, insisted there was no evidence Russia even had a hand in the attacks, let alone with the goal of helping him. (It could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.) Elements of the left decried suspicions of Russias role as neo-McCarthyism. The Nation editorialized, liberal-media elites have joined with the Clinton campaign in promoting the narrative of a devious Russian cyber-attack. Others on the left insisted that the substance of the stolen emails command far more importance than their provenance, which in any case was disputed and unknowable. On October 31, the New York Times reported that the attack was probably aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.
Friday, the Washington Post reported that the CIA had concluded well before November that Russia specifically sought to elect Trump. The CIAs analysis is obviously not infallible, but it fits with a wide array of other evidence. Russia had a clear motive: chilly relations with the Democratic administration that had orchestrated sanctions against it, close ties with Donald Trump and several of his advisers, and a series of pro-Russian positions from Trump on such issues as Crimea, NATO, and Vladimir Putins human rights abuses. Russia also hacked the Republican National Committee but declined to release any of the contents. The disruption was intentionally one-sided. The CIAs conclusion merely lends incrementally more confidence to a deduction that was already fairly obvious.
uponit7771
(91,768 posts)... and both decided not to protect the state level tabulating machines against being tampered with
Botany
(72,496 posts)In the fall of 2015 the Sec. of State in KY had a 5 or 6 point lead going into
the election for governor but he lost by 9 points. That is a 14 point swing and
the reason given was that the people in KY sided w/Kim Davis (whack job anti
gay county clerk)
God only knows how many down ticket races were flipped too.
BTW Trump had a computer server linked to a Ukraine Bank/Russia/Putin in
his HQ and he hired a Russian run data company out of London, England to
"help" in his campaign too.
uponit7771
(91,768 posts)... don't make sense.
The other thing that doesn't make sense is the pollsters silence on these issues... who in the fuck is going to take any of them seriously going forward any longer?!
Why should we unless they come out with some objective theories on how they fucked up so bad.
Fuck them, they know how; either it was hacked or voter suppresion or Comey effect .... they're too cowardly to say so... fuck them
Botany
(72,496 posts)... very accurate in a given time frame. The models that HRC w/a >90% chance of winning
and the exit polls in N.C., FL, PA, MI, and WI were not wrong.
This was a coup.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)He is one sad Republican sack.
mnhtnbb
(32,071 posts)Wounded Bear
(60,697 posts)when he vowed to block President Obama.
JTFrog
(14,274 posts)blue neen
(12,423 posts)Benedict McConnell.
TheFrenchRazor
(2,116 posts)Ellipsis
(9,183 posts)He might be done.
meow2u3
(24,923 posts)Bitch McTurtle belongs behind bars, along with Tiny Hands, Closet Case Pence, and the rest of the neo-McCarthyist incoming Putin regime.
Botany
(72,496 posts)I think Mitch knew that the fix was in so that is why he stonewalled President Obama's
pick for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland.
And BTW I don't know if this figure is true but I read today that 3.8 million people voted for
HRC in the primaries but they skipped in voting for President in the general election.
This was a coup.