And WWII was more of an "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" kind of situation. We put up with each other because we needed each other to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan, but the second the war ended we turned on each other as main enemies. In truth, Russia has not been friendly to the west since the Communist revolution that occurred during the first World War.
Clinton and Trump spent many order of magnitude more on political advertising than any foreign nation and even that didn't assure their win. People aren't mindless robots, they vote for who they want to vote for.
Oh wait. That isn’t wrong. What are you arguing in favor of again?
Look, the whole Russia angle is a hoax. When put under enormous external and internal political pressure (remember Twitter/FB are filled with Trump haters), all they could come up with was a tiny number of ads labelled "Russian" that appeared to support nobody in particular. Hardly anyone saw them, so they can't have had much impact. And was that some plot directed by Putin or just ads by people who happened to be Russian? It's never made clear.
Back when Obama was in power and there was Citizen's United, he said words to the effect of "we must consider changing the constitution to limit political spending" and the Clinton wing of politics was spitting bullets about how in future Republicans would just buy elections outright.
Then Trump came along and beat Clinton, despite being outspent 2:1. Clinton's campaign steamrollered Trump's financially yet still lost. The whole theory of elections that had been pushed until that point, that marketing spend determines victory, it was just completely invalidated overnight. Democrats who couldn't psychologically explain voter disagreement via policy arguments could no longer explain rejection as a function of ad spend either, so had to come up something new - hence, this spectre of "foreign interference", as if Putin has some kind of mind control rays.
Either Russian ad spend is magically hundreds of times more effective than domestic, or it didn't matter.
"They vote for who they want to vote for" - you understand manipulation is a thing, right? And that people will believe lies, and that people are often irrational - and therefore when they "decide" who to vote for it might not be logical and based on whatever manipulative messaging, propaganda, they've heard over and over again?
If you want to argue it didn't have a substantial impact then please provide proof that the media amplifying the Russia (and related narrative) as it has - distracting us from the real, underlying issues - wasn't substantial. Please prove that Russia's actions, including brigading Reddit and other communities via their propaganda farms, didn't provide talking points to the media to distract the majority of us from the important, underlying issues.
Perhaps you're trying to gate keep by limiting the scope by saying Russia's efforts didn't directly have a substantial impact? But then you're ignoring the full picture in order for your argument to be "more right" but still not correct; Russia's direct actions don't exist in a silo - likewise Trump would be nothing if mainstream media didn't amplify every insane word coming out of him.
As POTUS candidate Andrew Yang is pointing out to us: it's automation, not immigrants, that have been taking jobs leading to Americans suffering and lead to the symptom of Trump; as Noam Chomsky also rightfully pointed out, Netanyahu of Israel greatly interfered - directly - with American politics.
The mainstream media is directly and indirectly part of the dis-ease, and has allowed such dis-ease progression. Trump, a tyrant wannabe-never-will-be, understands this mechanism of mainstream media (reach, the attention economy, manipulation) - in general called marketing, Trump being a charlatan or false prophet vs. a genuine entrepreneur with true compassion - an ideal example being Yang to contrast Trump to, regardless of what you think about his policies, how he holds himself, his character.
Curious what your thoughts are, what your response will be.
I can't tell if you're just spouting rhetoric or genuinely you aren't able to connect the ideas I'm presenting: do you not believe that mainstream media amplifies whatever news there is? Did you see no "Russia" news? Is that what you're arguing?
Respond to every point I make even re: Trump leveraging mainstream media to his advantage.
It's odd, interesting to me, that you're expecting concrete quantitative data, yet trying to use qualitative proof points - while not accepting qualitative proof points that I'm outlining for you.
Of course. But you're arguing here that Trump won because of massive scale manipulation to the extent that millions of voters don't have free will at all, which is just conspiracy theory thinking.
By the way, what makes you think that Clinton voters weren't the manipulated ones? The press came out in full force for her, and they're the most obvious source of information manipulation. The press have been trying to stack the electoral deck since forever, and they worked overtime that year to get Clinton in power. Still lost. I'm not seeing any evidence that voters are so easily manipulated as you think.
Do you consider that manipulation or not? Maybe you'll argue "Trump just didn't know any better" - and that's not a form of manipulation, lying to people?
I didn't argue that it was one or the other set of voters who were manipulated. And yes, the two-party system has been very bad for democracy - why POTUS candidate Andrew Yang will implement Democracy Dollars among other policy to breakup the two-party system; https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/
Also, isn't Andrew Yang the man who is telling people "vote for me and everyone will get free money". This is economically illiterate in a way that makes Trumponomics look like the work of Greek philosophers; I'm not American and have no dog in that race but I think you'd have a hard time arguing that Trump is manipulative for talking about jobs but Yang isn't for promising voters free money.
At any rate the original comparison was Trump v Clinton, not Trump v Yang. Clinton certainly engaged in a lot of emotional and manipulative rhetoric herself. The part where she adopted a policy of starting a war with Russia over Syria, but obfuscated it by claiming it wouldn't be a war because Russia would immediately surrender? That's what I remember the most.