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Was it the Russians who tipped the scale in Trump’s favor?

President-elect Donald Trump has finally admitted the possibility of the Russian hacking, so all liberal democrats who now consider the CIA the guardian of democracy and Russia the evil empire can breathe and go back to their seats.
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January 19, 2017

President-elect Donald Trump has finally admitted the possibility of the Russian hacking, so all liberal democrats who now consider the CIA the guardian of democracy and Russia the evil empire can breathe and go back to their seats.

I did not vote for Trump, but I did spend my childhood in communist Romania during the hay day of the evil empire — a background that makes me highly sensitive to hypocritical re-writes of history. Everyone knows that our future president has a flair for drama; still, he isn’t too far off to accuse his opponents of a “political witch hunt” to cover up “their embarrassment over their loss.” Yes the Russians need to be punished, along with all other hackers, through every possible means. But no, it isn’t fair to claim that they determined the election results.

To prove Trump’s point, Friday morning on CNN (1-6-2017) Paul Begala said that “Trump is the beneficiary of a crime; Russia put its finger on the scale and tipped it in his favor.” Gloria Borger, who had been trying to argue that the criminality of the hacking and the results of the election were totally separate matters and should be treated as such, tried but failed to shut her colleague up. Begala succeeded, over her protests, to do exactly what Trump contends his opponents are doing — crediting the Russians for Trump’s victory and Clinton’s defeat.

As much as I wanted Hillary to win, I find this narrative revolting. For in the very close 2016 race, who hurt Hillary the most? The far right? The far-away Russians? If you must blame someone for Hillary’s defeat — other than the massive numbers of Americans who grew disenchanted with Obama and the Democratic party — blame the American far left.

Who should know better than Robby Mook, Hillary’s campaign manager? During the Hillary for President Autopsy report held at The Harvard Institute of Politics on Dec 1, 2016, Mook reported that the precise cause of death was the millennial vote – or failure thereof.  “Yes, you can blame millennials for Hillary Clinton’s loss,” agreed Aaron Blake of The Washington Post on December 2, admitting that at first he was skeptical but realized after “digging into the numbers” that “Mook had a point.” And who poisoned the hearts and minds that had been enamored enough with the Septuagenarian socialist  to abandon lap tops, crowd at rallies and bring Sanders closer to the nomination than a socialist revolutionary might ever have dreamed was possible in America?

The ugly tactics used against Hillary Clinton by Sanders’ supporters were brought up during the Harvard post-mortem discussion.  Mandy Grunwald, a Clinton campaign senior adviser, confessed that a contributing factor to her candidate’s defeat was “the Bernie Bros and the vehemence and the anger and the hideousness and what was said on line; frankly I’ve never seen anything like it.”

What was said on line and on TV and at Bernie Sanders rallies about Hillary Clinton classifies not just as gender warfare – there was a bit of that – but as class warfare.  “Corporate democratic whore” was only one of the sexist revolutionary slurs directed at Hillary. There were many other unisex ones, like “she is in the pocket of Wall Street,” and “the tool” of “evil,” “corrupt,” “criminal”  “corporate America.”  There were  also those ugly, destructive chants at Sanders rallies, and the people sporting “Bernie or Bust” T shirts marching before the start of the Democratic National Convention shouting “Lock Her Up” and calling Hillary Clinton a “witch” and a “bitch.”

Strong-armed by the party’s establishment and wanting to retain maximum influence after Hillary’s victory, Team Sanders negotiated its fee for building the bridge over the troubled waters. And Sanders himself now remains more discreet in public than his supporters who are trying to strong-arm control of the democratic party as they advance the narrative that crooked Hillary cheated honest Sanders out of a presidency their hero could have easily won.  In truth, by the time the presidential race started, Hillary’s reputation – particularly with Bernie’s millennial fans — had already been brutalized in the primaries. The media, Hillary’s supposed best friends, continued to put salt on the wounds.  A second major reason for Hillary’s defeat, Mook explained at the autopsy report, was main stream media’s “not covering what Hillary Clinton was choosing to say” but instead “trying to unearth secrets and reveal the expose.”

“Like hungry school children, American mainstream media feasted on the hacked emails at the Democratic National Convention last summer,” I wrote in my essay “How Should Journalists Treat Stolen Booty.” (December 14,2016. ) But all the pundits thought Trump “was hopeless, and it was fun to torture Hillary and even more fun to guess when the next big batch of stolen property would be distributed.  Finally the John Podesta giant goody bag was pilfered and dumped out for all to feast on, and every major and minor journalist and newscaster rushed to grab his or her tasty treat. They ignored Hillary’s, Podesta’s and Mook’s pleas to stay away from it, not eat or feed anyone any of it,  especially not during the final and most important debate – the stolen goods were procured through an international crime, people!”

How the media raked Secretary Clinton over the coals over daring to attribute the millennials’ revolutionary fervor to the frustration of living in parents’ basements!  “I mean I’m still trying to understand the revolution part,” Hillary was caught saying in the leaked audio tape, followed by laughter from the audience.

Senator Sanders defended her statement at the time. Unlike many of his supporters, he is an honest socialist. He is also a serious socialist, and for him, the subject of revolution is no laughing matter.  Remember what he told the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board on March 23, 2016: No American president “can literally do anything for the American people, unless there is a political revolution” against “the ruling class – that is Wall Street, that is corporate America, that is the wealthy contributors, that is corporate media.”

The extremists in the Democratic Party did everything in their power to push Hillary Clinton as far to the left as possible; still, a socialist revolutionary they could never make out of her. Had she won, there might have been a chance she could have moved the Democratic Party back towards the center, where many of her supporters — like me– believe it belongs.

Instead of blaming the Russians for their hacks, “the movement” should thank mainstream media for the publicity provided every diamond dug out of the pilfered treasure chests. The Democratic Party Grand Robbery and The Podesta Grand Theft have now been used to fuel hatred towards an even bigger class enemy than the millionaire former presidential candidate – the billionaire future President of the United States. From a revolutionary perspective, Hillary Clinton’s defeat is a victory in disguise.

Those of us who are encouraged by Trump’s support for Israel during the last and worst back stab of the Obama administration should  consider trying, like David David Suissa suggested in his latest essays, to hold on to our seats and to give our next administration a chance.  And then there is still the hope that the sizable number of our Congressional leaders who are now standing with Israel in condemnation of the biased Security Council Resolution will also manage to withstand the efforts of the Berniecrats to tip the scale in their favor or bust it altogether.

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