Was the Russian Hack of the DNC and Clinton Campaign a Threat to Democracy Or Did It Expose One?

The New York Times front page  above tells an important story but not the one the Times hoped to tell. It tells a story of media collusion with the Clinton campaign and the DNC that was and is and has been the real threat to democracy.

When was the last time anyone saw a banner headline in the New York Times  that was simply reporting what another news organization was reporting?

The answer is never.

And what were they reporting? That a number of anonymous super delegates who called the AP in the middle of the night, no doubt at the behest of Debby Wasserman-Schultz, the night before the crucial Democratic California primary, the last big piece in a primary battle where Bernie Sanders had already won 23 states and by landslide numbers, to say they would vote for Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention to give her enough super delegate votes to win the nomination. Even though those anonymous "declarations" at the time didnt actually count as votes and there was no guarantee they ever would. 

The message intended for Sanders voters by Clinton,the DNC and the media sending the message  was clear: don't bother to show up tomorrow.No reason to vote. It's all over. 

It was not just dishonest dirty politics,it was false and its distinct purpose was to undermine our democracy and the single most important component of it -- the vote -- for the benefit of Hillary Clinton helped by a cabal of news organizations who for their own purposes were in on the collusion. Everything Democrats have tried to accuse the Trump campaign of doing without any proof or evidence, that there was collusion with Russia to undermine the election, was true of the Democrats, Clinton and a dishonest news media.

  It was the equivalent of the Democrats', the DNC, Clinton campaign and news media colluding to pull off a Putsch --  a German word for the kind of middle of the night power grab that happened in Germany in the 1930's -- collusion  to rig the nomination for Hillary Clinton and supress the vote for Bernie Sanders. And they did it with the help of a dishonest news media, the DNC and the unethical use of super delegates which the media also aided and abetted. Unethical because never in the history of the Democratic party has even one super delegate ever voiced a preference before the last primary was over, yet they began announcing preferences at the behest of Debby Wasserman-Schultz, to selected media outlets anonymously  back in February who then included and counted the superdelegates,whose declarations didnt count along with pledged delegate totals to try to blunt the effect of landslide victories by Sanders over Clinton. And to also give the false impression that Clinton had an insurmountable lead.

Friendly to Clinton news media outlets like CNN and MSNBC included those "declarations" without even verifying them and added them to the raw totals of pledge delegates won in primaries, the only delegates that actually counted at the time.  Super delegates hadnt voted to decide a nominee in 32 years. And there was no indication they would this time when their anonymous "intentions" were added to thepledged delegates won in primaries.

 It was all designed to help rig the nomination for Hillary Clinton with the help of a Soviet style Pravda-like news media. They eventually  succeeded when it came to the nomination. They tried it in the general election and failed.

After Clinton lost the election, the Democrats refrain or excuse, was that somehow the Russian email hack and subsequent  publishing of those emails by Wikileaks was why Clinton lost. But all those emails did was expose the real fraud, rigging,deceit,rigging and collusion between the DNC,Clinton and her campaign and many in the mass media. What the emails partially exposed was the real undermining of democracy. But Democrats tried to make the issue focus on who exposed it instead of what was exposed.

It was almost like a burglar breaking into a house and discovering a man beating his wife, reporting it to the police and the abuser trying to make the case that everyone should ignore what the burglar saw because he was a burglar doing something illegal and had no business being in his house. The Russians had no business hacking the DNC and Clinton emails but what they found was domestic political abuse being committed by Clinton, the DNC and media outlets.

While the consensus of the intelligence agencies said that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign emails, then turned them over to Wikileaks, what Adam Schiff, the Democrats' spin merchant on the Intelligence Committee keeps trying to do using the Democrats predetermined strategy of hoping to bury what the emails exposed with over-generalized and even blatantly false language like "the Russian hack of the election" (they didnt "hack" the election which insinuates hacking actual vote)  is try to shift the focus away from the content of those emails and the truth that they exposed and focus on who exposed it. They get some help from anti-Russian Republican hawks.

Any damage to Democrats, the DNC and the Clinton campaign as a result of those emails being made public was damage they did to themselves because of  what those emails contained, not who exposed them.

So when you hear words like "Russian interference in our election that was damaging and denigrating to Hillary Clinton" what was "damaging and denigrating" to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party was exposing the truth about what they were doing.

 And what was exposed was emails showing Debby Wasserman-Schultz lying about her role and DNC collusion, doing everything she could to rig the nomination for Clinton, evidence of fraud in the results of the New York State primary, Donna Brazile feeding CNN presidential debate questions in advance to Clinton then lying about it,emails and transcripts exposing  Clinton admitting in a closed door speech that she says one thing publicly about policy but privately intends on doing something else, Democratic super delegates colluding to rig the nomination for Clinton regardless of the vote, colluding to suppress the Sanders vote and his fund raising ability, and a lot more. None of which has anything to do with the Russians.  The Russians, assuming they were the guilty party in the email hack,saw things that made their eyes light up and just exposed  to the public  through Wikileaks, what they found.

Though using the word "damaging to Hillary Clinton" is a little disengenous considering she began with the worst unfavorable ratings of any presidential candidate in history and  polls showed 65% of the American people believed she was dishonest and untrustworthy.

The other false premise Democrats and the media have tried to push to both save face and continue the same deceit is that the email hack  was done specifically to help Trump get elected. The argument is provably preposterous on many levels. And in the future could get some officials in legal trouble for inserting false information into an intelligence report.

First, given there were 20,000  emails from the DNC alone and another 20,000 0f Clinton campaign emails and that the Russians would have had to read them first and then give them to Wikileaks who would also have to read them and  authenticate them, and given when they were released, days before the Democratic National convention ( timing the Russians had no control over) the timeline indicates the hack of the DNC first occurred sometime in February but  no later than March,months before Trump won the nomination and months before he was even being taken seriously.

 At the time of the first Russian hack and handing over the emails to Wikileaks most people including Republicans and almost every media outlet were mocking the idea that Trump was even running much less that he would win the nomination. So that it was done to specifically help Trump win is clearly false. 

The other fact that proves it false is that the first batch of emails were released right before the Democratic convention, before Clinton was officially nominated. If anything those emails and what they exposed were to the benefit of Bernie Sanders, showing how Clinton and the DNC they were virtually cheating him and his voters and were trying to rig the system for Clinton.  There was no way to know what affect those emails would have on the nominating process since neither candidate had won enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination so superdelegates were going to decide who it would be.  And as every poll showed, Sanders was the candidate mostly likely to beat Trump, consistently beating Trump by 15 points, a much bigger margin than Clinton.

 So idea that the Russians wanted Trump and colluded with the Trump campaign to win  but released emails that would benefit the candidate most likely to beat Trump is as ludicrous and dishonest as every other argument that has been made and in some cases is still being made regarding Trump campaign collusion with Russia for which there hasnt been a shred of evidence. 

Democrats and their allies have continued to deflect those facts with dishonest, distorted and overly exaggerated language like "a Russian attack on our democratic institutions".

Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign were not "one of our democratic institutions".

People like playing the "imagine if the roles were reversed" game and often its a good way to get to the truth. And if the roles were reversed and an email hack by any foreign government, or even domestically, exposed the kind of lies, deceit, fraud, collusion and the rigging of the democratic nominating and election process  by the GOP to help the Trump campaign despite public statements to the contrary and in collusion with friendly but corrupt media outlets trying to help rig the general election for Trump,one can imagine Democrats while admitting the hack illegal, praising the exposure as helping to save the democratic process and that we should all be grateful. And they would be right. We all should be grateful for what the emails exposed.

Had those DNC  and Clinton campaign emails revealed paragons of honesty and truth protecting our democratic ideals and processes, had they shown Clinton and Democrats to be pillars of integrity instead of the opposite, the Russians would have had nothing to show for their hack. But what they found didn't disappoint.

 That the Democrats would rig a nomination for a candidate with the highest unfavorable rating in history and a candidate who 65% said was dishonest and untrustworthy is something Democrats cant blame on the Russians. That has a lot more in common with Groucho Marx than Karl Marx.

In an answer to a question by Rep (D) Denny Heck of Washington State during the House Intelligence Committee hearings in exploring unproven ties between the Trump campaign Director of the NSA, Admiral Mike Rogers said that what is most important and inherent to democracy is to preserve the choice of the voters.

To that end Rep. Heck who comes from a state whose voters in the Democratic primary voted for Bernie Sanders to be the nominee 80-20 over Hillary Clinton but as a super delegate voted for Hillary Clinton to follow the corrupt party line, as did Al Franken in Minnesota and both senators from Washington state as well as all super delegates in states Sanders won by landslide numbers,  all of them did more to undermine our democratic processes and institutions by not preserving  the choice of the voters and doing what the party ordered, than Vladimir Putin and the Russians could ever do.