Summary: RussiaGate has been the Democratic Party’s largest project since Trump’s election. It has failed despite the massive political capital invested. Now even the Left looks at this with revulsion. Especially as they realize that the Democratic Party’s elite has near-total control of the news media – which can be used against them as well as the Right.
“Russiagate and Democratic Defeat“
By Margaret Kimberley, at the Black Agenda Report, 6 March 2019.
“They pointed fingers at Bernie Sanders, the Green Party, Vladimir Putin,
and even leftist celebrities.”
It should now be clear to all honest and sane people that the only collusion was between the corporate media and the Democratic Party to spin a phony tale.
The Russiagate investigation is as much a witch hunt as the despicable Donald Trump always insisted. The charge that Trump colluded with the Russian government in the 2016 election has been abandoned even by the people who turned the allegation into a well paid cottage industry. The Mueller investigation has come up empty and Democrats are scrambling to keep their creation alive in order to make themselves politically relevant. They should be planning how to go about giving the people what they need and want. But Medicare for All and any other proposals that would benefit the masses are off the table for them and their corporate donors.
The House Oversight Committee presided over a surreal circus as former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s testimony revealed absolutely nothing useful about Trump. Calling him a liar and racist is old news to all but dead-ender Trumpists. Despite the intense media coverage of his every word Cohen made only one worthwhile statement. “He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign – for him – was always a marketing opportunity.” {Editor’s note: just like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s run for governor in 2003.}
“The campaign – for him – was always a marketing opportunity.”
The Democrats were anxious to deflect blame for their self-inflicted calamity after carrying out one of the worst political debacles in history in 2016. They pointed fingers at Bernie Sanders, the Green Party, Vladimir Putin and even leftist celebrities after the day of reckoning exposed them as corrupt and inept frauds.
Michael Cohen gave them the opportunity to continue the farce and use it as a dubious election issue. Congressional Black Caucus Members joined in behaving as foolishly as the rest of their colleagues. A Republican put a black female Trump staffer on display in an effort to claim that he is not a bigot. But the CBC couldn’t even make hay out of a political gift. Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings excused the modern day auction block with soothing words for his cracker colleague. He finished the proceedings with maudlin comfort for Cohen.
Cummings wasn’t alone in creating stupid spectacle. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was forced to resign as Democratic National Committee Chair after she and others were caught rigging the primary against Bernie Sanders. Yet without a hint of irony she posed questions about non-existent Russian meddling.
“The proceedings were farcical.”
One by one the Russiagate allegations are falling by the wayside. Michael Cohen never went to Prague to meet Russian hackers or to do anything else. He never heard of any collusion plans or Trump vulnerability to blackmail. Of course the proceedings were farcical. The only collusion was between the corporate media and the Democratic Party to spin a phony tale.
The Democrats insist that Wikileaks accessed their emails with the help of Russian hackers. While Wikileaks announced every email release beforehand Cohen was allowed to pontificate about Trump’s supposedly secret knowledge of what was already public. There is even evidence that a DNC staffer leaked the material to Julian Assange and Wikileaks but the media make certain that this plausible hypothesis never sees the light of day.
Running against Trump as villain absent policy change gave him the electoral college victory in 2016 but the failed strategy is already in use for the 2020 race. They hope that this time they can pull off getting the votes they need without proposing even incremental change.
“The failed strategy is already in use for the 2020 race.”
It is sad to see the Democratic Party rank and file hang on desperately to fluff about who asked the sharpest questions or who was most photogenic at the hearing. For more than two years after their party failed them they refuse to dump the losers. But the losers are cynical and plan to continue the farce as long as they possibly can.
After two years they will now investigate Trump’s activities that were always the most obvious impeachable offenses. Trump was a tax cheating crooked businessman and it shouldn’t be hard to find evidence of wrongdoing. Even so, Nancy Pelosi is steadfast in saying there will be no impeachment regardless of what these investigations uncover.
Democratic Party voters are no better off now than they were in November 2016. Their so-called leadership are determined to change nothing yet they promise a different outcome. In the aftermath of their defeat this columnist wrote, “Victory is ours if we dump the Democrat Party and their black misleaders.” The upcoming election season is an opportunity to plan how to replace them with a truly progressive party. Any other course of action only validates their corruption and continues the suffering of millions of people.
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“65% of Democrats think “Russia tampered with vote tallies” & 41% believe “millions of illegal votes were cast in the election.” These numbers illustrate just how divorced from reality Democratic discourse on Russia has been.”
About Margaret Kimberley
Margaret Kimberley lives in New York City. She is an editor at the Black Agenda Report and writes their weekly Freedom Rider column. See her articles at Common Dreams, her website, and her Twitter feed. Her articles are reposted widely.
Especially see these recent articles by her at the BAR …
- The Amazon Robbery.
- The Democrats Win and Black People Lose.
- Mueller, Manafort and Assange.
- Yellow Vests Show the Way.
- UK and US PSYOP Collusion.
- Freedom Rider: Democrats are the McCarthyites.
- Freedom Rider: Venezuela Reveals America’s Sickness.
About the Black Agenda Report
Founded in 2006, Black Agenda Report is your source for news, commentary and analysis from the black left since 2006. Find their weekly Black Agenda Radio program on Soundcloud, iTunes, or Stitcher.
Their “About” page gives (impressive) bios of their key staff. Also see their Twitter feed. Google suppresses Black Agenda Report in search results. Subscribing to their email updates is the only guaranteed way to see them.
Click here to donate and support their work!
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
This failure of the news media and our political system is an example of the broad institution failure I discuss in A new, dark picture of America’s future.
More about RussiaGate.
- “A N.Y. Times Story Just Accidentally Shredded the Russiagate Hysteria” by Lee Camp, an op-ed at TruthDig, January 2019. Only a comedian can do justice to RussiaGate propaganda.
- “NBC News, to Claim Russia Supports Tulsi Gabbard, Relies on Firm Just Caught Fabricating Russia Data for the Democratic Party” by Glen Greenwald at The Intercept, February 2019. Most of the big RussiaGate stories disintegrate when examined.
- “A Skeptic’s Guide to the Russiagate Fixation” by Aaron Maté at The Nation, March 2019 – “Robert Mueller has yet to allege collusion, and Democrats who accuse Trump of being a Kremlin conspirator are silent when his policies escalate tensions with Russia.”
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see all posts about RussiaGate, about propaganda, about ways to reform America’s politics, and especially these …
- A review of Russiagate, its propaganda and hysteria.
- Secrets untold about the DNC hack, the core of RussiaGate.
- Debunking RussiaGate, attempts to stop the new Cold War.
- The secrets of RussiaGate, and what it all means.
- RussiaGate: fragments of a story large beyond imagining.
- We learn the secret origins of RussiaGate.
- Read RussiaGate propaganda, the first step to fighting it.
- The end of RussiaGate approaches, and its stunning truth.
- Hot fake news about RussiaGate! Read all about it!
Propaganda rules America! Read all about it!
Propaganda
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
Good one today too. Thanks for introducing Black Agenda Report to me a while back. Nice to see their point of view. Same goes for Kaitlin Johnstone and others.
There have to be areas where we can unify. If both sides see how they’re manipulated by the lies and spin of the media, we have to see we’re allies instead of monsters. I discounted arguments from the other side back in 2006 but they turned out to be correct. Lind argued the same points in his On War columns. That woke me.
I especially liked the point about Trump’s marketing opportunity with the mention of Schwarzenegger. Good one!
Best regards to you and BAR.
Long trail,
This is an aspect of the FM website project that partisans can’t see. They look at a post with an other’s views and scream Leftist! Or Far-Right!
I’ll then point to posts with views from the opposite end of the political spectrum. Every single time they’ll repeat their screams.
In days of yore I would attempt to reason with them, often at length, to no avail. Now I just ban them. Screw them all. They’re a pox on America.
This would be a well rounded and almost neutral commentary, except:
No mention of Steele’s well paid-for mud nor the Clinton’s history (almost a platform) of confrontation (e.g. Libya, likening Putin to Hitler, proposed no-fly-zone over Syria and such).
Also, many think (as in past replies here, on FM) that the Russia-Gate was a highly successful (if not brilliant) scam, that helped making the ‘president’ quite impotent, especially in mending relationship with Russia.
BTW, the Mueller’s report is not out yet…
Jako,
“No mention of …”
This isn’t a full history of RussiaGate. That would require a much longer article – and a lot more work to produce. It is a focus analysis on some of its political effects on the Democratic Party.
“BTW, the Mueller’s report is not out yet…”
Do you believe anybody doesn’t know that? The stream of articles preparing for the big let-down foreshadow its contents. Just as the endless stream of leaks kept us posted on every step of Mueller’s investigation.
Larry,
“BTW, the Mueller’s report is not out yet…”
Wasn’t meant as “news:” even though most don’t think there would be anything worth reading beyond already known, we may get a surprise or two…
Early in the Russia collusion story most of the left of the Democrat media including Black Agenda Report were accused of being Russian puppets or Russian dupes in a notorious Washington Post article. Eventually these sites were also suppressed in Google search results. This soured me personally on the Russia narrative because, well, the whole thing is stupid. No, Black Agenda Report is not a Russian agent.
I do agree with the political predictions of the article. The Democrats did have a huge outpouring of sincere support early in the Trump term, and they spent it all on the Mueller investigation. I just saw many people, mostly white liberals, just upset and tense, almost to the point of damanging their health. They’ve been on this crazy roller-coaster of ‘big bombshell’ from MSNBC, expecting the impeachment any day now, over and over. They haven’t changed, but I feel they are starting to lose energy. For the Republicans and anyone left of Democrat, no, it’s not happening.
Maybe some of those elusive ‘moderates’ are persuaded by all the noise. What I see are the Russian and Serb ethnic groups in the USA who have been put off by this, and I think it could push a state over to Trump unexpectedly by a point or two somewhere.
“After two years they will now investigate Trump’s activities that were always the most obvious impeachable offenses. Trump was a tax cheating crooked businessman and it shouldn’t be hard to find evidence of wrongdoing. Even so, Nancy Pelosi is steadfast in saying there will be no impeachment regardless of what these investigations uncover.”
So if they can’t impeach Trump for Russia they’ll impeach him for something else? Good luck with that.Clearly, they’ve learned a lot from the last couple of years. So this is analysis of the effect of Russiagate on the Democrats, and perhaps it reveals more than the author intended. It’s like when the Acme Destroyer Robot failed. The coyote would send off for the Acme Blaster Cannon. He’d have been better off ordering take out. Beep beep.
Actually, it may help to think of Russiagate as the latest in a long series of regime change operations that miscarried in one way or another, but that may be beyond the scope of this discussion, and I’m too ill and tired to expound on it anyway
The Man,
You nailed it. They want to ransack past records, find something, and impeach him for it. Got to overturn that election, somehow – and put Pence in the White House. Who is a competent far-right politician. As I’ve said before, these people couldn’t run a lemonade stand.
On the other hand, we have the Republicans – whose primary goal is to rollback the New Deal and restart the Gilded Age of Plutocrats. Pick our pockets and keep us weak.
This is the Great Circle of Life at work, as Disney warned us. Sheep attract predators. If we don’t want to be prey, then be strong. There are no other alternatives.
Don’t look for the leftist press and followers to admit they were wrong for three years. They’ll just move on to Trump’s hookers and tax problems.
He’ll still be here in 2024, I hope.
Ron,
“Don’t look for the leftist press and followers to admit they were wrong for three years.”
Don’t look for the right-wing press to admit that they were wrong. We’re becoming a tribal society, with tribal histories and tribal “truths.” Each side clearly sees this in their foes, but not in themselves. This keeps us as docile followers. When we develop clearer vision, then our politics will change.
Larry,
Clearer vision? I come here to get more confused, you and the others here are way above my mentality. How might that be accomplished?
Ron,
People ask to do fix America is great news! The answer to such questions is on the Reforming America – steps to a new politics page. Here are 129 of the lowest traffic posts among the 4600 on the FM website. Section 4 discusses how we can more clearly see the world – and become less gullible.
Larry (Teacher),
Thanks for the links to your articles, I looked them over.
My take is this;
I should become more tolerant of other views, less tribalism.
Truth and honesty are of the utmost importance, along with substantiated facts.
Boys Scouts honor and not unlike the Ten Commandments for the religious in nature.
Am I close?
Ron,
I’m not great at prescribing these kind of things. But those sound like great commitments to make.
“I should become more tolerant of other views, less tribalism.”
Thomas Kuhn describes the different between “normal science” and science during transitions between paradigms. Something similar is true when society hits hard times. The rules for survival change. Organizing – forming teams with strong cohesion – becomes a prerequisite, top of the “to do” list. But that means less tolerance for others. The circle of trust narrows, inevitably, in hard times.
The extreme example is going to prison. Tolerance in the usual sense doesn’t help. Hating others, drawing strong lines, avoiding conflict – those are the rules. Also, you don’t get to make up the teams. Do you wish to be a victim, one of the Black ganstas, Puerto Rican gang-bangers, or White Nationalist Nazi KKKers?
Avoid that level of social decay should be one of our primary tasks today. But both Left and Right seeks to hurl us down that path. Few seems interested in the work (and risk) required to even slowing the slide.
Ron,
Your comment is an incisive one, and deserves considerable thought. I should write about it, when I understand this more clearly.
Here are examples of how in hard times the need to boost group cohesion — necessary in order to survive – changes the rules. These are from the Warhammer 40K game, but similar rules are seen across history in societies at war. America applied these rules ruthless in WWI and WWII, one reason why our cohesion made us powerful.
“An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.”
“Educate men without faith and you but make them clever devils.”
“The difference between heresy and treachery is ignorance.”
For those on the front lines of the war: “A good soldier obeys without question. A good officer commands without doubt.”
The Ten Steps above, like similar postings over time, take time to actually read and source and actually think about and sink them in.
Number One above gives a historical and political economic frame to be critical of much of what we see daily.
Great Stuff!
And yes sheep attract predators and so few will take the time and read all ten.
However, grateful we should be and I am to always come here and find Larry hard at work.
You never know…..hopeful has a place. And that is the only place to be,
Thx.