Democrats blame Russia for tipping the election in favor of Donald Trump. But it’s hard to see the logic of their argument, even if they eventually turn out to be correct.
The Russia Conspiracy Theory, Explained
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
12 Comments. Leave new
@Ted – you need a new straw man, this one’s getting a little frayed.
@Regulars – we’ve tossed around the larger picture, politely for the most part. I don’t see any reason to open up the discussion again, but I do have a question. Why such strong pushback? I know I’d love to see Don John go down in flames, I assume y’all would too. I’s expect his supporters to argue incessantly that there’s nothing to see here, but am surprised to hear it from his detractors.
Ted’s straw”man” is hardly as frayed as the straw”country” trotted out by HRC/DNC to which he refers.
And WHY is it worth repeating? Because the particular straw”country” response was/is is chillingly characteristic (unintentionally, or do they even realize?) of the tired, uninspired, totally off-base, hackneyed, cliched, insulting and frayed campaign that HRC burned $1.2 billion to embarrass herself with and to usher in Herr Hair …. all on the ultimate “merit” that is was “her turn.”
Another word to describe Hillary’s campaign is “over.”
@CH
Hillary and the Democratic Party oligarchy’s campaign would be over if they had surrendered their control of the DNC, rather than re-entrenched their control, recognized that the screw job they had given to huge numbers of people who had voted for them was not a winning strategy, but that their failure to win a majority of Electoral College votes was their fault and not Russia’s.
As things now stand, the Democrats will have some big wins in their future, not because they have seen the error and futility of their ways, but because of the great number of people who will vote for them in the future, as awful as they are, rather than for Trump.
The vote for Trump was nothing more than a jump from the frying pan into the fire.
And now that the fire has grown hotter under Trump, people will jump back again into the hotter-than-ever-before frying pan of the Democrats.
This is a regressive process, not a progressive process.
@Glenn – that all may be true, but it it’s simply no longer relevant. She lost, game over.
Rather than spend our time in fruitless analyses of why the loser lost; we should concentrate on the jackass that won. I will enthusiastically fan whatever flames arise, and I invite you to join me in that endeavor.
@CH
If the campaign to demonize Russia to excuse their own failures were truly over, the word “Russia” in the context of campaign discussions would never cross another Democrat’s lips.
Democrats could stop talking about this “dead” issue anytime they choose to, but they choose not to.
The failure of the Democrats is the issue. Obama is said to be receiving a $400,000 “tip” from Wall Street in the fall, for services rendered.
How can one talk about removing the corruption (the splinter) from Trump’s eye, while ignoring the corruption (the log) in the Democrat’s own eye?
Will the chickens be saved from the fox by the wolf?
You can wake somebody who is sleeping, but you can’t wake someone who is only pretending to sleep.
I realize we are, and will continue to be, at an impasse. So, Good Day, Sir.
Good Day, Glenn 🙂
“How can one talk about removing the corruption (the splinter) from Trump’s eye, while ignoring the corruption (the log) in the Democrat’s own eye?”
I dunno, how? Moreover: why? Personally, I prefer to remove the corruption from our government regardless of the tribal affiliation of the alleged perpetrator.
However, *if* Komrade Trumpski *did* collude with the Russians, it is hardly a ‘splinter’ – more like ‘High Treason’
“Will the chickens be saved from the fox by the wolf?”
Doubtful. However, I am fairly certain that we don’t need any help from the bear.
Thanks for keeping this alive, Ted.
Lies will never move one toward the truth, only to a new lie posing as a truth.
A lie repeated often enough may be popularly accepted as truth, and from that beachhead a new lie may be launched.
Democrats want to distance themselves from their gross domestic failure, to rehabilitate themselves and continue their attack against Russia in their neocon quest to conquer the world—or kill us all in trying.
Regardless of the provenance of the emails that the Democrats want to blame their loss on, the truth the emails revealed was never challenged by them. Democrats blame the messenger but the message itself remains unimpugned by them.
I understand the necessity of believing that an unobserved thing exists in order to motivate the search for it. But the fool searches for his lost keys, not in the dark where he lost them, but under the light of the street lamp. Democrats need to look at the reason they lost so many Electoral College votes to Trump, and why they failed to recognize that those who live outside of the Main Stream media bubble would have no part of Hillary, and would likely have voted for Sanders instead of Trump, if given the chance.
It is something quite different to believe that something exists, and in the belief that the thing sought does exist, that the reality of its existence held so strongly that actual observation becomes moot, and this belief replaced with an object of zealous, almost religious faith, in a faithfulness to this object unto death.
Mass man is mass murder.
That is why I am an atheist to the conceptual object of political theology.
“Democrats need to look at the reason they lost so many Electoral College votes to Trump, and why they failed to recognize that those who live outside of the Main Stream media bubble would have no part of Hillary, and would likely have voted for Sanders instead of Trump, if given the chance.”
As an Arkansas voter who has met Bill and Hillary personally and who was a founding member of “Ready for Hillary,” finally I couldn’t lend my support to her for many reasons learned too late. Reading the polls for Arkansas, I realized that Trump would carry the state. My only real choice was to vote for Jill Stein.
I damn well would have voted for Sanders, and I still think he was chicken-shit for pulling out instead of honoring his promise to take it to the convention and let the delegates decide. He is as much to blame for the Trump presidency as anyone in this fiasco.
Mr Rall is once again savaged at gocomics, where almost all the comments point out that everyone ‘knows’ that Russia must have hacked the election, since a) 17 Obama appointees working in different intelligence agencies said they had irrefutable proof that they can’t show you because it’s classified; and b) St Hillary had more than 75% of the voters who would have voted for her had it not been for Putin hacking the election and Comey lying to help Trump.
Glenn has a good response.
I have a problem with the ‘proof’ Mr Rall posted on gocomics that Trump is an idiot, because the reporter said, after the evil Syrian regime gassed 89 people, Trump said he fired 79 missiles when it was really 59, and that Trump said he hadn’t realised how difficult the decision to fire those missiles would be. The reporter failed to add that Trump said he fired the missiles at Iraq.
The reason Trump is an idiot is because there is no more proof that the Syrian government used poison gas than there is proof that Russia hacked the election and stole St Hillary’s victory.
But then, bombing evil regimes for possessing WMDs without any evidence is a hallowed tradition for US presidents, so why should Trump be any different? St Hillary said she’d have started bombing Syria on Day 1 (and I feel very sure she was telling the truth), and Trump waited more than 50 days.
I like to watch Robert Reich’s “Resistance Report.” He keeps mentioning http://www.indivisibleguide.com ; has anybody checked it out? (I don’t think I would benefit, as a resident of Mexico.)
(?)
Thanks for the link derlehrer. I saw a bulletin board locally (“Resist Hate”) which seems to be connected to this effort.