There is a lot to digest to Jane Mayer’s big new Christopher Steele piece in The New Yorker, but the following bit interests me in particular.
[Clinton campaign manager Robby] Mook told me, “The problem with the Russia story is that people just weren’t buying it. Today, it’s, like, ‘Of course!’ But back then people thought that we were just desperately peddling conspiracy theories.” After the D.N.C.’s e-mails were hacked, Mook went on TV talk shows and pointed the finger at Russia, but, he says, his comments were often dismissed as “spin.” On Jake Tapper’s “State of the Union,” he declared, “What’s disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the D.N.C., stole these e-mails, and other experts are now saying that the Russians are releasing these e-mails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.” Tapper then interviewed Donald Trump, Jr., who ridiculed Mook’s accusation as “disgusting” and “phony”—even though it’s now known that, just a few weeks earlier, he had met at Trump Tower with a Russian offering dirt on Clinton.
Both during the campaign and after it, there were a lot of people on the left who did not want to hear about who was responsible for the hacks and the leaks that had damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Some saw the question of culpability as a distraction from the actual content of the emails, and that’s certainly how Trump wanted people to see it.
The first thing that leaked was the DNC’s dossier of opposition research on Trump, which was pretty clever if you think about it. It gave Trump the chance to accuse the Democrats of “hacking themselves.”
Donald Trump on Wednesday asserted that the Democratic National Committee hadn’t been hacked at all — and in fact conjured the story itself — after the party’s research on Trump was purportedly sent to journalists by a hacker.
“This is all information that has been out there for many years. Much of it is false and/or entirely inaccurate,” Trump said in a statement. “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader. Too bad the DNC doesn’t hack Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 missing emails.”
Trump consistently denied that the Russians were responsible for the hacks, but he was echoed by many people on the left who refused to accept the word of the intelligence community or cybersecurity firms. When Trump wasn’t denying that the Russians were behind the hacks, he was asking people to focus on the content, and particularly the fact that Bernie Sanders had supposedly gotten screwed by the DNC. This same argument was made by not a few Democrats and supporters of Stein and Sanders.
After the election, these same folks argued that the Russia investigation was just a way for Clintonite Democrats to avoid introspection and responsibility for losing to the most ridiculous major party candidate in our country’s history. They wanted a reckoning on what went wrong, and some nefarious foreign interference wasn’t something they wanted interfering in the conversation.
If we really want to have some introspection and responsibility, it’s time for the left as a whole to look at what happened in Italy yesterday and get real. It’s true that Italians are feeling overwhelmed with migrants and that the economy is stagnant, which means that there are actual causes for the right-wing populist revival of fascism. But the Five Star Movement, which got the most votes, is a completely Putin-aligned political phenomenon. Putin has been pushing these fascist forces in elections throughout Europe as a way of weakening the European Union and NATO. Helping Trump and hurting Clinton were part of the same overall plan.
It’s working strikingly well, at least in part because the left in the West is so slow to recognize the threat. Part of the needed correction is to identify the people who are pushing the Kremlin line either because they’re misguided or have some other higher order agenda, or because they actually want to divide and weaken the left. It’s easy to identify Roger Stone or Sean Hannity or Alex Jones. It’s harder to identify people or sources that we may trust, but shouldn’t.
In conjunction with Josh Marshall’s lede
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/is-there-a-problem
about lack of DCCC support for the March 13 PA-18 special election candidate Conor Lamb, I am wondering what a passionate supporter of democratic rights and principles can do?
Conor Lamb is not supporting Pelosi for speaker so the DCCC has good reasons to provide only moderate support. The district is so red that anything the DCCC did would probably backfire anyway. This guy is a Blue Dog type, although still worth supporting as you won’t get a liberal elected with that district.
You want people to turn away from fascism you need to offer them an alternative that works.
Why aren’t you a fascist then?
Because economically I’m a socialist.
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17035848/democracy-populism-trump-europe
It’s like your house. Hey, we all want to fix up our dwelling space right? Maybe get new gutters, put a french drain in the basement– hey, how about an extra bathroom? The living room really could use a fresh coat of paint, while we are at it.
oh by the way–
THE HOUSE IS BURNING DOWN!
Trump and Putin are the fire. If not neutralized, and swiftly, the inferno will destroy everything we have. There will be nothing to fix.
THAT is the message.
LOL!! Then why are Democrats, including one Tim Kaine, looking to water down Dodd-Frank? Why do Democrats vote to approve Cheeto Mussolini’s nominees? Why did a majority of Democrats vote to give Trump a bigger defense budget than even he requested? Why did many Democrats vote to give Trump increased spying powers?
Good questions.
Phil Perspective wrote:
Good questions?
You bet they are.
Here is my own answer.
The centrist Dems and Republicans are really allied more with each other (and with their shared corporate masters) than they are with the supposedly “liberal” and “conservative” Democratic and Republican parties. And…until very recently those neo-centrists were in control of both parties. Trump shocked the shit out of them, and Sanders damned near did as well. Only the plain fact that the centrist Dems were better at the long-game, inside, bureaucratic DNC-style hustle than were the centrist Republicans saved them from a serious Sanders primary challenge to HRC.
Would he have won the election against Trump? ? Damned if I know, but the idiot numbers crunchers at the DNC thought that HRC would win. Big time.
They believed this right up until the real numbers started to come in on election night. One of my fondest memories of that night came when I watched that useless little CNN hustler Wolf Blitzer look like he was going to shit his pants and faint when his map guy…I forget his name, but he was a real pro, he just reported the numbers with no spin whatsoever…somewhere around 10PM that night basically said that it was all over and Trump was going to win. I am by no means a Trump supporter, but the corporate-owned, centrist news purveyors (CNN=Centrist News Network. Bet on it.) are guilty as hell of a hugely successful propaganda job on the American public ever since the assassination years, and every time they fuck up I celebrate. Every crack in that propaganda wall is a ray of sunshine shining into the dingy room of U.S. political awareness.
AG
People can criticize Obama all day long for not doing more to intervene but the political climate at the time would have not just turned a deaf ear but the mocked and ridiculed even louder.
For those from Trump’s inner circle who continually claim that the campaign just simply wasn’t that organized to have pulled this off, was politically naive, there’s enough evidence on the table that some factions were plenty savvy.
btw, if you get a chance to watch a clip from MSNBC’s Ali Velshi/hosted by Katy Tur this morning, there’s an insane rant from one of the Trump aide’s who got a Mueller subpoena.
. . . live-tweeting of the interview by Yashar Ali.
It is indeed gob-smacking(ly stupid! “Interesting Legal Strategy”–atrios):
Saw his interview with Ari. He seems real desperate. Like he knows he cannot call, email, or text to warn someone that the gig is up. Going on cable tv was the only thing he could think to do.
Let’s start a GoFundMe for him. Buy him a toothbrush.
Naw. Arrest him. Put him on some military transport to Leavenworth where he can sit until he is ready to talk.
seems more appropriate…
Sorry, Barack doesn’t get a pass. He did the equivalent of fiddling while the nation burned. It was his responsibility to sound the alarm and marshal the troops. If a foreign entity attacks, the President must act. He did not that. In his typical constitutional-minded way, he pondered, he explained, he warned, he weighed the options. Our nation was dying and he couldn’t wait to go sail boarding.
How do you know what he did or did not do. Do you have top secret clearance?
Do or not do…he was unsuccessful.
And here we are…
AG
Jane Mayer’s new article in The New Yorker, which I have yet to read, apparently addresses this.
I think they cut Obama’s nuts off from the beginning and at least after 2010. Before then he had too many blue dogs working against him.
Look. There is a chunk of the American left who pretty much believe that anyone who is against American interests abroad (and is therefore understood to be “standing against American hegemony”) is, if not worth supporting, at least worth NOT ATTACKING (how these governments treat countries around them or their own people is of secondary importance at best). I dunno how many of them there are, but they write for The Nation, and presumably form a chunk of that readership.
And, to be fair, I also presume that a chunk of them also assumed this Russia business was initially just a bit of the old Cold Warrior fear mongering.
Either way, accepting the idea of Russian involvement means they need to accept the pronouncements of the US intel agencies. It has to be an unpleasant feeling for them. I’m they would prefer to focus on ICE or Trans issues and pretend that Russia thing isn’t a thing.
It’s also possible I’m being hard on them. I’ve never cared for that faction.
“I’m they would prefer to focus on ICE or Trans issues and pretend that Russia thing isn’t a thing.”
This is a cheap shot. And your first paragraph is provocative hyperbole and a silly blanket statement.
I’d like to point out that saying “a chunk”, as I did, pretty much by definition means it is not a blanket statement.
I think that is all I really need to say.
Remember
So it’s all good, and America should thank us.
“Some saw the question of culpability as a distraction from the actual content of the emails… “
Why does everything have to be either/or?
I believed the contents of the e-mails were true AND I believed the Russians did it. I also believe with a certainty that the CIA has done many horrible things both to other countries and to this country, but I know that they also perform legitimate intelligence functions and that we, rely on them to perform those functions, especially when other countries are trying to manipulate our elections.
When the CIA was doing those horrible things, by the way, they WERE NOT performing legitimate intelligence functions.
I know the CIA has fucked up other countries by manipulating their elections, which is precisely why I also know that it’s the responsibility of American intelligence to protect us from other countries trying to do that to us.
Some take the attitude that “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” apparently forgetting that we ARE the gander but we were not responsible for the “secret sauce”. Er … I know I wasn’t — were you?
Russia has become the center of world fascism, so it is a mystery to me why lefties would place so much trust in them. I suppose old habits die hard. Sometimes you really need to pay attention to what’s going on.
It’s working strikingly well, at least in part because the left in the West is so slow to recognize the threat.
Just for reference, pretty much what happened in Iran.
Maybe because the west repeatedly shoots itself in the foot, on purpose. Look what the EU & ECB did to both Greece and Italy. For a quick summation:
Did Putin cause our politicians to cut taxes on millionaires and billionaires while screwing over the little guy? I don’t mean just last month. I mean things like West Virginia, which idiots like Joe Manchin helped cause. BTW, Manchin recruited Jim Justice to run for Governor. Is that Putin’s fault?
Do us a favor and make a list of all the things that are not Putin’s fault.
The point being is that Putin, if anything, is taking advantage of the awfulness of our elites. Dumping even more gasoline on an already raging bonfire.
Yes, and it’s a good point! But it’s not where apologists like Greenwald stop. The analysis such that it is turns to a defense, whereby they AGREE with Putin and his grievances, or at the very least defend his actions. It’s never an analysis of what he does so much as a way to work in a defense of it. And this is why the left will eventually be broken, and why a lot are trying to avoid this conversation. If parts of the left are now defending Putin’s actions rather than analyzing them, then all the “well at least the Soviets tried to implement socialism” defense of USSR’s own imperialism is borne of a lie, and what lies underneath is pure opposition to US which is going to lead to alliances with fascists. Fuck that.
I stopped reading GG a while back, so I don’t know what he’s saying about it these days. My point has been this exact thing, even if it hasn’t always been that articulate. We have underlying problems that aren’t being addressed. That’s the real issue. And my guess is some people think the Putin thing is being used to ignore the fact that we have serious issues that would still be serious issues whether Trump had help or not. Just look at West Virginia. Manchin recruited that shitbag to run for Governor. And now he wants to end the strike by gutting state government. The asshole doesn’t even want to raise taxes on oil/gas/coal companies. Taxes that were lowered thanks to Joe Manchin, among others.
Did Putin cause this:
Quite possibly, since Russian interference quite possibly is the reason McConnell is majority leader and not Schumer.
As the kids on Twitter say .. read the thread that starts with this Tweet:
“Did Putin cause our politicians to cut taxes on millionaires and billionaires while screwing over the little guy?”
Hmmm, now I’m not so sure…it would explain a lot!
Crooked oligarchs gotta stick together. Else the masses come with pitchforks.
Naaaahhhh…won’t happen.
They’ll just ban pitchforks.
AG
Actually, yes, Putin did cause the taxes to get cut for millionaires and billionaires. Obama had raised them, and Hillary had proposed raising them further. Russia helped Trump and the Republican get elected, and they cut them.
Russia is one of the critical causes of the Trump tax cut.
The short explanation for the five star movements election in Italy is:
None of these has to do with Putin. The first is on the ECB and the eurogroup. The second on France, US and the Gulf monarchies. The third on the traditional parties and foreign backers of said parties like the US.
Btw, there were at least three fascist or post-fascist parties in the election, and at least one gaining seats. None of these are the five star movement.
The destruction of Libya and the refugee crisis predated the Libyan intervention and is the fault of Gaddafi. Now, if you want to say that Gaddafi happily played along with western intervention prior to the protests against him, fine; the US sold him weapons and along with the UK renditioned his political opponents to be jailed and tortured in exchange for his support in the war on terror.
Why was France so hot to trot against Ghadaffi?
Who knows. Politicians aren’t pure sociopaths (all of the time). There was an election in 2012. Refugees and Arab spring was an issue in general.
Immigration to Italy has always been a “problem”, which is why the Italian government paid Gaddafi to “crack down” on the border flows (arm and train people to kill migrants). They’re paying warlords still which is exacerbating the slave trade there.
August 2008: Italy to pay Libya $5 billion
There’s been a migrant camp on Lampedusa since at least ’04 or ’05.
Migrants arriving in Italy by see increased in 2011 and then even more so in 2014 when the second round of the Libyan civil war kicked off.
As we remember Ghaddafi died in 2011.
Ghaddafi may have been a dictator, but the decision to support the rebels with an airforce and build them up to be able to attack the Libyan army was taken in capitals outside of Libya.
Surely, Ghaddafi didn’t call for Qatar to send special forces?
It is unlikely that Qatar acted alone, not least because it is not a neighourbing state.
And apparently the chaos that followed could have been and was predicted.
“Now, if you want to say that Gaddafi happily played along with western intervention prior to the protests against him, fine; the US sold him weapons and along with the UK renditioned his political opponents to be jailed and tortured in exchange for his support in the war on terror.”
That is a good point, but not the one I’m making. The cooperation with Libya – which included surveilliance assistance to be used against Libyans – was part of the EUs southern wall, where autocratic countries south of the EU was bribed to make sure refugees and other migrants didn’t reach the EU. This caused all kinds of suffering, and was a policy I opposed and tried to make people awaare of, but at least it was a rational evil. Bombing the crap out of coutries you are paying to keep refugees away is just chaotic evil.
I opposed the Libyan intervention when it took place, and I still don’t know if that was the correct decision or not. In addition to the migrant flows from Libya, you have migrant flows from Syria. And I opposed Libyan intervention specifically because of a result like we see in Syria, where there was no such intervention to take out Assad, but to prop him up. All of the intervening other countries have done there are either in service to genocide, war on terror expansion, imperial actions of Iran and Russia, or a combination of the above. The epicenter of the violence is still the dictator. Rather be dealing with chaos and migrant flows than mass murder and genocide.
In all its subversion attempts, Russia has been supporting movements which have some domestic support. This has always been true of foreign nations seeking puppets – the puppet must have substantial domestic support.
What’s relevant is how the Russians take over the domestic movements – the Republican party in the US is now subservient to them, and most of the lieutenants in Five Star are too. So if and when the movements gain power, they work for the benefit of Russia, which currently is very much to the detriment of the West (for example, the US not enforcing sanctions).
Also, the movements Russia is supporting are typically destructive themselves, even if there are some legitimate grievances, and the Russian support gives them more power than they would have otherwise. Brexit is going to be a disaster. Trump is a disaster. The Italians fascists are going to have more power now than they would have, and that’s bad for everybody, and possibly will become a disaster as well.
It’s more than the republicans who have become subservient to Russia.
I have a feeling that Mueller is going to lay it all out, and it’s not going to be good news.
.
Russia is a faltering and failing nation state, a fossil-fuel Potemkin democracy that doesn’t pass the smell test. Nevertheless its leader and his foreign shenanigans and adventures are apparently supported by most of the citizens of that country, to the extent their opinion is solicited, ha-ha. Putin is advancing the national interests of his state by the various means you have detailed, which clearly involves his latest favorite, election-influencing/tampering. He obviously worked to help install (via our failed constitution and the heroic James Comey) a democratically illegitimate stooge in the US WH, who seems intent on advancing policies that coincidentally advance the foreign policy goals of Vladimir Putin.
The latest is Der Trumper’s Quixotic tariff announcement, which can be dressed up as “populist” while being deeply damaging to the economic expectations of the western powers, another Putin goal. As if decades of disinvestment in heavy industry and de-industrialization can be remedied by some ramshackle tariffs. Sorry, but the horse has left the barn. Of course no one ever accused Donald Trump of being a serious person.
The high comedy here is not so much that the powerless and hapless left needs to focus on Russia as the fact that the American RIGHT refuses to even acknowledge the issue of both Putinism and Russian meddling! This is professional-grade hypocrisy. That the Manchurian Candidate and his party simply refuse to do ANYTHING to counter Putin’s ratfucking should be the Dem election message. This in the face of unanimous warnings by their past comrades-in-arms, the US national security community! How much clearer could the Repubs’ mantra of “Party Over Country” be? Given that Dems are a defeated opposition party, it’s hard to see what else they can do. It’s quite obvious after the Dreamer Debacle that they simply have no leverage to accomplish anything, on the issue of national security or otherwise. The corporate media is of little use as well.
The underlying problem in all this turmoil is of course the hostility to immigration that is now surfacing across the entire western sphere. Be it Muslim or Pole, no country wants immigrants, who are seen as both competing for a declining national pie and weakening the Volk. Now it’s the Italians turn, after we just made clear that we can’t stand even the Dreamers! Today’s fascism is pretty heavily focused on the Volk element of Der Fuhrer’s famous program, and I think we can kiss goodbye the Star-Trekian vision of universal brotherhood, ha-ha. Today’s is a Fascism-lite version of the 1930s, as there is no militarist geopolitical expansion program being pursued, no one (thankfully) ranting about Lebensraum…
Hell, other than fucking up the liberal order of the West and poisoning its societies, it’s hard to see what Putin is actually accomplishing with his bots and facebook pages. The Guards Armored divisions have long been dissolved and he couldn’t even occupy Ukraine, no matter how many memoirs of the Great Patriotic War he reads and Stalinist situation maps he studies. Ultimately Putin may need to ponder the proverb that one needs to be careful what one wishes for…
The left should grab patriotism and stuff it down the right wing’s throat. They are never allowed to call themselves patriots again.
You write:
Oh, absolutely!!!
He’s been working on it since the ’50s!!! Probably an immortal alien in Russian clothing.
Him and his damned bots!! Bringing us Nixon and Reagan and all!!! Those assassinations. That unfortunate recent economic crash. Vietnam!!! The Iraq War!!! The burning cities of the ’60s and more recent manifestations of the same permanent, racially-enforced poverty. Those damned terr’ists!!! Our wonderful mass shooting sprees.
Man, them Russkies is good!!!
Get real.
AG
“…..which means that there are actual causes for the right-wing populist revival of fascism.”
But are “migrants” and “economic anxiety” the true cause OR the latest excuse for a large enough percent of Western democratic societies that are Fascist, but never allowed to be discussed as such in the public square?
The numbers alone cast doubt on any of these right wing political gains even being “populist” in nature. It is just a latest buzz word to deflect blame away from people who know better and put it onto the powerless citizenry.
In 2016 while media obsessed about the fate of 300k coal miners, it largely ignored that most of President Stupid’s support came from people who did the BEST economically Obama. No one dares point out the overnight change in our national economic narrative.
Sorry Booman, but your lead post and some of the comments here are just plain silly. It may or may not be to the Democratic party’s advantage to focus on Russian meddling the world over as a way of getting at Trump (and perhaps avoiding a deeper self analysis for Hillary’s failure). I will leave it to yourself and your allies to judge what is good politics for you to pursue in the USA.
But as far as Europe is concerned, its just totally off point. Italy has long had a strong Communist party with a history of alignment with the Soviet Union. That party is now weaker than ever, and the 5* movement is NOT it’s successor. It is prospering for entirely domestic reasons of austerity, stagnation, and the immigrant crisis. Sure the Russian ambassador is doing his job – while the US has none. A legitimate point to make against Trump. But if you were blogging in Italy, as a progressive, I suspect you would be supporting the 5* movement.
5*’s policy positions are pretty mainstream in Europe. Nobody doubts that the US and EU meddled in the Ukraine and that that meddling backfired spectacularly. Nobody knows who to support in Syria. Probably all but humanitarian interference there is to be avoided. Certainly it is difficult to see the US position as obviously preferable to Putin’s. Probably the best outcome, and now the obvious one, is for Assad’s regime to win quickly so as to minimise further loss of life. There is almost nothing left to win there anyway, and it is in Europe’s interest to limit the further inflow of refugees that is destabilising European politics.
But you risk delegitimising the US progressive left abroad by buying into neo-con fantasies and media propaganda. It was a difficult enough choice for most progressives outside the US to choose between Hillary’s neo-con warmongering and Trump’s totally incompetent isolationism. Either way the USA and the rest of the world loses. If the US left cannot offer us something better we will become indifferent to the result of the mid-terms and even Trunmp’s re-election – always assuming he doesn’t actual start a nuclear war somewhere or a trade war with the rest of the world – something he seems intent on doing. Either way, everybody loses. Is a moderately competent conservative US President the best we can hope for in the future?
Is that all the US left have to offer? Or do you simply not care what the rest of the world thinks? The USA has already lots it’s place as the largest economy in the world (measured in PPP GDP (IMF and CIA World Factbook) . It has also lost almost all semblance of leadership in world politics. I am personally not looking forward to China taking over, and the EU is too diffuse a power ever to exert really powerful global leadership. But I am fearful of what will happen in the vacuum of there being almost no global leadership. Can you offer us nothing better than warmed up Hillary soup?
Outside of the Berniebros,
Who, in the left, hasn’t been watching and understanding the Russia conspiracy with the Trump Campaign?
In 1972, the Republican Party burglarized the DNC. That crime was never punished, not in real time, not ever, not even in memory.
Why is it that Mook’s expectation that the media would take his allegations seriously in real time has any real expectation. A much less polarized media did not take a police report seriously in real time in 1972.
Name the mainstream media personalities (we don’t have reporters any more) who did take Mook’s report seriously. Name the real-time evidence, not the evidence that has been discovered that was available at the time but never surfaces either by the media nor publicly by the national security agencies that later issued a weak joint report and have only strengthened their stories since the Mueller investigation has gotten some of the principals to sing.
For 46 years, the US was so focused on the Soviet Union that when the Soviet Union collapse, the US “helped” them with a shock treatment that delivered not democracy and free markets but oligopoly, religious authoritarianism, and autocratic rule, moving close to a return to tsarist monarchy. Putin is a reaction to that harsh experience of an interim during which there was not new leadership but the persistence of the old leadership. The loss of US power as a result of the Bush-Cheney recklessness and a bipartisan continuation of the illusion of American absolute imperial power after it was in fact gone (around the time of pivoting from Libya to Syria and Asia) allowed Putin to guage that Russia’s power was rising relatively. The Republican clown car provided the realization that US foreign policy under a Republican Congress and Hillary Clinton would continue to assert US power, especially with respect to Russia’s borders. The left created neither loss of US power (it opposed Bush’s and most of Obama’s wars) nor the failure to accurately gauge Russia’s serious fear and opposition of US encirclement.
Democratic scapegoating of the left has led it into legislative losses and distracted it from useful alliances. Despite strong grassroots movements pushing against this tendency, the direction from the DNC is moving in this direction again.
Russia is a sideshow and only a threat is the US responds to every move from a US fear of weakness. In fact the US weakness lie in the viciouness of its partisanship and the absence of any concern for traditional left values of peace and prosperity. Russia’s main purpose is a a sales incentive for adjoining nations to buy overpriced and rapidly obsolescing and complicated weapons systems as other US manufacturing stagnates and offshores itself.
The US’s biggest national security danger is the blowback from its own foreign policy of the past 70 years, a foreign policy that squander over a trillion dollars a year.
But, yes, let’s start cheerleading a Eurasian war, or one that starts in the Middle East or southwest Asia and spreads to the Black Sea. Because our military industrial complex has become pretty much all that is left of the US economy under austerian rule.
And because Democrats do not have the gumption to take on their true political rivals — the Republicans — on anything that actually is a matter of principles and practical value.
Democrats know what they don’t want – lefty and Green candidates — and cannot tell the public what exactly they do want.
Well, that’s not exactly true. There are grassroots Democrats stepping up to the plate locally in some places that the DNC wants to starve financially that are saying what they do want.
Without some serious change Democratic incumbents, but not newbies, are likely to find 2018 to be another shock.
Ruaaia has one strategic importance; it has parity with the US in nuclear warheads, regulated by treaty. One would think that would encourage both nations to economize by using diplomacy instead of nuclear power, proxy relations instead of direct conflict, strategy and tactics short of direct and open war instead of saber-rattling.
Unfortunately America’s emotions and sense of loss of solitary and absolute power have come to dominate its good sense.
And that is panicking Russia and causing Russia’s emotions and lust for dignity and recognized power to dominate what was left of its post-Yeltsin caution.
The left is such small potatoes in the US that it wasn’t even marginal in 2016. But it gives a nice false shiny object for the Democratic establishment to focus on and exert perceived revenge.
Focus on Republicans, you might win. Focus on Bernie and Jill Stein and you will lose again.
While I completely agreed that the “left” in the Democratic Party (and that’s a pretty slippery term, frankly) really just dropped the ball before and after the election with respect to Russia’s blatant interference in the election to cause the election of a no-nothing, extremist monster who could be easily manipulated by Putin, I find it deeply disturbing that commentators simply right off the responsibility of GOP voters because they are supposedly hopeless and beyond appealing to any sense of justice or even patriotism. That simply enables their enthusiastic acceptance of authoritarian government and a weakened America. It seems we should be holding them to account too instead of just giving them a pass because of “culture”.