{"id":306261,"date":"2017-05-02T11:02:40","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T10:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/drinking-the-russia-gate-kool-aid\/"},"modified":"2017-05-02T11:02:40","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T10:02:40","slug":"drinking-the-russia-gate-kool-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/drinking-the-russia-gate-kool-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Drinking the Russia-gate Kool-Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Russia-gate, the Democrats\u2019 over-the-top attempt to blame the Kremlin for Hillary Clinton\u2019s disastrous campaign, has become the party\u2019s go-to excuse to avoid confronting how it lost touch with average Americans, says Norman Solomon.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-23415\"\/>By Norman Solomon<\/p>\n<p>A new book about Hillary Clinton\u2019s last campaign for president \u2014 <em>Shattered<\/em> by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes \u2014 has gotten a lot of publicity since it appeared two weeks ago. But major media have ignored a revealing passage near the end of the book.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6709\" style=\"width: 210px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/rachelmaddow.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\/2017\/05\/rachelmaddow.jpg\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6709\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/rachelmaddow.jpg 200w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/rachelmaddow-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6709\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/rachelmaddow.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/rachelmaddow.jpg 200w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/rachelmaddow-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Soon after Clinton\u2019s defeat, top strategists decided where to place the blame. \u201cWithin 24 hours of her concession speech,\u201d the authors report, campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta \u201cassembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn\u2019t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Six months later, that centerpiece of the argument is rampant \u2014 with claims often lurching from unsubstantiated overreach to outright demagoguery. A lavishly-funded example is the \u201cMoscow Project,\u201d a mega-spin effort that surfaced in midwinter as a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. It\u2019s led by Neera Tanden, a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/138212\/neera-tanden-works\">self-described \u201cloyal solider\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for Clinton who also runs the Center for American Progress (where she succeeded Podesta as president). The Center\u2019s board includes several billionaires.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cMoscow Project\u201d is expressly inclined to go over the top, aiming to help normalize ultra-partisan conjectures as supposedly factual. And so, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.themoscowproject.org\/\">homepage<\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cMoscow Project\u201d prominently declares: \u201cGiven Trump\u2019s obedience to Vladimir Putin and the deep ties between his advisers and the Kremlin, Russia\u2019s actions are a significant and ongoing cause for concern.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s freeze-frame how that sentence begins: \u201cGiven Trump\u2019s obedience to Vladimir Putin.\u201d It\u2019s a jaw-dropping claim; a preposterous smear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Following&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/05\/01\/drinking-the-russia-gate-kool-aid\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia-gate, the Democrats\u2019 over-the-top attempt to blame the Kremlin for Hillary Clinton\u2019s disastrous campaign, has become the party\u2019s go-to excuse to avoid confronting how it lost touch with average Americans, says Norman Solomon. By Norman Solomon A new book about Hillary Clinton\u2019s last campaign for president \u2014 Shattered by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes [&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-306261","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\/306261","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=306261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}