- Joined
- Oct 14, 2015
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You are aware that if Hillary wasn't so lazy, ceding to Trump, letting Trump both outwork and out campaign her by a 116 campaign visits/stops to 71 for Hillary between 1 Sep 2016 through 8 Nov 2016, it wouldn't have mattered one iota what Russia did or didn't do?
It's less the number of stops, and more the fact that she just about ignored a few key swing states that went for Obama assuming they'd go for her too. She lost by 20-50k votes or so in those few states if memory serves. Would've flipped the election if she had poured energy in. I remember reading reports about despairing ground operations in those states that were just about making it up as they went along. The campaign didn't devote resources to them.
I found it blindingly foolish behavior for a Clinton campaign.
Then there was Hillary's ho hum campaign, completely lacking energy and enthusiasm. He inept campaign strategy, her whole lackadaisical attitude toward running for president. Her complete inattention to the so called blue wall states, her concentration putting in time, energy and money into winning states like Georgia, Arizona and Utah. Just so she could boast she received more electoral votes than Obama.
Then there was the matter of the DNC and state Democratic Party leaders jury rigging the primaries in her favor. That made Sanders supporters angry. All these things were directly under Hillary's control. Hillary lost the election by taking the election for granted, in the bag, that she didn't have to work at all in an attempt to be elected.
Blame it on Russia if you must, but it was Hillary's actions, inactions, her decisions that even allowed this race to become close. It shouldn't have been. Hillary lost it herself, Trump didn't win it. Hillary gave it to him.
It's hard to say it's "not Russia" though. All of these things combined. I doubt the precise effect of social media echo-chambers passing around disinformation propaganda that is anti-Clinton could be properly measured or extrapolated, when all these other factors went into the pot. I don't see how anyone can conclude the Russian campaign definitely did not affect the result, perhaps even that it definitely did not fix the result.
The bottom line is, they went in for Trump in a close election. It didn't have to be a close election, but yes, all sorts of things were bad with regard to Clinton and her campaign. So it was close. The closer the campaign, the more a disinformation campaign can matter. How much it matters....well..... that's down to all sorts of polling and modeling and a bit of guesstimation.
(There is the separate question of whether the propaganda had a stronger effect when aimed at the people who would become Trump's base during the GOP primary phase).
The other bottom line is: no matter what "meddling" or even specifically "election meddling" we've done, it is very bad to have someone else meddling in our elections. National security trumps charges of hypocrisy in my book.