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I follow politics pretty closely and this is literally the first time I've heard that anyone was alleging Russia actually hacked voting machines or switched votes. I had only heard about social media disinformation and social media disinformation campaigns.

I also never really heard many assertions that any of this was significant enough to have likely swayed the election.

Russian "collusion" was the primary topic on twitter for most neoliberal pundits and party consultants in 2017

As someone who followed things fairly closely at the time, that's not true. There was talk of meddling with voter rolls, but changing of votes was basically not discussed and was quickly dismissed.

Well, that was found to be absolutely true. Just look at the emails released by Don Jr. himself.

They planned to meet with someone who they believed to be working for the Kremlin in order to get dirt on their opponent.

So I think you're right in the literal sense, but rainer is accurate in the sentiment.

The media used the word 'interference' in an exaggerated and nefarious context, and they didn't seem very interested in clearing it up. Election interference--without context--is usually taken to mean vote interference.

Like many things, it isn't an outright lie. But I do think it was misleading. And while you might not have been mislead, enough people were--as evidenced by that poll.

The comment to which you're replying said "the government" didn't claim Russia tampered with the results. You can't rebut that with a cite of Neera Tanden, who was not in the government.

The 2 parties govern the US, for better or worse. The good faith interpretation allows for more than the official press releases (eg Trump talking points), which are presented to be in dispute.

Fair point, I read "Democrats" rather than "Government."

I'm going to gently push harder, because I don't think you can reasonably compare what angry Democrats said and did in 2016 to what's happening in 2020. Nobody attempted to overturn any state's electors. The sitting Democratic president didn't directly lobby state governors and state house speakers to decertify results. For that matter: Democrats didn't deliberately fuck up tabulation processes to sow chaos to exploit later in the month.

There were many calls by Democrats for faithless electors to flip to Clinton.

See, for example, #UniteForAmerica video plea https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek

They then spent the next few years making up conspiracy theories and trying to delegitimize his election. I’d gently suggest that there are no clean hands here, and what Dems did 2016-2019 was sufficiently reprehensible.

You've met my example of the outgoing administration lobbying state legislatures to overturn their own votes with a hashtag.

You said, “Nobody attempted to overturn any state's electors.” I thought you might like to know that is not true.

I posted a video which calls for exactly that in 2016. It’s a pretty amusing piece of history actually.

To her credit, “Clinton’s team and the Democratic National Committee have steadfastly refused to endorse the efforts spearheaded by a group of electors in Colorado and Washington state.”

NY Mag wrote a piece on the eve of the electoral vote documenting the extent of the harassment campaign, including hundreds of thousands of emails, hate mail, and death threats. Of course it also mentions Russia.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/12/final-push-to-sway-e...

Whatever argument you think it is we're having, you win. My point is that the 2016 Democrats and the 2020 Republicans aren't comparable, and that's obviously true.

A Youtube video, fantastic! Yet you'll blindly compare that to physical threats of violence that we continue to see over and over which have been instigated by misleading or false statements from our sitting President?

Nor did nearly twenty Democratic-controlled states sue in federal court to overturn the results of the election, as just happened today!

Do you think such an action could ever be justified? What kind of evidence would you need in order to consider proceeding down such a path? Thousands of affidavits, tens of thousands of documented illegal votes, video evidence of illegal ballot counting?

You left out Spyder and his SpiderFoot scan indicating that Iran was voting directly in the election using its access to Dominion voting machines. How could this not reach SCOTUS?

Hah. I have no illusions that SCOTUS will take up the case. I personally think it still pales in comparison to the “pee-pee dossier” that Clinton cooked up to frame Trump.

Trust the plan, Q is coming!

My reading of Tanden's tweet is that she's rebutting Trump's first sentence, not the second. Ie, Asserting that Russian hacking (in the form of releasing sensitive emails) was plainly sufficient to flip 70 kVotes (Donald Trumps cumulative margin in the states over the tipping point) and ignoring the question of whether "voting machines [were] touched".

Trump's second sentence clarifies and elaborates that the first sentence is referring to voting machines.

So what? I ask this very specifically because you're applying precisely the same rhetorical device that Tanden is.

Even if they meant Russian hacking influenced people enough to flips 70k votes, that's still unsupported conjecture worded in way that strongly implies actual hacking of votes.

Calling it 70k votes makes it sound small, but its more like 1% of voters. 1% of voters making their mind up based on TRUE stories about inside baseball at the DNC? Unrealistic. I bet 99% of voters couldn't even tell you what the emails were about.

And that's without considering the negative affects of the Democrats attacking Trump for being in bed with Russia, which probably cost him votes too.

Neera was clearly saying that she believes that Russia’s actions affected the election results.

Trump made two distinct and unrelated claims in that tweet. One claim was a lie, one was true. You dishonestly pretend there is only one claim. Neera was not addressing the true claim about voting machines being touched.

Trump has a habit of mixing in things he’s not accused of and running on them to acquit him of the things he is accused of. He consistently did it by attacking nonexistent and unprovable accusations of “collusion” (an imprecise term that is not a crime one can be charged for) when the actual investigations, hearings, and findings centered on Russian interference and any of the campaign’s coordination of it. This includes direct communication with Assange as well as the Trump Tower meeting over Magnitsky Act sanctions.

Your NYT article, in opposition to your stated conclusion, addresses infiltration attempts related to voting and voter registry systems, not the DNC hack.

Nadler’s claim is only unbelievable if you memory-hole Trump’s attempt two months ago to start another misinformation and character-smear campaign against Hunter Biden. The impeachment hearings specifically addressed and exposed the early stages of this campaign.

66% of democrats in that poll are wrong, so we agree there.