#david alexrod | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

odinsblog · 6 years

Note

I don't want to keep retreading the same ground, and if you don't want to publish this I get it, but with the whole "Russian spies on Tumblr" thing going around... Russians on Tumblr didn't make Hillary make bad choices like ignoring entire states. Russians on Tumblr aren't responsible for our messed up system where she lost even though she won the popular vote. Yeah, interfering with our election is still terrible, but it feels like people are using it as an excuse to avoid real change.

[re: this post]

Nah, you good. I’m right there with you. People are confusing correlation with causation. And networks like MSNBC aren’t helping with their constant, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” histrionics.

Look, I always appreciate full transparency. American citizens should know if an account was run by an IRA employee, just like we should have known when PAID pro-Clinton surrogates were representing themselves as unbiased political analysts. And we also should have been informed that a lot of anti-Sanders social media accounts were actually professional trolls paid by a Clinton Super PAC. (source) (source) (source)

Being transparent means actually being transparent, and it doesn’t stop being propaganda just because it’s not coming from Russia.

Anyway, here’s what people are conflating:

1. Did Russia interfere in our election? Yes. Did they “hack” it and flip votes from Clinton to Trump? NO - there is no credible evidence that happened (but there IS evidence that Republicans flip votes).

2. Did Russian bots turn Clinton voters into Trump voters? NO. People who voted for Trump were n-e-v-e-r going to vote for Clinton. Anyone who thinks Gary Johnson Libertarians were going to vote for Clinton, they don’t understand politics. And Green Party voters are with the Green Party specifically because they’re fed up with the Democratic Party. And the overwhelming majority of Sanders supporters voted for Clinton - even those of us who could not stand the Clintons.

3. Did Trump Collude with Russia? Yes, clearly.

4. Did Trump’s collusion with Russia cost Hillary the election? NO. We should punish Trump for treason, but that is not why Clinton lost the election.

In the words of David Alexrod, “It takes a lot of work to lose to Donald Trump, let me tell you. He was the least popular presidential candidate to win in the history of polling.”

People, especially white people, in my opinion, want something to blame, but they also want to ignore the fact that WHITE WOMEN AND WHITE MEN voted for and elected Trump, and no one was holding them at gunpoint when they cast their ballot.

The only people I blame for Trump’s election are the people who voted for him, and the Democratic Party - for running such a terribly flawed, GOP-lite candidate who lollygagged to the finish line and refused to campaign in key swing states. They took the gamble, but I’m the one paying the debt.

Our system is seriously broken when the two leading candidates were the least popular candidates in recent history. The “best” candidates money can buy are not the best candidates. (source) (source) (source)

You’re also right about something else too: The Democratic Party hasn’t learned anything. We have DNC leadership openly supporting an homophomic, anti-abortionist like Dan Lipinski, and the DCCC and many House Democrats are running outright smear campaigns against pro-choice, pro-LGBTQ progressive candidates like Laura Moser …. it’s obvious that the DNC still over-values right leaning, conservative candidates and voters.

And as far as our electoral system being broken? BOOM. Last time I checked, Russia didn’t stop votes from being counted in Florida when George W. Bush stole the election in 2000.

Russia didn’t gut the Voting Rights Act.

Russia didn’t make SCOTUS legalize Citizens United, making it easier for super PACs and secret money from billionaire conservatives to buy & influence election outcomes.

Russia isn’t rolling back the Civil Rights Act day by day.

Russia didn’t close down voting places in Black communities, poor neighborhoods and nearby college campuses.

Russia didn’t create the Electoral College, which has it’s origins in slave states maintaining white supremacy.

Russia isn’t forcing us to use outdated, privately owned machines that run on Internet Explorer and leave no paper trail, making it easier to falsify election results.

Russia didn’t pass scores of racist voter ID laws and then immediately close down driver’s license offices close to predominantly poor Black neighborhoods.

Russia doesn’t use purge lists to remove voters with common “Black surnames” from our voter rolls, even though they’re legally registered and eligible to vote.

Russia hasn’t systematically used mass incarceration as a means of preventing Black people from voting since Reconstruction.

Russia hasn’t gerrymandered our voting districts so that conservative politicians can get millions less votes than Democrats, but still win House races anyway.

Russia didn’t make a millions of allegedly “non-racist” white people change their minds about Hillary and suddenly vote for Trump.

And Russia hasn’t passed countless other laws that have disenfranchised generations of Black and Brown voters in America - REPUBLICANS DID ALL THAT.

Republicans are the clear and present danger here. Republicans are the existential threat to our democracy. Fix the Republican problem.

Once again, YES, Donald Trump absolutely needs to be impeached and arrested for colluding with a foreign power to win the election. Yes, we need to make sure that another nation cannot interfere in our elections. And yes, Vladimir Putin—who is possibly a bigger homophobe than even Mike Pence—is most definitely manipulating Trump.

But if the Democratic Party was serious about election integrity, they would be working 25/8/366 on addressing all of the obvious problems in our own backyard before wasting all of our time and energy on Russian bots “hacking” the last election.

#snommelp #ask #answered #hillary clinton #politics #russian bots #russia #republicans #centrism #neoliberalism #unpopular opinion #voter suppression

217 notes · View notes