Trump, McConnell, Putin, and the Triumph of the Will to Power
Of
the many things that resulted in Donald Trump’s election, from Hillary
Clinton’s own errors to James Comey’s extraordinary insinuations against
her in the contest’s final stages, Russian hacking played a meaningful
enough role to tilt a razor-tight contest. Russia successfully riled up
Bernie Sanders die-hards against the Democratic Party by leaking minor intrigue
that fueled their suspicions, aggravating a Clinton liability with
young voters that never healed. They also dribbled out enough emails in
the succeeding months to keep stories using the word “emails” in the
lead of Hillary Clinton news, adding more smoke to the haze of scandal
that permeated coverage of her campaign.
We
now know with near-certainty that Russia did this with the goal of
electing Trump president. During the campaign, this reality was not
quite certain enough to be reported as fact. Trump, of course, insisted
there was no evidence Russia even had a hand in the attacks, let alone
with the goal of helping him. (It “could be somebody sitting on their
bed that weighs 400 pounds.”) Elements of the left decried suspicions of
Russia’s role as “neo-McCarthyism.” The Nation
editorialized, “ liberal-media elites have joined with the Clinton
campaign in promoting the narrative of a devious Russian cyber-attack.” Full Story