{"id":289393,"date":"2017-01-10T13:45:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T12:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-democrats-russia-did-it-dodge\/"},"modified":"2017-01-10T13:45:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T12:45:01","slug":"the-democrats-russia-did-it-dodge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-democrats-russia-did-it-dodge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Democrats\u2019 Russia-Did-It Dodge"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>To avoid facing up to why Hillary Clinton\u2019s pro-corporatist candidacy really lost key Rust Belt states, national Democrats are finding it easier to blame Russia, a dangerous and self-defeating game, says Norman Solomon at The Hill.<\/p>\n<p>By Norman Solomon<\/p>\n<p>Two months after the defeat of <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/hillary-clinton\">Hillary Clinton<\/a>, the most cohesive message from congressional Democrats is: blame Russia. The party leaders have doubled down on an approach that got nowhere during the presidential campaign \u2014 trying to tie the Kremlin around <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/donald-trump\">Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_20482\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-300x200.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-20482\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-1028x685.jpg 1028w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-20482\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-1028x685.jpg 1028w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-160x107.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Still more interested in playing to the press gallery than speaking directly to the economic distress of voters in the Rust Belt and elsewhere who handed the presidency to Trump, top Democrats would much rather scapegoat Vladimir Putin than scrutinize how they\u2019ve lost touch with working-class voters.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the emerging incendiary rhetoric against Russia is extremely dangerous. It could lead to a military confrontation between two countries that have thousands of nuclear weapons each.<\/p>\n<p>At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last Thursday on foreign cyber threats, ranking member <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/people\/jack-reed\">Jack Reed<\/a>, D-Rhode Island, denounced <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/1701\/05\/cnr.02.html\">\u201cRussia\u2019s rejection of the post-Cold War international order and aggressive actions against its neighbors,\u201d<\/a> and he condemned \u201ca regime with values and interests so antithetical to our own.\u201d It was the kind of oratory that would have made John Foster Dulles or Barry Goldwater proud.<\/p>\n<p>Like so many other senators on the committee, Reed seemed eager for a new Cold War while accusing Russia of digital aggression. \u201cIn addition to stealing information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign,\u201d he said, \u201cand cherry-picking what information it leaked to the media, the Russian government also created and spread fake news and conspiracies across the vast social media landscape.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Russia-Did-It Conspiracy Theory<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Russian government may have hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and it may have given those emails to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/01\/10\/the-democrats-russia-did-it-dodge\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To avoid facing up to why Hillary Clinton\u2019s pro-corporatist candidacy really lost key Rust Belt states, national Democrats are finding it easier to blame Russia, a dangerous and self-defeating game, says Norman Solomon at The Hill. By Norman Solomon Two months after the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the most cohesive message from congressional Democrats is: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-289393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}