The Siberian Candidate: A Collection

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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22 Responses

  1. Saul Degraw says:

    Really, all you need to know is that Putin believes that Trump will help him get Moose and Squirrel!Report

  2. Damon says:

    Yeahhhhh..

    Funny how the narrative quickly changed to “it’s the Russians”. Convenient re-direction? Everyone is now talking about this and not the substance of the emails. Whatever happens to that story about the emails containing the names of operatives in foreign countries? Frankly, I don’t care if the Russians were behind it. We’ve been doing similar stuff to them and a lot of other countries. Blowback was inevitable.Report

    • Morat20 in reply to Damon says:

      To be honest, there’s no real substance TO the emails. Most of the ones that catch the eye are dated in May (after the primary had been effectively over for two months) and all of that seems to be random kvetching that led to no actual action.

      If two DNC employees bad-mouth Sanders in a forest, and no-one hears them, are they rigging the election?

      And if they are, how? And if they’re not, why would the story have legs?

      (In fact, the only bit that had actual action I’ve found involved an op-ed writer contacting the DNC on a piece about how Sanders should take the high-road post-Nevada, in which the DNC suggested she contact the Clinton team for comment instead of them, but suggested the Clinton team would be against the op-ed in general. Since the writer is not a member of the DNC, we can’t know if she ever DID contact the Clinton team, nor whether she approached the Sanders team either. Although I would judge it likely she offered it to Sanders’ team for comment, as it was about him, if she was shopping the piece around in general before publishing. And the DNC’s entire action was to suggest the writer talk to the Clinton team, but not the Sanders team. Why not Sanders? I dunno. For all I know, an earlier email in the chain said she did. After all, there’s already reports of DNC employees searching the leak and not finding any of their emails, so the leak is selective not all encompassing).Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Morat20 says:

        I agree and disagree with your analysis.

        The big problem is that there are a lot of people out there who are heavily involved and invested in a worldview that is shadowy elites vs. the masses with nothing inbetween. The e-mails seem to give them evidence for their worldview even if nothing exists.Report

        • Morat20 in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          *shrug*. Take a sampling of my work emails, show it to my customers, and you can find things that make me look really, really bad.

          Especially if you’re rather selective about which ones you print, or strip them of context. (Say I’m complaining heavily about one customer and one specific request they’d had. Sounds bad. Unless you note that I also managed to get that request into the next build, about three months ahead of schedule).Report

      • Marchmaine in reply to Morat20 says:

        Most of the ones that catch the eye are dated in May (after the primary had been effectively over for two months) and all of that seems to be random kvetching

        Which I guess just means that they were mooting ideas of how to possibly humiliate and marginalize a man who had already lost the election? The election they were hosting and the ostensible referees?

        If I change the lens from A to B… Better, Worse, or the same? A… B… Better? Worse?Report

        • Morat20 in reply to Marchmaine says:

          Which I guess just means that they were mooting ideas of how to possibly humiliate and marginalize a man who had already lost the election?

          You mean the ideas that went no where? Perhaps squashed, perhaps ignored (selective leak is selective).

          A large organization under attack by the losing candidate who was darkly implying they stole the election, some people floated bad ideas that weren’t enacted and complained about him.

          My god, cancel the election and find me a fainting couch. My faith in humanity and democracy is forever crushed. It turns out parties are run by people.Report

      • Damon in reply to Morat20 says:

        If there is no real substance to the emails, then why would anyone care 1) that they came out and 2) that the Russians did it? Everyone would laugh and say “oh look at the stupid Russians trying to embarrass someone and they failed, LOLOLOL, silly Russians!”

        Funny..that doesn’t seem to be the case.Report

        • Brent F in reply to Damon says:

          Because in politics, people typically remember the headlines and not the substance to something contriversial. Especially if they comfirm existing narratives.

          That’s why its pretty smart of the Clinton supporters to jump on the Russia is influencing election meme. You don’t beat a narrative with facts even if you have them on your side, you beat it with a good counter-narrative.Report

          • Damon in reply to Brent F says:

            And all those people who pay attention to the facts conclude that “when you don’t have the facts on your side, you point the finger elsewhere”.Report

  3. Aaron David says:

    I am starting to think HRC has lost her “air” support.Report

  4. Kolohe says:

    I’ve said this before (and before all this latest bruhaha) but I would really love for Elizabeth and Philip Jennings to meet a young up and coming New York real estate magnate.Report

  5. Stillwater says:

    Nice title. Nice collection of views. Re: Drezner’s article …. it’s sorta hilarious. He has three bases of skepticism – Manafort’s (etc) links to Russia, Russia’s link to the DNC hack, and Trump’s connection to Russian money – and claims that only the third is really hard to argue against. As if the first two are easy to argue against, something he rejects in the article (of the first he says “those links are there” and of the second he says it’s “far from ironclad”.)

    Acourse, if we reverse the order of the arguments and begin with the money trail, which he thinks is “the hardest part of the story to dismiss”, his other arguments appear pretty damn flimsy and incidental.

    Priorities, people!Report

  6. Dark Matter says:

    It took me a while to wrap my head around this.

    Putin probably has Hillary’s email server’s full contents. I’d assumed he’d use it to blackmail her, but he timed this release to damage Hillary.

    Ergo: We’ve got an October Surprise coming.Report

  7. Kolohe says:

    Bill Clinton stated that there were 6 Police Academy movies.

    But there are seven.

    The last?

    Mission to Moscow.

    The movie where Russians are hacking all the computers.Report

  8. Saul Degraw says:

    The Siberian Candidate just challenged Russian to find 33,000 HRC e-mails. He also apparently confused his Veep with a former Republican governor of New Jersey.

    What are the chances that Trump is showing signs of dementia?Report