Clinton campaign backs call for intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote, by Gabriel Debenedetti.
Hillary Clinton’s top political adviser John Podesta said the campaign is supporting an effort by members of the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election.
“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”
“Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” he said. “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”
Podesta’s statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory.
It follows an open letter from 10 presidential electors — including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Christine — requesting an intelligence briefing ahead of the Dec. 19 vote of the Electoral College.
Podesta backs bid to overturn electoral vote, by Chris Stirewait.
The hope of the electors, led by Christine Pelosi, daughter of the House minority leader, is that the information would cause red-state electors to break from the popular vote in their states. …
Even before the electoral uprising gained steam today, Democrats were looking for a Russia-inspired reboot. Since the revelation Friday that the CIA concluded Russia was trying to help Trump and hurt Clinton, “#revote” has been bouncing around the internet.
No one, not even the strongest Russophobe, has suggested that there was any interference in the election by the Kremlin. While only the most chronic consumers of Putin propaganda would say there was no Russian effort to interfere with the campaign, there is no credible reason to believe that Russia messed with any ballots, rigged any vote totals or anything of the like.
Russia obviously meddled in the campaign. There’s no evidence that Russia interfered with the election. …
A bad guy wanted Trump to win. There were probably other bad guys and gals who wanted Clinton to win. Team Putin meddled as they were able, a fact perhaps not fully explored but hardly unknown. That’s not cause for a revote or electoral usurpation. …
Trump and many Republicans are particularly sensitive about the Russian stuff because of the aforementioned popular vote minority but also because of the now obviously real effort to overturn the outcome.
The left in the West has gratefully accepted Russian help for decades from communists in the Kremlin. Also the left is complaining about news from outside their media as “fake” whilst now promoting the suggestion that the Russians somehow stole their election … which is fake (they cannot come out and say it directly or it would be refuted and they would look foolish). So this is a tad hypocritical. They look like bad losers.
It appears like the plan is to deny Trump legitimacy, despite the fact that the Republicans won the last election at every level: presidential, senate, house, and state races. Their virtue signalers are spurring the Democrats on to a kind of double-or-nothing gambit for supremacy, which could prove suicidal. Or maybe they will prevail, with media backing. In any case this is a novel PR strategy, especially given that with the Internet they no longer have a near-monopoly on dispensing the news. Interesting.
UPDATE: The tainted election, by Paul Krugman. This is the spin that the loyal PC troops should be repeating, being from Krugman in the NY Times.
Did the combination of Russian and F.B.I. intervention swing the election? Yes. Mrs. Clinton lost three states – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania – by less than a percentage point, and Florida by only slightly more. If she had won any three of those states, she would be president-elect. Is there any reasonable doubt that Putin/Comey made the difference?
And it wouldn’t have been seen as a marginal victory, either. Even as it was, Mrs. Clinton received almost three million more votes than her opponent, giving her a popular margin close to that of George W. Bush in 2004.
So this was a tainted election. It was not, as far as we can tell, stolen in the sense that votes were counted wrong, and the result won’t be overturned. But the result was nonetheless illegitimate in important ways; the victor was rejected by the public, and won the Electoral College only thanks to foreign intervention and grotesquely inappropriate, partisan behavior on the part of domestic law enforcement. …
Mr. Trump is, by all indications, the Siberian candidate, installed with the help of and remarkably deferential to a hostile foreign power.
UPDATE: Trying it on, by Steve Kates.
These people are not just bad losers. They are totalitarians at heart who support the democratic processes only up to the point it actually delivers them the results they want. They are a danger to us all, and to themselves.
The only reason the US does not turn into Venezuela is that they represent only about 47% of the voting population. They are saved from financial oblivion by the Republicans, whom they hate.
UPDATE: How’s this for unhinged?
hat-tip Matthew
