Stop saying election meddling didn’t make a difference!
It’s not only Republicans saying that it “doesn’t matter” or “didn’t make a difference,” but also some Democrats. Typically such Democrats say, “I didn’t say that Trump won because of the meddling. Yes, he won, fair and square. We (or Hillary) screwed up and didn’t do blah-blah-blah…”
Let’s say my friend tells me he eats donuts for breakfast every morning. What if I said: “You didn’t get fat because of the donuts. It’s not the fault of the donuts. You probably didn’t exercise enough, you probably ate other bad food, you didn’t do blah-blah-blah…” Well, of course there’s some truth in this. He could have eaten donuts but also compensated by working out more and keeping the rest of his diet healthy. After all, we don’t know from his comment how many and how big and how calorie-laden these donuts were, so there’s some uncertainty as to how great of a factor they were. Right.
But to leap ahead with some kind of bizarre reverse-butterfly effect to say that donuts aren’t the reason, or it didn’t make a difference, or it didn’t matter is ridiculous! Of course it makes “a difference”; every calorie matters. And how could we possibly know how much?
There is no longer any doubt that Russians and other foreigners meddled in the 2016 elections. The extent of the interference is still being determined, although Robert Mueller is gathering more information and more evidence daily. It’s clear there was manipulation of public opinion, especially on social media and especially with the use of bots (computer programs that mimic real people) to give credence to certain stories with repeated hits, likes, forwards, and responses. Bots were overwhelmingly anti-Clinton in the 2016 election. It’s also clear that foreign “trolls” made big efforts to stir up fights among Americans with disinformation, propaganda, and divisive rhetoric, especially about race, immigration, and gun control. It’s clear there were fake/hoax news stories planted from several sources including in Russia and other countries. There are more than 140 fake news sites based in Veles, Macedonia alone. The DNC servers (therefore emails) were hacked. Websites that looked like they were American-made were created, such as the very popular “Heart of Texas” site, an anti-“Killary”, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, pro-secession Texas nationalist site.
Of course we all understand why Trump alternates between “there was no collusion,” “none of this made a difference,” and “it’s all fake news, my friends,” because his sole priority is not allowing anyone to question why he won the presidential election.
During the early days of the Cold War, the CIA tried to influence post-WWII European elections, especially to prevent communists from winning in certain West European countries in which leftist partisans were instrumental in resisting Nazi occupation. Most historians credit these efforts with helping to prevent these relatively popular candidates from winning.
Many countries have interfered in other countries’ elections, often successfully. American and Soviet/Russian electoral intervention is the most common. In fact, American private political consultants were instrumental in helping Russian president Boris Yeltsin get re-elected in 1996. The U.S. government also clearly favored Yeltsin in a variety of ways.
According to a pre-2016 election study by Carnegie-Mellon researcher Dov Levin, the average effect of the 117 electoral interventions he studied increased the favored side’s vote by about three percent, although at the time he said: “So, assuming that no new kinds of covert/overt acts take place between now and [the 2016] Election Day, the Russian intervention is unlikely to have a significant effect either way.” However, as of July 2017, after much more information was revealed, he speculated: “Given the magnitude of the election victory by Donald Trump, it was a very narrow election victory based on about 100,000 voters in three states, it is quite possible that that was the thing that made the difference.”
So just as we know donuts are not the healthiest breakfast, we know that any manipulation of public opinion, whether by governments or private citizens, can be consequential. What is in dispute in both cases is only the extent and its effectiveness.
What is Trump’s response to an assault on our election system? What are his loyal supporters saying? They are making a bizarre counter-argument that it is actually Hillary and the Democrats that colluded with Russia and Christopher Steele to try to ruin Trump’s candidacy. This follows a well-known pattern and would not be the first time Trump accused others of things for which he is guilty. It is akin to a child with paint all over himself, holding a spray paint can, and claiming “No, Joe made the graffiti!”
So, no tough talk. No implementation of the sanctions passed long ago. No instructions to the intelligence community to safeguard the integrity of the 2018 elections. No collaboration with other countries (such as France and Germany) who have more successfully defended themselves. All Trump said was that Putin “believes” [sic] that he didn’t meddle. He doesn’t know?
I’m still waiting for Sarah Huckabee-Sanders to explain to us in her magical way why President Trump believes that Hillary colluded with Russians to undermine his election, but utters not a single criticism of them about it. It doesn’t take a “stable genius” to suspect that either he doesn’t believe it, or the Russians have something incredibly incriminating on him… or both.
And of course, the FBI and possibly the entire intelligence community is engaged in a massive “deep state” anti-Trump sabotage, based on an e-mail joke between two agents having an affair. It’s an ongoing secret conspiracy that supposedly everyone knows about. How embarrassing. Can they not even make an effort to sound credible?
And dammit, stop saying the meddling doesn’t matter.
