Russian Influence on US Candidacies

shadowsminder

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I figure we can watch for signs of who are Putin's favorites for the 2020 Presidental race, and in all of the other political positions where his government's attention appears to go.

Let's please remember the forum's stickies.

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My inspiration for this thread was news of Hillary Clinton's suggestion that Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) is being set up by Russia as a third-party candidate. What I saw on Twitter was Gabbard facing off against Clinton without giving any reassurances that she will not allow her campaign to be used by a foreign government hostile to the USA. This appears to be consistent with how Gabbard responds to concerns about her connection to Moscow.

Links:
https://twitter.com/i/events/1185275718780870656 - "Hillary Clinton suggests Russia is 'grooming' Tulsi Gabbard to run as a third-party candidate"
https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1185289626409406464 - Gabbard responds, "It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me."

NBS News reported back in February that several experts who track websites and social media linked to the Kremlin saw what might have been the first stirrings of Russian campaign support for Gabbard after she announced her intention to run in January. Three major Moscow-based English-language websites affiliated with or supportive of the Russian government "celebrated Gabbard's announcement, defended her positions on Russia and her 2017 meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and attacked those who have suggested she is a pawn for Moscow."

Gabbard was mentioned on the three sites about twice as often as two of the best known Democratic possibilities for 2020, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, each with 10 stories. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren had fewer. In each case, the other contenders were treated more critically than Gabbard[.]

A spokesperson for Gabbard said in February that it was "ridiculous" to suggest the Russians supported her candidacy, because "Russia would never overtly support a candidate they wanted to help".

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...20-democratic-candidate-tulsi-gabbard-n964261 (2019)

For a recent counter to the claim that Russian media would not promote a preferred candidate, see https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0002764217693281 for "The Phenomenon of Trump’s Popularity in Russia: Media Analysis Perspective" (2017).
 
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ElaineA

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The giveaway was her taking Hillary's bait like a greedy carp in a monastery fish-pond. Hil never used her name, but boy, weren't Tulsi's feather's instantly ruffled. So ruffled she went into great detail on all the tired talking points used against Hils in 2016.

Here's RT (Russian Times, the English Language news site) on Gabbard, calling her response to Hillary a "smackdown."

And here's some old Caroline Orr work on Russian support for Gabbard from February.

And two Tweets about Twitter shenanigans, 1) Jack Dorsey maxing his campaign contributions to Gabbard (with FEC report linked); and 2) a little peek into the Tweets Jack is liking.

Tulsi can't raise enough money or enough interest to get in the debates, but suddenly (overnight in the US, while we're mostly asleep) she's trending on Twitter, people are sharing "receipts" of them having donated to her campaign, and the AP--the AP!--runs a story headlined: Tulsi Gabbard Elevated in Iowa by Clinton Spat . (Don't get me started on the use of the word "spat" when it's between women, ARGH.)

Yes, this whole episode is pretty blatant in, at a minimum, it's sh*t-stirring.

Also, Yang and Beto have come out defending and praising Gabbard. So...um...yeah. Know your candidates, folks.
 
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Kjbartolotta

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Also, Yang and Beto have come out defending and praising Gabbard. So...um...yeah. Know your candidates, folks.

If I'm correct, so has Pete, (assuming she's still running and not just going on cable to call Dems demon-spawn) Williamson. No surprises wrd any of them, some hurt more than others.

Not that the candidates need to jump on Tulsi or say they agree with what HRC said, Castro's 'Keep me the f out of it' was perfectly fine and admirable even.
 
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Underdawg47

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I found it inspirational that Tulsi wasn't about to allow Hillary to slander her without a response. I donated to Tulsi again after that.
 

Roxxsmom

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Any Democrat or moderate who runs as a third-party candidate in 2020 is either being egged on by the Russians, or a secret Trump supporter for some other reason, or a hopelessly stupid egomaniac. A third-party alternative who would pull moderate and/or liberal voters (depending on which person we eventually end up with) away from the Democratic candidate is the surest way to give Trump a second term.

I don't know enough about Gabbard to know which of these she might be, assuming she really is looking at a third-party run.

I'll also posit that any sincere liberal seriously supporting a third-party candidate (such as Gabbard) at this point has been successfully manipulated by the Russian troll farms. It's not just conservatives being targeted and falling for their ruse.

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/20/621726963/conservatives-and-liberals-both-take-to-rt

Does anyone seriously doubt that they are working overtime to divide and polarize the Left too? They are attempting to do the same thing they did in 2016--convince the leftest-leaning Americans that whomever ends up with the nomination is worse than Trump.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/21/tech/russia-instagram-accounts-2020-election/index.html

https://www.apnews.com/8890210ce2ce4256a7df6e4ab65c33d3

This is a pervasive threat to our system of government.
 
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shadowsminder

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When I covered Gabbard's profile photos the other day, her Twitter pages look exactly like a generic Republican's: the same issues, the same retweets, the same anachronistic focus on the Clintons, and the same lack of attention to the issues specific to her locality. Maybe it's the timing of when I've looked, but I wouldn't have known she's from Hawaii from her tweets. That's not Democratic behavior.

In addition, as far as I've seen, she hasn't once criticized Russia despite repeated opportunities in interviews and on her social media accounts. She and her spokespeople only ever deny that Moscow favors her, against the evidence otherwise.

She's not looking like anything but one of Putin's pawns at this point. I have trouble believing anyone who really wants a Democrat to take Trump / Republicans out of power will vote for her. Like Yang, isn't she more likely to pull from right-leaning voters?
 
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Roxxsmom

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I've been reading more on this issue.

I'm no fan of Gabbard's. She's a really strange and recently arrived liberal Democrat, what with her being a member of an anti-LGBTQ group in the early 2000s and so on.

As for her current stances on things, I agree with her on some issues, but not on others. On the surface, she seems like a left-leaning liberal mostly. I hadn't heard she had any plans to launch a third-party candidacy after the primaries. She's even pledged that she wouldn't. Her primary campaign is getting very little traction, so she'd be nuts to think she'd have a chance of doing anything more than pulling a few percentage points off the Democratic candidate (I can't see how any Republicans would vote for her)--which could be enough to ensure Trump a victory.

Still, I don't think Clinton did a smart thing here, especially since she doesn't seem to have iron-clad proof of anything. All it's doing is giving Gabbard more attention and potentially making her the darling of those very elements who are seeking to divide and destroy the Democratic party from within as well as from without.

She's not looking like anything but one of Putin's pawns at this point. I have trouble believing anyone who really wants a Democrat to take Trump / Republicans out of power will vote for her. Like Yang, isn't she more likely to pull from right-leaning voters?

I don't think so, given her currently stated stances on most of the hot-button issues of the day. Unless she is anti-choice and still against LGBTQ rights, I think she'd be more likely to pull voters from the disaffected Left, actually. She might be able to pull a few people who still agree with Trump's isolationism, but only if that's a major issue for them and they disagree with Trump on other issues.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/09/25/tulsi-gabbard-2020-democrat-candidate

I didn't think much of her interview on Here and Now, especially since she played the tedious "I'm offended" card when pressed about her past association with her Parent's cult and anti-LGBTQ-rights activity. If you can't even distance yourself from something that repulsive (and counter to the Democratic party's positions) in your past, let alone explain why you were sucked in at the time, what does that say about your true positions today?
 
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Xelebes

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Even if Clinton is right about her suspicions, her castigating Tulsi isn't helping to secure the election or the Democratic Party. I think the biggest takeaway of the 2016 election is that there are growing holes in the election system and the political parties that are allowing this influence from hostile foreign nations. And while Clinton did point to an issue with Trump, she didn't correctly diagnose the problem. It is why the Mueller Probe, while very successful in finding problems and prosecuting these problem individuals, still fell short of Democratic Party members' expectations. The problem is how the Clintons (and Reagan for that matter) view security. If you rely on economism to inform your security policy, and you assume that moral principles will be adhered to out of naive interpretations of game theory, you're security policy is going to fail. The Republicans are currently seeing this failure in security policy on a more cataclysmic scale, but if Clinton wants to do right she is going to lobby the Democratic Party to provide staffing support, especially vetting services, to these minor alternative candidates. Because if you don't, you can end up like the Republican Party and have a minor, alternative candidate staffing himself with heavily compromised campaign staff suddenly explode into the lead.
 

ElaineA

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Yeah, Hillary's corporate media allies are so powerful they lie about her incessantly, push conspiracy theories, and have to walk back their headlines. See Post 9 in this thread.

Love Tulsi all you want, but don't perpetuate misinformation that's already been debunked by the organization that actually said they got it wrong.
 

Roxxsmom

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The responses to this suggest that Clinton gained nothing by doing this. Without ironclad evidence, all it is going to do to shore up support by the closet-sized group people who already support Gabbard and to put her name out there for those who didn't think about her much prior.

I don't care much for her, for a number of reasons (her interview on Here and Now really felt off, for one thing), but she was just a minor Democratic candidate who polls in the very low single digits (like 1%) and had about as much chance as my dog of being the Democratic nominee, let alone the next POTUS.

Except now, the Hillary haters will have an excuse to rally around her and support her as a third-party candidate if they decide they want to divide the party further and make things easier for Trump in 2020.

Ignoring her would have worked better, at least unless she actually did announce a third-party candidacy (which she has pledged not to do anyway).
 
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