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Now, note what I am not arguing: I am not arguing that Russia did not leak the embarrassing DNC information. Nor am I arguing that there should be no consequences for a government trying to aid one candidate over another in a foreign election. But it is important to remember that the “interference” in question did not involve telling lies or changing votes. It involved releasing true information, of genuine public interest, that made people less inclined to vote for one party over another.
I am sure this line of reasoning is not persuasive to many Democrats, who fundamentally believe they lost in an unfair fight. But as a voter, I was extremely glad to know the information that came out of the leaks. I felt it was important. I voted for Hillary anyway, but I felt more informed about how the party worked, and I’m pleased the facts came out. Leaks are often useful in shining light on secretive and undemocratic institutions.

It’s also true that by focusing so intensively on the leaking of DNC information, Democrats are failing to conduct the necessary critical self-reflection on other reasons why they may have lost the election. The DNC leaks would not have mattered at all had the election not been close, and it’s important to understand why the election was close. This requires a serious appraisal of the strategic mistakes the Democrats made, such as failing to focus on blue collar voters in key swing states and failing to craft a compelling message. It requires considering why the Clinton campaign decided to send Lena Dunham to North Carolina rather than sending Hillary Clinton to Wisconsin. It would require some humility, and some consideration of whether some voters’ rejection of the Democrats might have been, in part, an explicable and rational response to factors like major spikes in their health care premiums. Ultimately, single-minded focus on Putin entirely exonerates the Democratic Party from any responsibility for their own loss. And that’s dangerous, because it means they’re not actually trying to figure out how to improve their electoral fortunes in the future.

Even worse, every moment spent talking about Putin is a moment not spent talking about mass incarceration, policing, Social Security, Medicaid, public schooling, Chelsea Manning, gun violence, climate change, and war. It’s true that one can care about many things at once. But it’s also true that political messaging is somewhat zero-sum: you can’t talk about everything, you have to allocate your resources and energy. And if you’re spending all of your time trying to cheerlead the next Cold War (and, by the way, almost making Trump appear sane for being seemingly the only politician disinclined to start such a war), then you’re not pushing the progressive agenda forward. You’re definitely not giving anyone a sense of your major priorities, and you’re also not giving anyone a convincing reason to return to the Democratic Party. Trump is giving press conferences in front of factories whose jobs he has supposedly preserved, while Democrats are frantically calling Trump a Kremlin agent. Who is speaking most to people’s real life material interests?
Sadly, it doesn’t have to be this way. Trump is unpopular, and it wouldn’t take much effort for Democrats to build a serious opposition movement that excited the country and effectively challenged the Republican agenda. But when the media is absolutely dominated by Russia stories, this is going to be impossible. Just consider two hypothetical headlines:

•  “Democrats Vow To Defend Social Security and Medicare, Fight Trump’s ‘Anti-Working Class’ Agenda”
  
• “Democrats Vow To Investigate Russian Hacks, Fight Trump’s ‘Pro-Putin’ Agenda”
  

Which of these is going to rebuild the party’s political fortunes? Which is going to get politically apathetic people to join our side? And which do we care about most? Yet which are we seeing instead, over and over and over?
It’s difficult to escape the cynical conclusion that a lot of the Democrats’ noise-making on Russia is somewhat opportunistic. Consider what would happen if the roles were reversed. If Trump lost the election, and the intelligence agencies said it was because Putin pulled for Clinton by releasing the Billy Bush tape, what would Democrats say? Would they make the same arguments? Would they say that the Billy Bush tape should never have been heard? Would they say that Clinton’s victory was illegitimate? Would they spend the bulk of their time insisting that the election was compromised?

How The Times Failed You

A look back at the Paper of Record’s election commentary…
by Emily Bartlett Hines


When 2016 dawned, it seemed like anything could happen. Now long-forgotten figures like Martin O’Malley and Carly Fiorina still roamed debate stages, Donald Trump was still a joke, Bernie Sanders had just stopped being one, and every voter could still dream of success for her favored candidate.
Still, even then, there were those warning voters against attempting to monkey with fate, against progressives delusional enough to believe they could create the future in whatever image they wanted. Hillary Clinton’s politics were the only feasible destiny, Paul Krugman warned Bernie Sanders admirers in his January editorial “How Change Happens.” If people failed to accept that, they would bring on disaster:
“Sorry, but there’s nothing noble about seeing your values defeated because you preferred happy dreams to hard thinking about means and ends. Don’t let idealism veer into destructive self-indulgence.”
Krugman’s attitude would prove emblematic of the Paper of Record’s election coverage. As the months passed, the New York Times’ Hillary-boosting scribes would converge on a set of rhetorical strategies to defend hard thinking by squashing ideas that fell outside the bounds of pundit orthodoxy. The paper decided early on that 2016 was to be a coronation, and that all attempts to derail Hillary’s ascent to the presidency (or even to point out that it wasn’t going according to plan) would be mocked, ignored, or treated as failures to acknowledge Empirical Reality. The Times’ “The Upshot” election predictor consistently held that Hillary was comfortably on her way to the presidency, regardless of what anyone else (e.g. voters) had to say about it. To read the Times in 2016 was to be told, in a tone of utmost certitude, that Hillary Clinton was inevitable and inescapable.

Gargantua wrote:Tramp orgijao u Rusiji i Rusi ga ucenjuju.... kaže super duper "top sikrit izveštaj"

Klasterfak

plachkica wrote:Mene samo zanima šta je to što bi moglo kompromitovati Trampa?
Ima problema sa erekcijom?

ostap bender wrote:btw, ako ovo zaista dolazi od senilnog mekejna, spreman sam da se kladim da su sastavljali dokument neki ukrajinski fantomi.