Vlad Putin Was the Ideal Republican Candidate, Too Bad He’s Russian…But Then They’ve Got Trump, Perhaps with Putin’s Help

This 2016 Election has turned out to be the most bizarre of my lifetime and that includes the events of the 1968 Presidential Election which was scarred by the murders of Martin Luther  King and Bobby Kennedy.  That election even included a racist demagogue George Wallace, with a crazy former Air Force General,  Curtis LeMay,  who wanted to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. It also featured the disruption of the Democratic Convention by protesters in Chicago, who were brutally beaten in what could only be described as a police riot.  As clear as those events of 1968 are in my mind after 48 years,  this year’s campaign seems more bizarre without the bloodshed so far.  This is solely because of the Republican Presidential Race,  which featured 17 ridiculous candidates and led to the nomination of Donald Trump, the narcissistic fraud, who is probably the most unfit Presidential candidate in United States history.  The events so far leading to Trump’s Hitlerian nomination Acceptance Speech,  have now been trumped,  so to speak, by revelations that Russia has intervened to try to get Trump elected.

Yesterday,  Swarthmoremom, one of our regular readers,  posted a link from Josh Marshall’s TalkingPointsMemo:  What’s Going on With Putin and Trump and Why It’s a Big, Big Deal which set me thinking about the Wikileaks document E Mail dump regarding how the Democratic National Committee, under Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was tilting the nominating contest against Bernie Sanders. Marshall writes:

“I have been talking to various cybersecurity experts today to try to get a handle on just what level of confidence we should have in the claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers and then leaked the email cache to Wikileaks to upend the Democratic convention.”……………..

“So I thought I’d take a moment to explain what I see as a sober, one-step-at-a-time explanation of what questions need to be answered and explored.”………..

“For me you start with a series of highly disturbing and dangerous comments by Trump about Russia and NATO. As I noted a couple weeks ago, our relative peaceful and prosperous world is far from the natural or only possible order of things. Things can get bleak very quickly, especially when you’re stupid. Trump’s comments are far more than highly questionable foreign policy ideas. He seems unable to understand high level geopolitics as anything more than a protection racket with him running for American mob boss. Even if Trump is no more than ignorant, impulsive and stupid, these are highly disturbing intimations of a Trump presidency that should have everyone across the political spectrum taking note and re-evaluating what sort of situation we’re dealing with.”

Josh Marshall,  is usually a rather sober and fair commentator on our country’s political doings.  His launching into hyperbole should be seen as a cue for people to begin feeling anxious about what is happening in the Presidential contest. While he has more to say in drawing a close parallel with Trump and Putin,  there are other confirming aspects of this current situation that make the Putin/Trump connection even more ominous.

“………you have very high level advisors to Trump who have been deeply immersed in the Putin world of dirty politics and energy concessions that characterizes Putin’s Russia and the post-Soviet successor states. Those associations might simply be unsavory if the candidate were an experienced political figure or surrounded by knowledgable advisors. Neither is the case.

Is that connected to this in some way? Simply the influence of people who’ve operated in that world on a man who won’t take the time to learn anything about geopolitics beyond the geopolitics of licensing deals and hotel properties?

Then you see that Trump seems to have relied in recent years quite a lot on investment capital from Russia and Russian oligarchs surrounding Putin.

I think if you really understand the stakes involved with Trump’s comments about NATO and Europe alone and then layer on the advisors who’s been operating in that world and the high volume of money flowing in Trump’s direction, the entirely rational response is to say, let’s put the brakes on here and figure out what we’re dealing with.

This is the most minimal and innocent version of the story. But it’s actually an extremely big deal. When you start layering on Putin’s alignment of Russian media in Trump’s direction, the weird platform solicitousness, even the possibility that Russian security operatives are interfering in the US election it elevates to such a high level that it’s genuinely bewildering as to what to make of any of it. It is so florid and cartoonish that it is almost a set of circumstances only a buffoon like Trump could bring about.”

As we watched the follies of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination unfold, there was polling that developed ideas about certain attributes of a candidate sought by the 20% to 30% of the Party, that it calls its base. That this base is overwhelmingly male; aged; white; working class; martial: religiously Christian and homophobic goes without saying. Trump currently led the pack nationally based on certain expressed attitudes, but even he didn’t fully live up to the ideals of the Republican “base”. Trump for instance was twice divorced and really hasn’t expressed any serious homophobia. There is, however, one man known worldwide, who was truly perfect for the Republican Base:

Vladimir Putin has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012, succeeding Dmitry Medvedev. Putin previously served as President from 2000 to 2008, and as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. During his last term as Prime Minister, he was also the Chairman of United Russia, the ruling party.

For 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991. He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin‘s administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,^[3] and was reelected in 2004. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008. Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 presidential election and appointed Putin as Prime Minister, beginning a period of so-called “tandemocracy”.^[4] In September 2011, following a change in the law extending the presidential term from four years to six,^[5] Putin announced that he would seek a third, non-consecutive term as President in the 2012 presidential election, an announcement which led to large-scale protests in many Russian cities. In March 2012 he won the election, which was criticized for procedural irregularities, and is serving a six-year term”

Greater Russia, known as the today as the Russian Federation which “according to the Constitution of Russia, the country is a federation and semi-presidential republic, wherein the President is the head of state^[114] and the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Russian Federation is fundamentally structured as a multi-party representative democracy, with the federal government composed of three branches:

Legislative: The bicameral Federal Assembly of Russia, made up of the 450-member State Duma and the 166-member Federation Council, adopts federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse and the power of impeachment of the President.

Executive: The President is the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Government of Russia (Cabinet) and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.

Judiciary: The Constitutional Court, Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the Federation Council on the recommendation of the President, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.

The president is elected by popular vote for a six-year term (eligible for a second term, but not for a third consecutive term).^[115] Ministries of the government are composed of the Premier and his deputies, ministers, and selected other individuals; all are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister (whereas the appointment of the latter requires the consent of the State Duma).”

Interestingly, Russia’s governmental structure and constitution closely resembles our own and in fact has sections analogous to our Bill of Rights.  It has structures analogous to our Senate and House of Representatives. The country is made up of a multitude of districts similar to our States and they represent just as much economic and cultural diversity as that of our country. Putin has won almost complete control of his Russia through a combination of presenting himself as a virile strongman,  who has harassed homosexuals,  stifled a free press and has engaged in various dangerous military maneuvers that are aimed at portraying the primacy of Mother Russia.  Putin’s nationalism is a bald attempt to present himself as a hero of Russia’s rebirth as a major world power.  The Russian Federation contains as much ethnic variation as does our United States and with it comes just as much ethnic division, hatred and oppression of minorities.  Besides that,  Putin’s Russia is a place where men are seen as the dominant sex with women merely as appendages.

However,  while Putin is seen as the strongman and powerful head of State,  the Russian Federation,  while maintaining the pretense of a constitutional republic, is at this point a blatant oligarchy and as such Putin rule is mediated by his need to pay heed to the needs of the various Russian “Oligarchs” who wield real power behind Putin’s throne.  The Russian do indeed call their elite, billionaire class “Oligarchs”,  which in a sense is a more honest appellation than we Americans give our Koch’s,  Walton’s and Adelson’s.  The word out of Russia is that Putin himself has become a billionaire through various shady dealings and therefore entered the status of being himself a Russian Oligarch.  Let’s summarize though why Vladimir Putin would actually be a preferred candidate for Republicans, except for the details of his citizenship.

Putin projects himself as a strong and powerful leader.

Putin believes in a muscular foreign policy.

Putin sees women as subservient to men.

Putin hates homosexuality.

Putin is closely allied with the Russian Orthodox Church

Putin hates the notion of a “free press” and doesn’t allow criticism from it

Putin is closely allied with Russia’s businessman/oligarchs.

Putin believes in enforcing “law and order”

Putin favors repression of Muslims

Putin favors repression of Russia’s ethnic populations

We see that Vladimir Putin holds very similar political positions to those of Donald Trump, who convincingly won the Republican Presidential nomination and is extremely popular with the evangelical and with the Tea Party wings of the Republican Party.  The fact is though that Putin. has far more governmental experience than Trump and given the nature of his rise in the labyrinthine arena of Russian politics,  Putin is clearly the more competent of the two.  Alas, the extreme wing of the Republican Party is unable to have Vlad, so they have settled for Donald.  Putin,  however,  seeing a kindred and pliable spirit in Donald seems to be doing all he can to help Donald to get elected.

More from the Marshall TPM piece:

“But I want to go back to this point. The most minimal version of the story is actually a very, very big deal and in some ways the more high-octane and outlandish aspects of it are obscuring that. We know very, very little about Trump’s finances. For most presidential candidates – the Clintons, Obamas, even the Bushes – it’s important to see their tax returns. But there’s not likely to be much of significance there. They either don’t have much money or they’ve already been tightly scrutinized. Trump has a long list of bankruptcies, foreign business connections, huge debt loads. Seeing his tax returns is really essential. And yet we haven’t seen them. And he’s justified this on the basis of a preposterous claim that he can’t because he’s being audited – something that makes no sense at all. Even the fact that Trump owes a huge amount of money to DeutscheBank a foreign bank that has been under tight scrutiny recently from US regulators is a big deal. How would that possibly work if that scrutiny continues and the Presidential personally owes them hundreds of millions of dollars? But there’s so much other craziness tied to Trump, no one has really even focused on it.

It doesn’t have to be some wild, maximal version of Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin to be a big, big deal – not just a big deal in the way we toss around the phrase in politics but a big deal in terms of our future, our safety, our children’s safety.

I have no idea just what is behind all this smoke. I tend to be a minimalist in what I assume or imagine in these cases. Sometimes I’m surprised. My own concern is mainly that this kind of mix of ignorance, grifters, disorganization is the kind of seed bed where influence operations and malign influence tend to thrive and take root. We’ve seen more than enough to know this knot of connections requires deep scrutiny, extreme vetting as Trump might say. This is no joke. And it doesn’t have to be the motion picture version of the story to be a very big deal.

True to his rather sober reportorial style Marshall looks at the facts of the Putin tie in  with the E Mail scandal and deems it suspicious enough for people to explore it further.

What I find interesting is that the majority of the mainstream media coverage so far looks at the E mail revelations mainly from the perspective of the Democratic Prty establishment tilting the scales against Bernie, I find that of lesser significance even though Bernie was my preferred candidate.  Much more significant to me is that it seems very likely now that Putin’s people are trying to get Donald Trump elected and why that might be the case.  An article today at Slate.com perhaps clarifies this:  The DNC Hack is Watergate But Worse

“A foreign government has hacked a political party’s computers—and possibly an election. It has stolen documents and timed their release to explode with maximum damage. It is a strike against our civic infrastructure. And though nobody died—and there was no economic toll exacted—the Russians were aiming for a tender spot, a central node of our democracy.

It was hard to see the perniciousness of this attack at first, especially given how news media initially covered the story. The Russians, after all, didn’t knock out a power grid.  And when the stolen information arrived, it was dressed in the ideology of WikiLeaks,  as is Vlad Putinwhich presents its exploits as possessing a kind of journalistic bravery the traditional media lacks.”

This puts these E mail leaks into a perspective lacking in the initial news stories.  This is really not about a Democratic Party scandal, because ever since the formation of political parties, the party’s establishments have always had favored candidates who they have worked to get their nomination. The scandal here,  if true,  is that Russian intelligence operatives are attempting to influence our election in favor of Donald Trump.  The why of that is easy and can be seen in Trump’s own political positions, such as they are and in his business dealings. Trump is hostile to NATO, as is Vlad Putin. Trump has stated he admires Putin and his regime. Trump has close business ties to Russian Oligarchs.  So far this Russian intelligence intervention should be the main story but it isn’t.

The answer to the question of how the leak of these E mails was thought by the leakers to affect the Presidential race is simple.  Trump feels that he is in a position to capture disaffected Bernie Sanders voters. Throughout Trump’s campaign he has not attacked Bernie and has even expressed the idea that he and Bernie have been fighting a similar battle, but that Bernie was beaten by a rigged system.  This serves a twofold purpose for Trump.  The first is that Trump has beaten the “rigged system”, thus has succeeded where Bernie has failed, making Trump the person Bernie supporters should get behind.  The second is that the E Mails “confirm” that the Democratic system was rigged and so Bernie supporters should not vote for Hillary “the rigger”, but for Trump who overcame rigging and wants the same things Bernie wants.  The comparisons between Bernie and Trump are ridiculous, but then again Trump is not exactly the epitome of rational thought. Let’s look further at the Slate story:

But this document dump wasn’t a high-minded act of transparency. To state the obvious, only one political party has been exposed. (Selectively exposed: Many emails were culled from the abridged dump.) And it’s not really even the inner workings of the Democrats that have been revealed; the documents don’t suggest new layers of corruption or detail any new conspiracies. They’re something closer to the embarrassing emails that fly across every office in America—griping, the testing of stupid ideas, the banal musings that take place in private correspondence. The emails don’t get us much beyond a fact every sentient political observer could already see: Officials at the DNC, hired to work hand in glove with a seemingly inevitable nominee, were actively making life easier for Hillary Clinton. It didn’t take these leaks to understand that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a hack and that the DNC should be far more neutral in presidential primaries.

“What’s galling about the WikiLeaks dump is the way in which the organization has blurred the distinction between leaks and hacks. Leaks are an important tool of journalism and accountability. When an insider uncovers malfeasance, he brings information to the public in order to stop the wrongdoing. That’s not what happened here. The better analogy for these hacks is Watergate. To help win an election, the Russians broke into the virtual headquarters of the Democratic Party. The hackers installed the cyber-version of the bugging equipment that Nixon’s goons used—sitting on the DNC computers for a year, eavesdropping on everything, collecting as many scraps as possible. This is trespassing, it’s thievery, it’s a breathtaking transgression of privacy. It falls into that classic genre, the dirty trick. Yet that term feels too innocent to describe the offense. Nixon’s dirty tricksters didn’t mindlessly expose the private data of low-level staff.

We should be appalled at the public broadcast of this minutiae. It will have a chilling effect—campaign staffers will now assume they no longer have the space to communicate honestly. This honest communication—even if it’s often trivial or dumb—is important for the process of arriving at sound strategy and sound ideas. (To be sure, the DNC shouldn’t need privacy to know that attacking a man for his faith is just plain gross.) Open conversation, conducted with the expectation of privacy, is the necessary precondition for the formation of collective wisdom and consensus. If we eviscerate the possibility of privacy in politics, we increase the likelihood of poor decision-making.

It is possible to argue that Russia is just behaving as great powers often do. States try to manipulate opinion beyond their borders. Barack Obama recently attempted to sway the British public to reject Brexit; we don’t just broadcast the Voice of America to expose the world to jazz. Russia does this, too. It has a website and television network, Russia Today. We might not care for Russia Today and its propagandistic coverage, but it operates in the open. It uses reporting and opinion to sway hearts and minds. The interconnected nature of the world means that it would be malpractice for states not to make the best case for its policies to enemy and ally alike. The United States is better when it understands the world and argues with it.

Still, we have a clear set of rules designed to limit foreign interference in our elections, to protect our sovereignty. We should be open to rational arguments from abroad but terrified about states playing a larger role than that. This is why we don’t let foreign entities make campaign contributions. We don’t allow noncitizens to vote. Consider our reaction, if an American political leader had pulled this stunt: He would be prosecuted, and drummed from political life. These are unacceptable tactics for an American; they can hardly be more tolerable when executed by a foreign power that wishes us ill.

The DNC dump may not have revealed a conspiracy that could end a candidacy, but it succeeded in casting a pall of anxiety over this election. We know that the Russians have a further stash of documents from the DNC and another set of document purloined from the Clinton Foundation. In other words, Vladimir Putin is now treating American democracy with the same respect he accords his own. The best retaliation isn’t a military one, or to respond in kind. It’s to defeat his pet candidate and to force him to watch the inauguration of the woman he so abhors.”

Contrary to the coverage of the mainstream media,  these leaked DNC E Mails are more significant because of the source of their leakage and represents an attempt by Vladimir Putin to sway our Presidential election towards a candidate favorable to Vladimir Putin.  I’ll explore this further in a followup piece tomorrow,   but I think I’ve presented enough already to chill you and to get you to see how important this election has become.