What if we’re looking at the Russian hacking allegations all wrong? Consider:
• By Obama’s own admission, Obama talked with Putin about Russian hacking.
• Reading through leaked DNC emails, it’s blatantly obvious that everybody knew Hillary was a terrible candidate with poor political instincts.
• If her name had been Hillary Jones and she hadn’t been a celebrity-connected one-percenter she’d have been dropped during the primary process faster than Lincoln Chaffee and Martin O’Malley.
• Obama’s third term was on the line on election night 2016.
Taking those things into account, did Democrats view hacking as a political firewall in the event Hillary lost to Donald Trump? Consider:
• Democrats believed Hillary was going to win.
• They believed that if she didn’t win, the margin of defeat would be narrow enough to influence recounts and court challenges in Hillary’s favor.
• With a sufficient population of demonstrators in the streets, Democrats believed they had enough social leverage to go through Bush v. Gore redux and come out on top in 2016.
• Shields had to be erected around Hillary to avoid any suggestion that she and she alone was the reason she lost in 2016; The shields would be named “fake news” and “alt-right”.
• In order for all this to work, Democrats needed a mechanism to freeze, personalize, and polarize any perceptions of legitimacy in Trump’s victory.
Enter from stage left, Russian hacking.
Everything listed here has happened. The only thing Democrats hadn’t anticipated was Trump’s landslide win over Hillary Clinton. Had election results been closer, did Democrats believe they could use allegations of Russian hacking as a last ditch measure to either give Hillary the Presidency, or retain Barack Obama in the White House until an investigation into hacking was completed that would give the election to Hillary?
Yes, it sounds tin-foil hat conspiratorial – so do a lot of the stories making headlines these days; we live in strange times. All the same, the Obama administration knew hacking was going on and it wasn’t just a bunch of lower level staffers that were interested in it. Barack Obama himself spoke with Vladimir Putin about it. But nothing was done to stop it. Why?
Did Democrats need for hacking to occur and continue just in case Hillary lost?
photo credit: @markheybo via photopin (license)
