Professor Jacobson has covered the Democrat’s futile attempt to mount an electoral college insurrection in the hopes of turning over the results of the recent presidential election.
Monday morning, establishment media outlets along with a bevy of Democrats decided Russia was to blame for Hillary’s embarrassing electoral loss. The sudden, unified chorus was an amusing sight to behold. I blogged:
The Russian hacking/tainted election story line is a particularly fascinating coping mechanism in leftist elite circles.All signs point to a painfully out of touch party platform, the world’s worst presidential candidate, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the political landscape, yet Democrats are blaming the Russians for their embarrassing electoral loss.Worse still, there’s no new evidence to suggest Russians swayed election results. Sure, the Wikileaks stuff was nasty, but that’s old news. Should it be investigated? Probably. Though the same people demanding an investigation into this alleged hacking’s electoral impact NOW also declared with certainty that Hillary’s home-brewed server was never infiltrated by foreign foes.It’s almost like this story line was cooked up as a last ditch effort to overturn the election results. Almost.
What was amusing Monday is concerning Friday. Desperate, Democratic “hacked election” rhetoric has gone from silly hail mary pass to saber rattling and all in in the midst of a governance transition.
It’s worth reiterating that while we know of hacks into the DNC and all the Wikileaks stuff, there’s zero evidence Russians “hacked the election” — whatever that means.
Friday, Hillary described the alleged hacks as an “attack against our country”:
Addressing the BUT THE RUSSIANS! issue for the first time this week, Hillary claims Putin is still peeved over comments she made in 2011, suggesting the Russian election was rigged. Gee, aren’t we sorry we didn’t elect someone with whom our biggest foe has a personal beef? [insert giant eye roll here] I mean, please. That’s not to suggest that we should be courting commies, but Hillary’s self-involvement is pretty impressive.
“Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election,” Mrs. Clinton said.“Make no mistake, as the press is finally catching up to the facts, which we desperately tried to present to them during the last months of the campaign,” Mrs. Clinton told the group, which collectively poured roughly $1 billion into her effort. “This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation.”
Meanwhile, President Obama is promising retaliation:
WASHINGTON — President Obama said on Thursday that the United States would retaliate for Russia’s efforts to influence the presidential election, asserting that “we need to take action,” and “we will.”The comments, in an interview with NPR, indicate that Mr. Obama, in his remaining weeks in office, will pursue either economic sanctions against Russia or perhaps some kind of response in cyberspace.Mr. Obama spoke as President-elect Donald J. Trump on Thursday again refused to accept Moscow’s culpability, asking on Twitter why the administration had waited “so long to act” if Russia “or some other entity” had carried out cyberattacks.The president discussed the potential for American retaliation with Steve Inskeep of NPR for an interview to air on Friday morning. “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our election,” Mr. Obama said, “we need to take action. And we will — at the time and place of our choosing.”
Less than a day later, Obama seemingly contradicted his tough talk during his final press conference when he claimed he told Putin to “cut it out” with the hacking, and Putin did.
Let’s suppose there was serious Russian meddling, and there may well have been, using what could turn into a new Cold War between global superpowers all because of a little election loss butthurt is an egregiously irresponsible act.
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