Foreign Policy Magazine: Why Putin’s DNC Hack Will Backfire

[teach1st]

Why Putin’s DNC Hack Will Backfire
Foreign Policy Magazine, 7/26/16

The hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers and the subsequent leak of embarrassing internal documents appear almost certainly to have been carried out by Russian intelligence agencies, making it the most serious case yet of Kremlin interference in U.S. politics.

That it is a serious interference is clear. The confirmation — long suspected by many in the Bernie Sanders camp — that at least some DNC officials were on Team Hillary over the course of the Democratic primary has divided the party on the verge of its nominating convention and alienated Sanders’s base. If it hasn’t convinced them to back Donald Trump, it’s at least given them second thoughts about voting for Clinton.

The move has also helped cement Russian President Vladimir Putin in the minds of many U.S. observers as not only a strategic mastermind, but also the Trump campaign’s secret weapon. Clinton, the thinking goes, is regarded in Moscow as a classic, hawkish “Russophobe.” (Putin even blamed her for instigating the protests against his alleged rigging of elections in 2011.) Whereas Trump — with his focus on business, his apparent willingness to put realpolitik over moral considerations, his admiration for Putin, and his disdain for institutions like NATO — has thoroughly won over the Kremlin, even spurring some to refer to him as Putin’s “de facto agent.” With the DNC hack, according to this version of the story, Putin was just throwing a bone to his (soon-to-be) man in Washington.

It’s a good story — and many elements of it are true. There is much for the Kremlin to enjoy in sitting back and watching Trump’s continued, seemingly unstoppable rise to power.

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[BlueMTexpat]

1. I didn't appreciate the part

where the article stated that there was confirmation of DNC "rigging" - there may have been confirmation of some understandable pro-Hillary bias (>30 years of consistent Democratic Party participation versus one month prior to announcing one's candidacy, after all). It didn't go far enough, IMO, to state that none of the disgruntlement was acted on, thus leaving the slur to stand.

Not too much of any improvement on M$M in that way, IMO.

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