OPINION

Politics on the Cheap: The Russians Hijacked the Election II

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In a previous article, I submitted a list of considerations to prove that the Democrats are playing the worst sort of politics in making the indefensible claim that “the Russians” succeeded in sabotaging the presidential election to hand President-Elect Donald Trump a victory. Here, I strengthen this case.

There are still other thoughts that put the lie to this narrative.

The first is that Wikileaks is responsible for leaking the DNC emails. Up until very recently, Democrats would’ve been the first to insist upon this hacktivist organization’s impeccable reputation. It is to Wikileaks, after all, that we owe thanks for the largest leak in American military history, the Iraq War documents leak. And it is Wikileaks that has been shedding light on the massive, Constitutionally-dubious surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has repeatedly, unequivocally denied that either the Russian government or any government is the source of his information concerning DNC emails. The source, he has admitted, is a non-state actor. He told NBC News that there is “no proof whatsoever” for the Democrats’ allegation that the Russians were involved. 

The idea that the Russians or anyone would want to interfere, or try to interfere, with the world’s preeminent superpower is itself quite plausible. It is common practice for governments, including that of the United States, to influence, or try to influence, in various ways the internal affairs of other countries. But the Democrats, in framing this line in such a way as to lay bare its use as a partisan ploy, stretch credibility to the snapping point.

The implications of “the Russians Made Us Do It (lose!)” narrative are impossible for any remotely sensible person to accept.  The proponents of this fiction expect for us to believe that: (1) This is the first American election ever to have been decided by a foreign power; (2) Of all of the actors, state and non-state, to have an interest invested in undermining the American electoral process, “our intelligence agencies” have been able to identify “the Russians” alone to have done so; and (3) If not for Russian interference, Hillary Clinton would have defeated Donald Trump!

Let’s look at these in turn.

(a) This is the first American election in which any foreign power tried to intervene, and the only reason that there was any foreign intervention is because another government wanted for this one, unique candidate (Trump) to win.

Never before has there been post-election (or pre-election) hysteria about foreign sabotage of our elections. Even President Obama, just as recently as October, ridiculed Trump for his talk about the possibility of a “rigged” election. “There’s no serious person out there,” the President said during a press conference, “who would suggest that you even could ‘rig’ America’s elections.”

But now, suddenly, Obama is in the vanguard of the movement to delegitimize the election outcome by implying that (of all entities!) a foreign government “rigged” the election in favor of Trump. 

(b) Although any number of actors, state and non-state, could have tried hacking the DNC, the Democrats point the finger exclusively at Russia. 

But, as the creator of the NSA’s global surveillance system, Bill Binney, assures us, if there was hacking, anyone could’ve done it. More importantly, the NSA would easily be able to determine the source(s).

No “IPs or other signatures of APT’s 28/29” (the culprits responsible for hacking) have been presented, Binney remarks in astonishment. This is astonishing because once the IPs “and/or other signatures” of the hackers are available, all that the NSA would have to do is “use Xkeyscore to help trace data passing across the network and show where it went.” Binney alludes approvingly to Edward Snowden who tweeted: “Even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, #XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy.” Snowden adds: “I did this personally against Chinese ops.”

Zerohedge notes that “since Wikileaks is (and has been) a cast iron target for NSA” and other intelligence agencies throughout the world “for a number of years, there should be no excuse for them missing data going to any one associated with Wikileaks.”

(c) Though no one will explicitly say it for fear of being found out for the idiotic contention that it is, in claiming that the Russians interfered in our election in order to get Trump elected (a position for which there is minus-zero evidence), the Dems would have us think that if only this interference didn’t occur, Hillary Clinton would’ve won!

In reality, the country hasn’t witnessed the likes of the pummeling that Clinton received since Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory against Walter Mondale in 1984. Of America’s 3100 counties, Trump won at least 2600—84 percent—of them. He also won 30 of the 50 states.  Some 220 counties that voted for Obama in 2012 turned in favor of Trump, compared to only 17 that flipped from Mitt Romney to Clinton.  In a whopping 2,728 counties that Romney claimed four years ago, Trump outperformed him.  In contrast, Clinton outperformed Obama in only 383 counties.

Had it not been for a single, overwhelmingly-Democratic state, California, Trump not only would have trounced Clinton in the Electoral College, as he did (306 to 232); he also would have defeated her by 1.4 million votes in the popular vote. In fact, even had California just voted as other blue states did (awarding Clinton on average about 53.5 percent of the vote as opposed to the 61.5% that California delivered her), Trump and Clinton would effectively ended with a tie in the popular vote. 

Trump achieved a genuinely historic victory over Clinton.

The Democrats, however, would have us think that it was all made possible by Putin and his government-sponsored hackers.