dang that is a lot of words to say that Bernie is more of a Russian agent than Trump is now
I mean you could have just said that and be done with it
the rest just sounded like more triggered crying to me
Russian-funded Facebook ads backed Stein, Sanders and Trump - POLITICO
toodles
I said I wouldn't do this anymore, but I can't allow the ignorant ramblings to continue unanswered.
One of the main criticisms of Hillary Clinton from both the right and the left has always been that she is aggressively hawkish and has a history of overstepping her bounds, particularly during her tenure as Secretary of State. You know one person who really fucking hates Hillary Clinton? Vladimir Putin. She represented perhaps the biggest thorn in his side during her time at the State Department. Seeing Hillary Clinton as President would have been the absolute worst case scenario for Putin.
So when you're executing an influence campaign against a foreign adversary (i.e. the United States), with the very specific goal of keeping Hillary Clinton out of the Oval Office, what do you do? The answer should be clear, you attempt to help her opponents with whatever surruptitious means are available to you in order to switch delegates and/or electoral college votes out of her column and into her opponents' columns.
When you have a strong primary candidate running against Hillary, such as Bernie Sanders, it only helped to bolster Putin's opportunity for success. Ultimately, Bernie fell short of the nomination due to the criminal rigging and commandeering (IMO) of the DNC by the Clinton campaign. Sanders wasn't colluding, he was simply Hillary's opponent, and so was Jill Stein. The enemy of Putin's enemy is Putin's friend.
You're always so quick to point out that Bernie famously tried to help Hillary win the election despite the way she fucked him over. The real reason he did it was because he saw the dangerous implications of a Trump presidency. If Putin was truly "colluding" with Bernie, was he also trying to help Hillary by telling Bernie to campaign for her? It doesn't make sense. Your entire argument crumbles apart when you apply actual history and logic to the equation.
That being said, votes for Bernie were only relevant in the primaries. Votes for Jill Stein however, really could have been the deciding factor in swaying the general election to Trump. I'll admit that I don't know much about Jill Stein but regardless of what is known about her, she may have been Hillary's Ross Perot in the 2016 election. One of the primary things I do remember about Jill Stein is when she was seated at the same table with Putin and Michael Flynn at the RT (Russia Today) event early in her campaign. My personal theory of why she was at that event is because she was struggling desperately to remain relevant and hoped to raise her international clout by attending a foreign event with a powerful world leader. That's in contrast to your very questionable theory of her swearing fealty to Putin.
This particular stunt by Stein probably had almost zero effect in the real world because neither side believed she could win. Putin and Stein didn't have an incentive to collude. What's most important is that if an influence campaign was successful in raising her profile from "hopelessly negligible" to "slightly more than negligible", this could have had real tangible effects on the election; especially if there is an aggressive and concurrent Russian bot army spamming #HillaryForPrison and #LockHerUp on all forms of social media with 50% of America slurping it up like thirsty lapdogs.
Three states that would have swung the 2016 election to Hillary were won by an average of ~75,000 votes. It's very plausible to believe that the influence campaign orchestrated by the Kremlin, which was again unanimously confirmed this week by top intelligence officials who were appointed by Trump, could have affected a significant number of voters in those three swing states. That can never be proven, but the fact that almost no one on Tribalwar can see the forest for the trees is really sad to me.
I hate Hillary, I didn't want her to become POTUS. However, Trump is taking a wrecking ball to this country from the inside and the GOP congress is all too willing to help smash stuff. I'm disgusted by what I see happening, it's absolutely deplorable and defenseless in my opinion. As much as I hate Hillary, I really wish she won because our country will never fully recover from the Trump era.
You heard it here first.