Does any of this pass the laugh test?

Even if we assume that not only Russians but official Russians were behind the DNC hack, I'm having a hard time understand the compelling nature of an argument that they did it to put Trump over the finish line.  As HotAir comments, "A DNC hack would be a really indirect way of electing any Republican, let alone Trump."  It's like something out of The DaVinci Code.  For once, Julian Assange is sounding more credible; he claims the source of the leak was a disgruntled Bernie supporter at the DNC.

That Russians, official or otherwise, wanted to jack with public confidence in our institutions seems reasonable enough, but the rest of it is a bit Rube Goldberg for my taste.  In any case, if all it takes to undermine confidence in our institutions is the publication of completely genuine and true information about the inner workings of the DNC, bring it on.

10 comments:

Grim said...

In a close enough election, even a marginal effect could be important. This was a very close election.

Still, I don't think it's plausible that the Russians were trying to decide between "help Donald Trump" and "make Americans question their democracy." They clearly wanted to do both.

And thanks to the Democratic leadership and pundit class endorsing the idea that the Russians could have been more than marginally successful at the former, they've been wildly successful at the latter.

E Hines said...

I really haven't seen that much success at the latter. Just some NLMSM and some fevered minds on the Left.

What I have seen a lot of is anger directed at the Democrats and at the Obama administration for their meekness in addressing the Russian hacks (if they were; the IC isn't as united on that thesis as the NLMSM would like us to believe). And anger at the NLMSM and those fevered minds for being so willfully gullible and/or chickens**t about the whole affair. And anger at the NLMSM and those fevered minds for so enthusiastically playing along with the Russians in their apparent attempt to sow doubt about our republican democracy.

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

"Don't throw me in that there briar patch, Massa, please!"

If blaming the Russians is what it takes to get an audit of the voting processes in Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles, I will play that silly game.

Valerie

Eric Blair said...

After what the state of Michigan just figured out about voting precincts in Detroit, I don't think you're going to see that.

Ymar Sakar said...

America has turned from bombing foreigners to solve world justice problems, to being bombed by WMDeceptions from foreigners. How the mighty have fallen, for a so called superpower on Earth.

Without individual virtue and the Holy Spirit, nations don't go very far before they cater back to mortal levels of competence. The higher a people and nation go under the providence and guidance of the God of Abraham, the faster they will fall when they turn to Soddom and G abominations. Israel or Judea, was no exception.

MikeD said...

To me, the oddest thing about all this is NOT that they are screaming about the Russians hacking embarrassing internal emails (as opposed to say... the contents of those emails which accurately reflect upon what the DNC actually thinks about its constituents), but that at no point did anyone (media, DNC, the kook left fringe) anyone try to claim that the leaked emails were fake. I mean, I'd have expected them to at least TRY and claim that "yes, there was an email hack, but they inserted their own fake emails in with the real ones". Sure, it might have been debunked eventually, but they never even tried. Why not?

Grim said...

It's a good question. These are some practiced liars -- DWS, for example, is the kind of person who looked you in the eye and told whoppers no one could possibly believe every single day. She stepped down without much of a fuss, and without any denial.

I've kind of been curious about that too.

Texan99 said...

I, too, am shocked that they didn't try to claim the emails were fake. They didn't even trot out the usual "maliciously edited and taken out of context." I thought they had a button to push that added that complaint automatically to every press release.

douglas said...

I had been wondering that too, and I think they were afraid of another show dropping- and it didn't drop.
Perhaps the Russians (if it were them- it's looking more and more like mere incompetence at the DNC made them vulnerable to a phishing 'hack' that anyone- anyone- could have perpetrated) didn't think Trump was going to win, either (they wouldn't have been at all alone), and just were trying to get the attention of Hillary that they had dirt, and when she got elected, we might have seen a mighty acquiescent Hillary vis-a-vis the Russians. They knew she'd put herself above her country- she's demonstrated that many times over.

Grim said...

If it were that, though, why wouldn't they claim the emails were maliciously edited as a prophylactic against the second shoe (to mix a metaphor rather horridly)? "Well, these new emails showing that we all took bribes from the Saudis and the Russians is just another incidence of malicious editing, like the one that said we were happy to work to derail that nice man Bernie Sanders."