Comey and Hypocrisy

Of course Trump’s firing of Comey had nothing at all to do with this other headline just out: “Grand jury subpoenas issued in FBI’s Russia investigation — Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records….”

– but as the reasoning for firing the FBI-Dude is such awesome classical ‘Comedy Gold’ – we have to admire the lawyers -(and even the F…faces humor)
And I just see them sitting somewhere and chuckling:
‘Let’s use the Clinton Inquiry’!
‘Oh – that woulld be hilarious’
‘Even the writers of SNL can’t beat that’!
‘Take that Colbert’!
‘And it will show even Kimmel with his Baby- what ‘real’ comedy in our homeland is all about.

– and all what’s left is roaring laughter.
And for everybody who reall wants to discuss seriously some ‘laweful’ aspect of ‘Trumpland’ we might have to wait until Von Clownstick has departed again?

Hi John. I’ve no complaint with the OP.
I just visited the several newspapers and my own take away is that Democrats must be weeping with joy at their good fortune. The firing of Comey is being construed as the desperate act of a criminal about to be indicted. Which is remarkable given the fact that senior Democrats in the intelligence and judiciary committees confirmed they’ve yet to see any evidence connecting Russia and the GOP candidate as recently as last week. So, if the new Nixon (who I thought was Obama – record secrecy, spying on journalists, and prosecuting whistle-blowers) isn’t impeached, convicted, and pilloried it won’t be because there’s no evidence. Better still, Putin – Trump’s Russian master – is now running America through his Manchurian candidate in the White House. Historians are going to have a field day with the denunciations. I can’t wait.

From Trump’s letter of termination, it looks like Comey was fired because he refused to say in public, at the Senate hearing, whether Trump himself was under investigation about the Russians, thus leaving it appear that Trump could be under investigation, or that the investigation might lead to Trump.

Here is the beginning of Trump’s second paragraph in the termination letter: “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.”

This seems to have little to do with Comey’s performance in the Clinton email “scandals”. It looks instead like the Russian story is getting too close, & Trump found a convenient premise to fire Comey, that premise being the need to correct Comey’s public misunderstanding of the scope of Clinton’s emails on Weiner’s computer in Comey’s statements, at the Senate hearing last week — a rather minor error, at that.

I imagine that Comey may have divided feelings right now: relieved to be off the hot seat, but alarmed that history may abuse him. Because last year Comey was sandbagged by the GOP, twice:

1. In the last hour of the July 7 hearing about the State Dept. emails, you can see Comey’s visible discomfort and his growing frustration that he was being manipulated into saying something untrue about Hillary Clinton, in a witch hunt, under the repetitious badgering by Gowdy and Chaffetz who were trying different legalistic locutions. Their intended effect was to make much of the public believe that the FBI let Clinton off the hook.

As Comey had already explained in that same hearing, the facts are that dozens or hundreds of State employees, all the way back to Colin Powell’s days, were using private servers without the “classified” status printed on the emails, and there was technically no law broken, therefore none prosecutable — though it was careless and sloppy, as Comey stated. So far as I know, the big questions have never been asked in the media: Why were they all doing this? Why didn’t the State Dept. provide a secure server? Are the State Dept’s own computers underperforming, — or else compromised? Are gov’t communications of all sorts OVER-classified?

2. Various published reports could be construed to narrate a “dirty-tricks” story: that in October, an anti-Clinton faction in the FBI’s NY office leaked the Abedin-Weiner non-story bullcrap to Rudy Giuliani, and possibly to Republicans in Congress. This threatened Comey to come out and say something about it IN PUBLIC, before it was blown up in headlines in another way — with the added bogus suggestion of the Bureaus’ involvement in a new coverup to protect Hillary. So Comey found himself in another no-win situation.

Indeed Rudy just came up, again. From the hearing last week, May 3:

SENATOR LEAHY: Let me ask you this. During your investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, a number of surrogates like Rudy Giuliani claimed to have a pipeline to the FBI. He boasted that, and I quote, numerous agents talk to him all the time. (Inaudible) regarding the investigation. He even said that he had — insinuated he had advanced warning about the emails described in your October letter. Former FBI agent Jim Kallstrom made similar claims.
Now, either they’re lying, or there’s a serious problem within the bureau. Anybody in the FBI during this 2016 campaign have contact with Rudy Giuliani about — about the Clinton investigation?
COMEY: I don’t know yet. But if I find out that people were leaking information about our investigations, whether it’s to reporters or to private parties, there will be severe consequences.
LEAHY: Did you know of anything from Jim Kallstrom?
COMEY: Same answer. I don’t know yet.
LEAHY: Do you know any about — from other former agents?
COMEY: I don’t know yet. But it’s a matter that I’m very, very interested in.
LEAHY: But you are looking into it?
COMEY: Correct.
LEAHY: And once you’ve found that answer, will you provide it to us?
COMEY: I’ll provide it to the committee in some form. I don’t whether I would say publicly, but I’d find some way to let you know.

Reading the full transcript of this hearing will show you just how serious the Russian connections are, to both sides of the aisle in the Senate.

On the Rudy story, see also Reuters, Nov. 3: “FBI fear of leaks drove decision on emails linked to Clinton: sources”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-fbi-leaks-idUSKBN12Y2QD

And a detailed overview as of Dec. 22: “Was Rudy Giuliani At The Center Of An FBI-Trump Campaign Conspiracy To Steal The Election?”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/was-rudy-giuliani-at-the-center-of-an-fbi-trump-campaign_us_585ad14ce4b014e7c72ed993

– and @5 stop this nonsense about ‘Trump’s Russian master’ – as by now everybody is aware that Von Clownstick only has ONE ‘master’ – the most nasty, dangerous and demented of them all: ‘Himself’.

But – still – Historians are going to have the absolute and total ‘field day’ for how little dough one could in Trumps erection – buy a real ‘campaign manager’ – or for what an amazing tiny budget price you were able to get a real US national security advisor – and I really understand that lots and lots of US politicians are angry – how Manafort and Flynn went for such small change in order to help – of all Creeps one of the nastiest dudes of them all.

I mean I it would have been France -(or even better Italy) trying to buy themselves into the US government in order that Von Clownstick would do some promotion for them -(and Paris or Rome) – that would have been some kind of acceptable – and ME and my friends already thought: If a buy in – into the US government is ‘that’ cheap – why leave it to countries like Russian – why not getting it for ourselves? – and then when Ivanka comes by get some of her clothes a lot cheaper too?

Hypocrisy is not a charge about reasons but about motives.

The question is not: are there good reasons for Democrats to hold different positions about Comey in each case? (There are.) The question is: are they in fact motivated by those good reasons? (That seems less obvious.)

Imagine if Comey had been fired with equally improper procedure after the Clinton email scandal. Do you really think many Democrats would have been outraged?

This is particularly an ironic defense given that it applies equally well to Trump himself. Trump claims he’s firing Comey for mishandling the Clinton email investigation. Of course, no one believes that’s his real motive. But it is a sound reason, a reason that exists and is available to him, and by this logic, inures him from the charge of hypocrisy.

What’s astonishing is that the OP even presents the case in a cynical way that almost short-circuits the post: “if Republicans try to troll Democrats…here’s the short, sharp response.” In other words: hey, people on my team, in case anyone tries to impugn your motives and you need help coming up with a good motive, here’s one.

But hypocrisy is a moral charge, and so this is not a politically important issue. It’s good that Republican and Democratic hypocrisy might get Trump impeached, even if the state of the souls on both sides are extremely impure.

If Republicans want to make the case that one or both of these are bad, or that it’s wrong to want both, let them make their case openly and honestly.

They are never going to make their case openly and honestly. They will continue to equivocate and to give lip service to principles they don’t even bother to cover up anymore. The only question is whether they rest complacent in their hypocrisy, or whether they begin to argue that “rule of law” mean something different from what it does (or more likely, to hypocritically insist that we use their use of the word in inappropriate ways is correct, while giving lip service to the idea of shared meanings, traditional definitions, and so on). Which of these would be preferable (not that we have a say in the matter) seems to be less clear than we might wish.

A few seconds googling reveals numerous explicit statements from prominent Democrats that Comey is incompetent and untrustworthy and should no longer be in the job. I’m afraid that’s quite textbook hypocrisy.

The alternative to that reading would be that it’s not hypocritical because I want this incompetent individual to continue his incompetent work investigating my political rival. That would not be hypocritical but would be an inane position to take.

The public reasons Trump gave for the firing are broadly assumed to be correct assessments of Comey’s performance. If you’re worried that he had unstated ulterior motives you can relax, the “Saturday Night Massacre” didn’t help Nixon and if there’s anything to all this Russia Trutherism there are phalanxes of anti-Trump people in the government and elite media to bring it out.

“…let them make their case openly and honestly.”

You are neglecting the fact that conservatives have a total emotional block against honesty (at least outside their own closed community). To tell someone a true thing grants the hearer equal status: this a conservative cannot do, not under any manner of duress.

“A few seconds googling reveals numerous explicit statements from prominent Democrats that Comey is incompetent and untrustworthy and should no longer be in the job. I’m afraid that’s quite textbook hypocrisy.”

Not at all. You can think Comey should be replaced with someone more competent, and to also believe that Trump fired Comey not to replace him with someone more competent but to cover up an ongoing investigation.

Similarly, I think Trump is woefully incompetent and should be removed from office, but I would be violently opposed to the Chinese government assassinating him.

I think John Cole explains the case rather well:

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/05/10/the-part-of-james-comey-will-be-played-by-a-pizza-a-balloon-juice-explainer/

If this is an inappropriate procedure for firing the director of the FBI, what would be the appropriate procedure for firing the director of the FBI?

Heliopause,

The point is that Comey was not fired for the justifiable reasons of incompetence and untrustworthiness, but because he was investigating Trump’s ties to Russia, which is an obviously dangerous abuse of the power the president has been given to enforce or fail to enforce the law.

If Trump now appoints a replacement who continues that investigation with greater competence and trustworthiness than Comey has displayed, that will prove me completely wrong. But, since there has never been any prospect of Trump firing Comey in order to get a competent and trustworthy successor, it has not been the least hypocritical of Ds to not push for Comey’s firing before he was fired, or be happy about it now that he has been fired. Being incompetent and untrustworthy is light years better in this job than what we will get as Comey’s replacement, the tool of a president willing to fire FBI directors to avoid investigation of his wrongdoing. Any candidate to succeed Comey who does not make appointment of an independent counsel a condition for accepting nomination will prove that he or she is such a tool. I don’t care how competent such a person is at being a tool. In fact, it would be a plus from my point of view if he or she is incompetent.

Sebastian H

Well step one might be to disclose the actual reasons for deciding to fire the director of the FBI in the middle of his term instead of transparently false ones.

That’s an issue of substance, not an issue of procedure.

If you, surprisingly, believe the disclosed reasons for deciding to fire the director of the FBI, …

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘believing the reasons’. The reasons given in the Deputy Attorney-General’s memo appear, on the face of it, to constitute an adequate justification for the decision; but official justifications are only sometimes actual motives; sometimes they are not motives, but pretexts.

… step two would be to disclose the reason for firing him now, instead of in January, or February, or March, or April.

The President’s official notification, the memo from the Attorney-General, and the memo from the Deputy Attorney-General all bear the same date, so this question reduces to the question of why the Deputy Attorney-General compiled his memo when he did. Obviously he couldn’t have submitted a memo as Deputy Attorney-General before he became Deputy Attorney-General, but aside from that, there’s nothing in his memo to explain why he wrote it when he did, or indeed why he wrote it at all. It doesn’t begin (as it could so easily have begun) ‘You have asked me to report on …’ or ‘My attention has been drawn by …’ or ‘I have become concerned because …’ or ‘In the bath today, I suddenly began to wonder whether the Director of the FBI should be fired …’ (okay, that last one he would never have actually written).

So if anybody’s looking for a procedural flaw, I think that has to be it. There’s no explanation, on the part of the Deputy Attorney-General, for why he has taken this action (written this memo). That’s a reasonable procedural requirement, for a memo of this importance to include background information that explains how the preparation of the memo came to be initiated. Once the memo had been submitted, I can’t figure how there’s any procedural fault in the Attorney-General endorsing it or the President acting on it (I can figure how it could be argued that there are substantive faults, but not procedural ones).

@19
If Comey is unfit to hold the office, as many top Democrats have said outright or at least strongly implied, it is plainly ridiculous to trust him with an investigation which you consider so important.

“here’s the short, sharp response: we all agree that someone may deserve to be punished, but also that proper procedures for punishing them need to be observed. This is not hypocrisy”
It may not be hypocrisy, but it’s nowhere near short and sharp enough to impress Trump supporters. You risk sounding like a bureaucrat – “but he failed to complete FormA638ZZ!”, and is no answer to the riposte “I’m Dirty Harry – Dirty Harry don’t need no steenking paperwork. I did the whole town a favour taking that badass down. Now, Kim-il-fatface, do ya feel lucky punk?”

Far better for the Dems to keep pointing out his hypocrisy, not his impulsiveness. Talk more Russia, less Combey.

Sebastian H @26
When you demand to a politician “do X”, you cannot add “but only for the right reasons!”.
At most, you can demand “but follow the right procedure”.

Heliopause @30

“Can I also point out while I’m here that a very prominent Democrat recently identified Comey as the main cause for Trump’s being in office in the first place and that it is facially absurd for a Democrat to want such an individual to continue in office under any condition?”

The only reason I was happy for Comey to continue in office is that his replacement will now be named by Trump. I think that’s a sufficient condition to make my position not absurd.

The principal reason Comey spoke out in the first place was because candidate Clinton’s husband decided to pay an unscripted visit to his friend and long-time confident, the AG of the United States, at precisely the same time the Justice department was debating whether to open a criminal investigation into the handling of government documents by the Democratic nominee, also named Clinton. Comey’s decision not greeted with universal applause. The partisan press has spent the last 8 years polishing the myth of the scandal-free Obama administration so that the gullible and the cynical can promulgate the myth among the masses. This rather good Wapo piece on AETNA’s plan to walk away from Obama’s signature program does more to explain why Trump is president and Clinton is not than any parsing of statements. The long and short of is that this election should never have been close. It was principally because of the broken promises and failed policies of the Obama administration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/aetna-exiting-all-aca-insurance-marketplaces-in-2018/2017/05/10/9dedbeea-35d4-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html?utm_term=.73cecd86b1f4

It looks even more like Comey was cashiered because he wanted to expand the investigation into Trump’s Russian connections.

Trump screamed at Comey on the TV during the Senate hearing last week, then called Sessions & Rosenstein to the White House, said “Get rid of Comey”.

Rosenstein went back to his office & dutifully wrote a letter to give some reasons why.

But then Trump used Rosenstein as the pretext, claiming that the Rosenstein letter INITIATED Comey’s firing!

Washington Post top headline this morning: “Deputy attorney general threatened to quit after being cast as impetus of dismissal”.

I had been wondering about Rosenstein’s participation in Comey’s sudden cashiering, because it didn’t make sense. Rosenstein seems like the reasonable sort, but the reasons in his letter are last year’s stories. Rosenstein must know (as everybody in D.C. does, including FBI rank-and-file) that Comey is a decent guy, not a politician, and that he was dirty-tricked into smearing Hillary in two different ways in July & October. So the command to write the letter must have seemed like a call to scribble some perfunctory bureaucratise, however unfair to a fellow.

But now it looks like Rosenstein is being sandbagged, too. And he doesn’t like it.

Not good for Trump. Both Rosenstein & Comey can both be called up to the Hill for testimony.

Firing Comey was Trump’s second big unforced error. A hyoooge error, even bigger than his shallow claim in a tweety pique that Obama wiretapped him.

Despite the Democrats’ apparent indignation & hypocrisy at Comey’s sacking, you can forget it, they are tickled to death.

= = = John Holbo @ 9:42 am: The following things seem to me likely true.
Comey, in a mistaken attempt to protect the reputation of the FBI by forestalling pro-Trump leaks concerning Hillary’s case, did something that was in-itself inappropriate and thereby threw the election to Trump. That’s pretty outrageous even though Comey almost certainly intended no such effect. = = =

The difficulty is that there is an equally likely explanation that fits the facts and is no more complicated than this one and perhaps less complicated: there is a faction within the FBI that actively dislikes Hillary Clinton and took specific intended actions to damage her Presidential campaign, with the deliberate intention of seeing a candidate elected who was more congenial to their worldview. In this scenario whether Comney was a member of that faction or simply took no action to identify and fire/prosecute them, he was complicit in their actions.

[I saw a transcript yesterday in which Senator Schumer specifically asked Comney about Giuliani’s magical ability to predict FBI announcements up to 36 hours in advance. Comney did his best to deflect but admitted he might have to look into that. I think we can assume that won’t happen now. ]

If a large number of Democrats accept the fell scenario, then it becomes harder to disagree with Helipause: there is no justification for a law enforcement official not only violating the Hatch Act but actually throwing an election using law enforcement resources to remain in office regardless of what else he might be investigating.

= = =Lee A. Arnold @ 11:35 am: So far as I know, the big questions have never been asked in the media: Why were they all doing this? Why didn’t the State Dept. provide a secure server? Are the State Dept’s own computers underperforming, — or else compromised? Are gov’t communications of all sorts OVER-classified? = = =

I was working in the technology sector at the time and perhaps it was covered in more detail by the technology press, but yes: Hillary’s Clinton’s first employee town hall meeting as Secretary of State turned into a 2-hour gripe session about how bad State Dept. computer and communication technology was, why State employees were forced to use only Internet Explorer 4 and forbidden to install Mozilla/Firefox despite the latter’s vastly superior security record, etc. The answer from State’s CIO was: because that’s what our outsourcing contractor gives us and we are not allowed to complain or deviate from that.

I would argue there is an acceptable procedure for firing Comey. Trump could announce that due to Comey’s intervention, the results of the election are clearly tainted and his own presidency is illegitimate. Pence could then resign, and be replaced by Hillary Clinton as VP. Trump could then fire Comey for cause, before handing his own resignation to the Secretary of State, and making Clinton president in accordance with the will of a plurality of the American people.

Will this ever happen? Of course not. But the arguments above seem to boil down to ‘one cannot hold the opinion “Comey is unfit to be director of the FBI and, ceteris paribus, should be fired” and “Comey is unfit, but whoever Trump replaces him with will be far worse, so we must tolerate him” at the same time.’ if there is no satisfactory procedure to remove him available. So consider this the possible, but wildly improbable, satisfactory procedure.

kidneystones: If Dems think that six months to six years of conspiracy theories is going to win back the voters, I’d suggest they think again. Yes,

Alternate view: the Republicans managed to keep the EBOLA drumbeat going for 6 months even while the Liberian Health Service got the spread under control and the US health services stayed in top of it. You and your Republican allies are just surprised and set back on your heels to find out that Democrats can pull the same trick on you – and you know they have a real scandal to work with in the Trump case.

One thing I fail to mention above is that in a typical employment case with pretextual firing in retaliation for doing something legal (or legally mandated like reporting certain types of irregularities to the FDA) timing is almost always a factor. If you show that the legally mandated, but vexing to the employer, action is close in time to the firing, while the pretext is not close in time to the firing, you have gotten very far along to winning a lot of money.

Just took a final look at the international and national press coverage of Comey. Bottom line – the probe continues and there may be a special prosecutor. So, if the firing was an attempt to derail the investigation – that’s clearly failed. So, why did Trump do it?
Absent any other explanation I return to my original suppositions re: Trump.

No 1: He’s no politician, but a damn effective reality TV producer and actor. He builds and markets brand Trump. Comey was fired because he wasn’t generating the kind of ratings Trump wanted, the narrative was stale and the actor ‘playing the part of the FBI director’ was hated by every demographic of the president’s ‘audience.’ Trump isn’t running a government, he’s casting a reality TV show. Comey’ replacement must be competent, but more important she, or he, must win the trust of the public and the nation that Comey had clearly lost. Pretty much all the air goes out of the obstruction argument with the investigation going forwards as is surely seems to be doing. Any remaining goes out with the appointment of a special prosecutor. There may be some piece of spectacular evidence that eluded the CIA, NSA, FBI, and other security agencies (many of which are evidently staffed by individuals hostile to Trump) that will knock the president off stride. Within a week, or two, the news cycle will move on. Feinstein confessed there’s no there, there – at least not yet. And until there is, Trump moves on.

Comey is gone. He’ll be trotted out as a martyr, but in the end will regarded unsympathetically by pretty much everyone, rightly or wrongly. The folks who hate Trump still will, and those who don’t aren’t paying much attention to hyperbolic after-the-election moaning. Trump may yet hit a wall, but that will most likely come from some future blunder, and so far he hasn’t made any significant enough to knock too far off stride.

Praying for the president to fail? That’s what Republicans did for 8 years. How’d that turn out? Dems still have no persuasive economic argument to win back white voters. Few liberals are ready to make common cause with the ‘mouth breathers,’ and until they are Republican fortunes remain bright.

@36
“Sometimes there’s no good procedural way to do something.”

Trump’s fans like him because he is supposedly decisive, and if someone needs firing he’s not going to wait around 142 days for the HR report, he’s just going to do it. That’s his schtick and that’s what we should expect him to do. If he carefully deliberated his decisions he’d be Obama.

If that’s the way it’s going to be, that we’re going to pull the Capt. Renault routine every time Trump doesn’t follow “procedure” and acts like Trump, then it’s going to be years of these histrionics in the foreground while god knows what goes on in the back. More Russia nonsense, more Trump doing Trump stuff, more alienation of the general public from the whole stinking pile. I would say that the one good thing to come out of this is that there won’t be any more Comey dog-and-pony shows on TV, but, alas, my fear is that we haven’t seen the last of him.

Maybe I should be more positive about the Democratic party as Resistance. Maybe I should ignore obvious hypocrisy when I see it. Maybe I should immerse myself in procedure and personality and put all the stuff that matters on the back burner. Maybe I should look forward to our choice in 2020 between Mark Zuckerberg and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

@ 58 You put the pitfalls of focusing on bright, shiny objects – Trump’s ‘outrageous’ ‘unprecedented’ actions (all as you note quite predictable) into sharp relief. Trump couldn’t give a rat’s behind about Comey and may actually respect him for all we know. I don’t doubt for a second that Trump was going to dump him whatever the report said, or that many more former Obama officials will follow him out the door, a development which I hope comes as no surprise to anyone.

Who will be the first Dem to break ranks post-Comey and join the administration? That’s an interesting question for the distant, or not too distant future. Media outlets are showing few signs of regaining any sense of balance, or focus and have devolved into click-bait camps for the shrill of various persuasions.

58: “Maybe I should be more positive about the Democratic party as Resistance.”

You should, actually. From the grassroots to the top the party has put up a quite spirited resistance and I think they can keep it up. Given the weakness of the Democrats’ position, they can’t stop much if the GOP gets it halfway together – they could not stop Gorsuch and they may not be able to stop “health care reform” if a bill actually gets out of the Senate or the “tax reform” that the Republicans also have planned. But they really are making things as difficult for the GOP as they responsibly can, with a powerful assist from the Toddler-in-Chief.

As for Comey, I’m willing to believe a considerable part of Trump’s motivation was perfectly unserious. Comey had annoyed him by failing to support his claim that Obama tapped him, he had admitted the Russian investigation was underway, and apparently Trump took Comey’s “nauseous” remark to mean that Comey wanted to puke at the thought that his actions might have elected Trump. Never underestimate personal spite when it comes to Trump.

Given that the next Director is probably going to be Chris Christie or Rudy Guilliani (or Cushner perhaps), it’s perfectly reasonable to despise Comey for influencing the election and fully expect that whoever replaces him is going to be considerably worse. This isn’t a complicated position to hold and implies no hypocrisy on the part of the holder.

I don’t think whatever the partisan Democrats are playing at constitutes “hypocrisy” per se. I can see why one might think hypocrisy is involved, because there’s an elaborate sham being used as a “narrative” by the Media in cooperation with partisans, but I think the major actors would have to have some moral compass in order to deviate from its direction before “hypocrisy” was apt.

I do not think for one moment that there is any substance at all to the allegations of a Russian Conspiracy that meddled decisively and subversively in the U.S. election, so though I think Trump is annoyed at being dogged by investigations into the Russian Conspiracy, I find it impossible to credit this annoyance as morally significant “obstruction”. As far as I can tell, there are not even any actual allegations, let alone evidence to support them. There is just the pretence of allegation, innuendo ad infinitum. It is completely maddening — gaslighting a whole country. And, Comey has been an instrument for this kind of crap going back at least to the Clinton email investigation.

It is not like this is anything new in U.S. politics. The Whitewater scandal was kept in motion for years. Two of the leading journalists promoting the “if there’s smoke there must be fire” queries thru the 1996 election (20+ years ago!) at the NY Times and Washington Post founded Politico.com and another Whitewater scandal monger incongruously switched sides and became a favorite contract attack dog for the Clinton Machine.

The journalists and manipulators of the narrative that infect U.S. politics do not even know they are malevolent forces. The U.S. invaded Iraq with a majority of the electorate believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and had something to do with 9/11. Yet, the U.S. has been at war for 15 years with no end in sight. Pundits with the records of Tom Friedman and Charles Krauthammer continue on.

This has become U.S. politics, it is institutionalized as U.S. political discourse and now it is reaching its crescendo, with a reality teevee star in his dotage playing the President.

It is hard to have much sympathy for Trump, who was happy enough to use birtherism with his characteristic shameless disregard for all fact and, of course, to draw attention to Comey, when Comey was using “FBI investigation” as the instrument of Clinton’s discomfort.

Still, I look on in horror and fear for my country.

There is a barb of irony in the letter report of the Deputy Attorney General, citing Comey’s misconduct in the Clinton email inquiry as a reason for firing Comey. That barb of irony does not obviate the observations made about Comey’s failure to perform his role properly or the importance of doing so. It may be that these sensible observations of the Deputy Attorney General were merely there as part of the cover story to bait the Democrats, but it isn’t “hypocrisy” when the Democrats refuse to take the bait and continue to escalate the effort to de-legitimize Trump and oust him on completely bogus grounds. (And, why on bogus grounds — with Trump, it is hard to believe that a real, grounded case could not be built, not that option is considered an option.)

The erosion of norms of conduct and the failure of institutions to enforce those norms when violated actually has a lot to do with this growing crisis of legitimacy. I do not see many journalists let alone partisan pundits question the wisdom of keeping this narrative of the Russian conspiracy going. It is not that many years ago that a Presidential election actually was stolen, and prominent partisan Democrats did not get this excited. Most of them, led by Gore, rolled over, rather than risk critically de-legitimizing the government — it was viewed by some responsible politicians as an extortion attempt that they should accede to.

Trump’s letter to Comey was remarkably direct. “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.” I read that as sarcasm. That might not be “the” correct reading, but if you cannot see the high plausibility of that interpretation, if you cannot read it as sarcasm, something has gone wrong with your reading comprehension. You have passed thru the looking glass into a political discourse conducted entirely in the subjunctive case (“as if”) and a register of hyperactive albeit insincere and ungrounded outrage.

Trump is annoyed to be told repeatedly that he is not under investigation. Trump knows better than most the import of such negative messages. The whole narrative of the Russian Conspiracy is built on such empty non-allegation allegations and the conspicuous intent to never frame an investigation in terms that would bring it to a definite end and conclusion. Was there ever a final end to the Clinton email server investigation? Does any one ever investigate something with the intent of actually reaching a conclusion? There was that crazy dossier that floated about about Trump and golden showers in Moscow; did anyone, journalist or official investigator, ever confirm or disconfirm any of it? It was just another occasion for mindless, baseless speculation with no interest in judgment.

As Anarcissie @ 14 observed, one way to read these continuing events is as a struggle between a Deep State or Established Order and the rogue (but still billionaire elite) element represented by Trump. This is an E.O. that is remarkably careless about order itself.

Sebastian H

Is there any evidence of the procedure being subverted for an improper purpose–yes Rosenstein appears to have been ordered by Sessions (his boss and the very person supposedly recused from the investigation) and Trump (whose aides are being investigated) to draw up a memo with other reasons to fire Comey.

I agree absolutely. If Trump and/or Sessions asked Rosenstein to write the memo, that fact should be in the memo. On the other hand, if there was some other reason for Rosenstein to write the memo, that should be in the memo: for example, ‘Immediately on being appointed Deputy Attorney-General, I set out to review the performance of all those reporting directly to my new office. As part of this process, I commenced a review of the performance of the Director of the FBI, who reports directly to the Deputy Attorney-General, and was concerned to find that …’ and so on. There is nothing in the memo to explain why the memo is being written; that’s a procedural flaw.

And then there’s this report:

Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerging from the White House on Tuesday evening cast him as a prime mover of the decision to fire Comey and that the president acted only on his recommendation, said the person close to the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-trumps-anger-and-impatience-prompted-him-to-fire-the-fbi-director/2017/05/10/d9642334-359c-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.bcaac13ed219

Rosenstein’s grievance (if that story is true) is self-inflicted. If he had begun his memo to the Attorney-General, as he could have, ‘As you are aware, we have been instructed by the President to state the argument in favor of dismissing the Director of the FBI. This memo has been prepared accordingly for your consideration.’, it would have prevented the emergence of the narrative to which (reportedly) he objected.

kidneystone

US presidential elections are held every four years, not eight

Why, thank you so much for explaining that to me. But as it happens I did already know that, so the explanation was in fact unnecessary.

Trump the reality TeeVee star destroyed the entire Republican political establishment

After something has been destroyed, it’s not there any more. The entire Republican political establishment is still very much there, so clearly it has not been destroyed.

The Republican party won big as they usually do at all other levels

I don’t know what your idea of ‘usually’ is, but it’s obviously not the same as mine.

Trump is no Republican

The evidence is against you on that point.

@71 You’re entirely right on all counts – you spent over a year asserting that Hillary would win and she did. The Republican establishment love Trump, but the base found Donald’s dogmatic fixation on GOP principles to be excessively doctrinaire and impractical. Jeb Bush secured the nomination, but lost to Hillary, who is now making the world safe for everyone, including bankers. Republicans do not have control over far more state and local governments than Democrats and never have. Trump is now back to holding beauty contests, but regularly participates in local GOP contests like the lifelong Republican he is.
Democrats are more popular than ever having re-elected a young and dynamic leadership with no leader over the age of fifty. Trump never visits New York, but hangs out with his GOP buddies, the Bush family in Texas and Florida, who all attended Trump’s wedding to Melania some years ago. Trump will write a column for the Weekly Standard along with his good friend William Kristol, but will find time to join David Frum and the NRO gang on their cruises.

Or, how about this – the GOP allowed Obama to win in 2012 as part of their ‘master plan’ to make Donald Trump, ‘the Republican’s Republican,’ the nominee in 2016. Mitt worked as hard as he could to get Donald elected and was shattered when the man he admires most was demolished by Hillary’s masterful fifty-state sweep.

It’s your world we just live in it.

kidneystones: “Pretty much all the air goes out of the obstruction argument with the investigation going forwards as is surely seems to be doing.”

Yet Trump says he meant to obstruct the investigation:

“And, in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said: ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.’”

You may be right that the obstruction won’t work, but there’s no reason to be optimistic about that. And, I’m pretty sure they prosecute bank robbers who fail in the attempt. Then there’s Nixon, of course, who fired the special prosecutor who was investigating him. The investigation continued, carried on by others. Do you say Nixon wasn’t obstructing justice, because the obstruction ultimately failed of its purpose?

67: “Trump is annoyed to be told repeatedly that he is not under investigation. Trump knows better than most the import of such negative messages.”

We don’t know that any such exchanges between Trump and Comey ever took place. The reports we do have suggest that Trump was pissed because Comey admitted in a public forum that Trump was under investigation.

bruce wilder: “I think you would have a hard time finding such a statement. Google it and you will find a stream of propaganda from Think Progress, a Clinton organ, and endless regurgitation of claims and denials cleverly misconstrued by the Media to keep the controversy going.”

It’s hard to understand what this means. The first sentence is simply wrong, as a quick google search shows that lots of media (WaPo, Reuters, WSJ, etc) are reporting what you say is only being reported by Think Progress. The second sentence renders the first pointless anyway, as you make it clear you won’t believe it no matter who reports it. This is tin-foil hat stuff.

@PGD #80:

Obstruction of justice does not require a finding that a crime was committed – it’s a crime in itself, and more than a few people who could have walked away head unbowed have been convicted because they lied under oath or sought to influence legal proceedings. If you value rule of law and transparency, that’s an entirely reasonable and just outcome.

I do not think for one moment that there is any substance at all to the allegations of a Russian Conspiracy that meddled decisively and subversively in the U.S. election, so though I think Trump is annoyed at being dogged by investigations into the Russian Conspiracy, I find it impossible to credit this annoyance as morally significant “obstruction”. As far as I can tell, there are not even any actual allegations, let alone evidence to support them.

I haven’t been paying attention *that* closely, so perhaps I’m in error here, but isn’t at least some level of “subversive Russian meddling” (i.e., the DNC hacking) already more or less established fact? (‘Decisively’ is a weasel word – whether those attempts were truly decisive or not, they were certainly unwelcome.)

The matter of at least some inappropriate contact between Trump staffers and Russian diplomats — and attempts to then lie about and cover up those contacts — has also been established. Not to mention a pile of indistinct but distinctively unseemly-looking business ties with various Russian interests.

Thus the “Russian Conspiracy” you blithely dismiss is at least in some ways already a matter of fact. The remaining questions and investigation are instead about its size and scope: what were the content of those secret conversations, and how many others occurred? Was there any kind of prior communication — perhaps even quid-pro-quo agreement — between Russian officials and the highest levels of the Trump campaign regarding the hacking attempts which did occur?

That is, I believe, the implied allegation. And if any evidence for any of it were to be uncovered, it would in fact be scandalous, and perhaps even establish a crime.

(There’s also a question in my mind about whether the hacking was limited to email servers. I see no reason to assume that *attempts* weren’t at least made on the voting infrastructure itself. That would be enormously scandalous. And while I haven’t heard anyone more than whisper about the scenario, given the porous nature of most voting machine systems, it’s not nearly as tinfoil-hat as I think we’d all prefer.)

I google, “Comey says Trump is under investigation” and I get a lot of links reporting back-and-forth on Trump “defending” his firing of Comey and noting Trump’s claim that Comey told Trump Trump was not under investigation. I do not see any straight news report of Comey reporting on his own authority in a public forum that Trump was under investigation, which is what Suzanne claimed. I expect what Suzanne refers to was Comey’s March 20 statement before Nunes’ House Intelligence Committee about an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation.

A lot of the reporting on investigation of the Russia Conspiracy is tin-foil hat stuff — people in the Media adopt phrasing and tone that induce imagining stuff.

In a functional political system, institutions circumspect concerning their own integrity would police the boundaries, but that isn’t happening. Consider what happens to people who disclose actual, verified facts. What happened to the CIA officer who sought to verify rumors that Niger had supplied uranium to Saddam Hussein? What happened to Wikileaks? What happens to Media figures who come too close to critical thought? Ashleigh Banfield, I am sure, learned an important lesson in 2003.

Meanwhile, we have official statements from the likes of James Clapper to entertain us with empty innuendo and Seth Meyer drawing conclusions from how happy Trump appears in official photos of a meeting with the Russian ambassador. oooh, breaking news.

@85: ” I expect what Suzanne refers to was Comey’s March 20 statement before Nunes’ House Intelligence Committee about an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation.”

Well, yes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/us/politics/intelligence-committee-russia-donald-trump.html?_r=0

“The F.B.I. is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government — and whether there was any coordination, Mr. Comey said.”

If you want to make a distinction between investigating the Trump campaign and investigating Trump, fine by me. However, The Donald seems to have made no such distinction when it came to his displeasure at Comey’s March testimony:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/09/trump-needed-a-really-good-excuse-to-fire-james-comey-comey-gave-it-to-him/?utm_term=.06abb6bb7eed

“A couple of weeks after Comey made those announcements in March, Trump talked about his job security at length in a pretty conspicuous way, re-litigating the FBI chief’s handling of the Clinton investigation.”

Yes, well, hypocrisy is indeed the opposite of sincerity. The thing is, sincerity is the cheapest of virtues, being available for the wee price of self-deception. It is beyond me how anyone can be sure someone truly is a hypocrite, or just kidding themselves. That is, absent the power to see into men’s souls. Come to think of it, this power does seem to be standard equipment for pillars of rectitude. But if you’re not a rectitudinous pillar, this accusation can border on charging someone with being human. Even worse, propriety is very much like beauty. (I suppose I could harden myself to charge a mother with hypocrisy for persisting in telling all and sundry her child is beautiful, but is it a worthwhile pursuit?)

The politics however I think are much clearer than the murky waters in the human consciousness: Convicting the Democrat Party of hypocrisy supports Trump. Insisting that Trump is effectively obstructing justice, does not. It will be the Republican Party that impeaches Trump, so the kerfuffle is noise and fury.

Bruce is right, we all have better things to do.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/11/one-screenshot-captures-everything-wrong-media-coverage-trump/

Cheers, John!

jack lecou @ 83,84

I mostly don’t pay that much attention either — very few do. We rely on a division of labor and institutional reputation to provide focus and filter. I think we have seen that institutional bulwark break down almost completely after being under considerable stress for a long time.

Not trying to pick a fight or anything like that, but it seems to me that you are, in your comments above, illustrating my thesis about how this political discourse in the subjunctive is synthesized out of sweeping generalizations and “as if” speculation.

EX: “isn’t at least some level of “subversive Russian meddling” (i.e., the DNC hacking) already more or less established fact?”

EX: “the “Russian Conspiracy” you blithely dismiss is at least in some ways already a matter of fact.”

EX: “The matter of at least some inappropriate contact between Trump staffers and Russian diplomats — and attempts to then lie about and cover up those contacts — has also been established. ”

EX: “That is, I believe, the implied allegation. And if any evidence for any of it were to be uncovered, it would in fact be scandalous, and perhaps even establish a crime.”

EX: “There’s also a question in my mind about whether the hacking was limited to email servers. I see no reason to assume that *attempts* weren’t at least made on the voting infrastructure itself. That would be enormously scandalous.”

EX: “simply asserting forcefully that it’s ludicrous on the face to entertain the possibility that some of that dry wood might have caught a spark at some point isn’t actually doing a great deal to reassure me.”

To paraphrase Nixon, let me be perfectly clear about one thing: I do NOT want to reassure you about the competence of Trump or the people he has assembled about him. (I am not here to do the impossible ;-)

That said, the way your mind has gone forward into projections about hacking the actual vote count or a quid-pro-quo agreement between Russian officials and the highest levels of the Trump campaign is exactly the way this kind of propaganda is designed to work. No one ever reports such eventualities as accomplished facts, but you still somehow end up thinking them. Just like people thought Saddam brought down the World Trade Center. It is declaring “don’t think of a pink elephant” to induce people to think of pink elephants or asking a man when he stopped beating his wife or reporting a false but lurid rumor in the hopes of forcing an enemy to deny it. Richard Gere is never going to have a normal relationship with a gerbil, that much I know.

I am not saying that Michael Flynn’s early departure from the Trump Administration wasn’t a boon to the country, but speaking to the Russian Ambassador is hardly inappropriate conduct — it’s routine conduct to speak to ambassadors, that’s what ambassadors are for. And, Flynn, being Flynn and by many accounts possessed of singularly poor judgement and impulse control for a general officer, may have said more than he should and wanted to cover it up; maybe Flynn just lies compulsively. There are always going to be dots on the page; you need a little more to justify connecting those dots into a constellation and then making the supreme leap of asserting that the constellation represents anything at all in the world outside your own dreamscape.

Was it ever verified that the DNC was hacked on behalf of the Russian government? Not exactly yes and not exactly no — that event and the official narratives about it are a great illustration of how official secrecy and “investigations” that involve only a minimal nod to methods of investigation seem to breed this shadowy smoky stuff that get us worried about Manchurian candidates elected by rigged vote counts. A private firm, CrowdStrike, with some dubious political links and self-promotional flair, did the only hands-on investigation at the DNC and issued in place of documentary evidence a press release. They identified the hackers as the shadowy group dubbed by security researchers, Fancy Bear, and widely but vaguely thought to be a frequent instrument of some not altogether definitively identified Russian intelligence agency. CrowdStrike also asserted that another shadowy Russian hacker group working for a different Russian intelligence agency had broken into the DNC email server nearly a year before Fancy Bear tried their hand. Neither the FBI nor any other police agency conducted any kind of forensic examination. The CrowdStrike report was disputed. A former British diplomat with ties to Julian Assange claimed he had been involved in getting the Podesta emails to Wikileaks and knew the leaker was an insider. Guccifer 2.0, still another hacker(s), claimed to have done the dirty deed and there’s been back-and-forth among people who care about such things about whether Guccifer 2.0, who appears to be Romanian, is on good terms with official Russia. It is an endless tunnel of mirrors where people freely speculate and then weasel out “medium confidence” in a conclusion. And, this becomes the foundation for an intelligence assessment that might be nine-tenths reading Putin’s mind for intentions.

I think the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment commissioned by President Obama on Russian interference illustrates another way official secrecy is used to manufacture hysteria and outrage. There was, first of all, the ceremonial gravity given to the proceedings by Obama threatening retaliation and actually carrying out a gesture of expelling some diplomats. There was lots of high-flown language framed in general terms about a “massive” cyber operation, but the actual de-classified report mostly whined about the Russian cable-news channel, RT America. I suppose one is supposed to surmise that they just couldn’t tell everyone about the juicy stuff — source and methods don’t cha ‘no — but it kind of looks like they got nuthin’. Unless you think RT America is somehow illegitimate — I’m not one of the 14 people who watch regularly, but from what little I know of it, it has higher journalistic standards than MSNBC.

In the end, you are supposed to imagine almost involuntarily that the Russians hacked the voting machines and Trump insiders were conspiring with Putin’s minions in a quid-pro-quo. And, there’s absolutely no reason to think either of those things is true. Other than the incessantly repeated propaganda stream that substitutes for a political discourse.

jack lecou: “‘Decisively’ is a weasel word – whether those attempts were truly decisive or not, they were certainly unwelcome.”

I wasn’t trying to weasel so much as to draw attention to mechanisms. To make a case for Russian interference, you have to put it into a context of mechanisms for winning elections. It can’t just be serial liar James Clapper’s ungrounded and unexplained “massive” — it has to be proportional to the task. The U.S. has interfered in some elections historically, and the interference was proportional to outcomes; governments were overthrown by military force when the vote didn’t work out. You cannot in total secrecy win an election in which millions publicly campaign and vote. Some large part of your effort will appear above the waterline. So what was the mechanism? That the Podesta emails revealed true information? That RT America, with its audience of 14, overwhelmed the propaganda resources of the billion-dollar Clinton campaign?

jack lecou @ 86: . . . is this a very clever word game we’re playing, in which e.g., “investigation into links to the Trump campaign,” is not the same thing as “investigation of Trump”….?

Yes, I think it is akin to a very clever word game, but it’s not my game.

Psychological processes like semantic generalization and narrative incompleteness are being exploited to lead us along a path. Very vague formulas are used, so a possibly legitimate, routine and pedestrian counterintelligence investigation advances by almost imperceptible increments from examining the affairs of a relative nobody named Carter Page with distant and tenuous links to Trump into a surmised accusation that Trump is Putin’s Manchurian Candidate.

Or, speculation about who hacked the DNC becomes a fear that the electoral count was hacked. And, so on.

Again, I feel like I have to end by re-asserting that I do not want to “reassure” anyone. That’s a trick of the mind — your mind, not mine. Hysteria over a false threat doesn’t mean there isn’t a real threat. Paranoia is no guarantee that they are not out to get you. It is, in fact, evidence of a real threat: re-read Anarcissie @ 14 above.

John Holbo 05.11.17 at 9:42 am
‘… Comey, in a mistaken attempt to protect the reputation of the FBI by forestalling pro-Trump leaks concerning Hillary’s case, did something that was in-itself inappropriate and thereby threw the election to Trump…..’

It is not possible to reason from evidence to the conclusion that Comey’s actions, or Putin’s for that matter, caused a particular outcome of the election, because if it were, the same reasoning could have been applied shortly before the election, and the result would have been a predominance of predictions that Trump was going to win.

If Trump can’t take Russian money, then gleefully stiff them, he’s not the man I thought he was.

In other words, the old joke is, an honest politician stays bought, but Trump is not an honest politician.

Bruce, Flynn clearly broke basic rules on disclosure. He was working for Russia and turkey while advising trump on security. If you can think of an innocent reason for that I’d love to hear it. If you can explain why comeys sacking has nothing to do with the Russia inquiry when trump himself said that was the reason I would love to hear it.

Republicans are traitors and wreckers. That’s the easiest explanation for their behavior.

That said, the way your mind has gone forward into projections about hacking the actual vote count or a quid-pro-quo agreement between Russian officials and the highest levels of the Trump campaign is exactly the way this kind of propaganda is designed to work. No one ever reports such eventualities as accomplished facts, but you still somehow end up thinking them.

But I don’t think them. Or think they’re true anyway. You’re essentially making the claim that people are so foolish that statements like “there’s reason to be suspicious this might have happened, we should check it out” are equivalent in their minds to “this definitely happened”.

I’m the first guy to admit that the public can be pretty foolish, but I think that’s underestimating even them. The subjunctive continues to be used over the indicative for a reason.

Just like people thought Saddam brought down the World Trade Center. It is declaring “don’t think of a pink elephant” to induce people to think of pink elephants or asking a man when he stopped beating his wife or reporting a false but lurid rumor in the hopes of forcing an enemy to deny it. Richard Gere is never going to have a normal relationship with a gerbil, that much I know.

Which aren’t really equivalent at all. All of those examples are instances of non sequitur accusations invented out of whole cloth. There’s a difference between on the one hand, asking a man whether he has stopped beating his wife, and on the other hand, observing that a woman seems to be able to offer only weak explanations for the bruises she has all the time, so maybe it’s worth looking into whether her husband — or someone else she knows — may be responsible.

What we have with the Trump/Russia nexus is a series of accidental and clumsy revelations of misbehavior. Ripples in the water. There are enough of them that I — and apparently not a few others — think there’s sufficient suspicion there to merit turning on the fish finder and seeing if we can find out what’s down there. Could be a little school of minnows. Could be a great white whale. Could just be the wind.

I’m unclear on *your* position. Unless it’s just to assume it’s the wind because considering any other possibilities would involve use of the dreaded subjunctive.

In the end, you are supposed to imagine almost involuntarily that the Russians hacked the voting machines and Trump insiders were conspiring with Putin’s minions in a quid-pro-quo. And, there’s absolutely no reason to think either of those things is true. Other than the incessantly repeated propaganda stream that substitutes for a political discourse.

You act as if some sinister force is directing this process. Was it that force which conducted the DNC hacking? Was it that force which engineered inappropriate contacts between Trump staffers and Russian interests? No. And yet absent those events, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

*NO* reason to think those things were true would be the conditions which prevailed in the Clinton, Bush or Obama administrations, in which there were no ripples in the water. No potentially Russian linked hacks and high-level campaign contacts with Russian agents were ever revealed.

So there is not NO reason to think those things are true. Not enough to conclude they are true? Sure. We’re somewhere in between. Which is what investigations are for. To do the best we can to get out of that zone.

Psychological processes like semantic generalization and narrative incompleteness are being exploited to lead us along a path. Very vague formulas are used, so a possibly legitimate, routine and pedestrian counterintelligence investigation advances by almost imperceptible increments from examining the affairs of a relative nobody named Carter Page with distant and tenuous links to Trump into a surmised accusation that Trump is Putin’s Manchurian Candidate.

“Relative nobody” is doing a lot of work for you there. You’re writing as if Page were a refrigerator salesmen from Toledo, rather than well connected businessman and highly — if not top — placed adviser in Trump’s presidential campaign. Any in-progress counterintelligence investigation which involves individuals close to a sitting President is by definition not a “routine and pedestrian” one. Which is perhaps the crux of the disagreement here.

Republicans are traitors and wreckers. That’s the easiest explanation for their behavior.

Actually, the easiest explanation is that they all have undiagnosed or unmanaged empathy impairments, which sometimes manifests as a difficulty with understanding why different people have different experiences and want different changes made and sometimes emerges as a crippling, all-encompassing narcissism.

Noone wrecks or traits for fun. They’re doing it for reasons that seem to them just and mete, and to understand and predict actions you need to know what those just-and-mete reasons are and why they hold them. “People other than me don’t have genuine experiences” actually fits the observed phenomena pretty damned well; I mean, I’m open to alternative explanations. But yours is, fundamentally, “they are devils in human flesh”, and I find that unsatisfying.

JimV 05.13.17 at 1:39 pm @ 100 —
I have another reason for not thinking that Comey’s letter probably cost Clinton the election, besides that the outcome of the election was incomputable before it, and therefore opaque as to causes of its outcome after — a perception which seems so obvious to me that I am confounded that anyone disagrees. My other reason is that I have read that most voters do not vote according to lengthy chains of evidence-gathering and logical analysis, but according to intuition and emotion, and I believe this because it corresponds to my own observations. I do not believe the voters, in general, would be inclined to make the kind of extended analysis necessary to apportion blame for Clinton’s improper email server and the circus (Anthony Weiner!) which surrounded it, in time to change their feelings and therefore their votes. Why would they?

I’d like to point out the subtle tenor of Bruce Wilder’s denials of the Russia thing, in which he focuses on “hacking voting machines.” We all know this is largely not the way it most likely happened – that it was a bunch of other stuff. Also the inquiry is not about whether the Russians hacked voting machines, it’s about whether they own Trump. Even if they didn’t help him at all, the possibility that they own him is a matter of serious concern. Yet Bruce is focusing on specific material allegations that likely aren’t true, using the same strategy that the Republicans have been using in issuing denials. e.g. how they seized on Comey’s statement that there was no evidence the Russians hacked voting machines as a way to say the whole thing is a witch hunt.

Once again, just as he did with the stories about the Clinton Foundation and Obamacare, Bruce Wilder is reproducing right wing disinformation.

Why do you always repeat right wing lies, Bruce? Is it because you’re being played?

“I do not believe the voters, in general, would be inclined to make the kind of extended analysis necessary to apportion blame for Clinton’s improper email server and the circus (Anthony Weiner!) which surrounded it, in time to change their feelings and therefore their votes. Why would they?”

Answer: there was a significant portion of voters who had not made up their minds – some leaning slightly one way or the other, others without any clue (and in fact something like a million voters handed in ballots with no selection or a write-in – often facetious – at the top). These voters did not have feelings or votes to change. Then they saw the front page of the NY Times after the Comey letter, or the cable news furor – the last supposedly significant thing before the election.

I don’t know for certain, but it is equally if not more obvious to me that attributing a significant effect to the Comey letter is not a reach (and that the announcement itself turned out to be another red herring). Of course, it is always possible that I am indulging in motivated reasoning, the ill that all humanity is heir to.

JimV 05.14.17 at 12:56 pm @ 109:
‘… Then they saw the front page of the NY Times after the Comey letter….’

Who, the people who voted for Trump in the Rust Belt? The Times? Come on.

Actually, I can see the Comey fandango producing a sympathy vote for Clinton. I am told most people hate email and prefer to communicate via texting and social media. What they get from email is mostly spam and messages from their bosses. That Clinton was having some kind of mysterious trouble with an email server in her basement would resonate favorably with them. Someone should look into this.

Anarcissie: “Actually, I can see the Comey fandango producing a sympathy vote for Clinton…”

Of course you can! I mean, that’s not at all at odds with what you said before, which is that people paid no attention to it, and that people can’t reason from evidence to make voting decisions. Who needs data, after all, when we can just go along with whatever you find impossible to believe today, and are confounded that anyone disagrees?

@88

>1)we know that Trump team members were discussing with Russians the content and timing of anti-Hillary propaganda (Stone)

Stone has only boasted of having talked to *Wikileaks*, not ‘Russians’ (not to mention that Wikileaks has denied even that). Equating Wikileaks and the Russians is what the McCarthyist establishment does, of course.

>2) we know that Trump team members held illegal conversations with Russians and then lied about them (Flynn)

Breaking formally an antique and mostly pointless law that had been dormant for centuries and that nobody involved was probably aware of. The content of that conversation (as reported by the leakers themselves) wouldn’t have seemed obviously wrong or sinister to anyone unaware of the specific law, and Flynn’s subsequent lies were just an attempt to avoid admitting that he had broken it.

>3) we know that other Trump team members had contacts of an unknown nature with Russian officials, and then lied about those contacts (Sessions)

AFAIU, he said that he hadn’t spoken to them in the capacity of a member of the campaign; and as a US senator, it was perfectly normal for him to speak to foreign ambassadors all the time.

In sum, one can note that sinister-sounding general formulations are often more useful for a certain purpose than the actually available specifics.

Of course, I can’t *exclude* the possibility that any of the accusations are true (and, at least, it’s only too plausible that some in Trump’s entourage are motivated by their business interests in Russia), but what does seem quite clear is that a lot of very weak evidence is being trumpeted and misrepresented deliberately and systematically in order to manufacture a controversy.

jack lecou @ You act as if some sinister force is directing this process. . . . So there is not NO reason to think those things are true. Not enough to conclude they are true? Sure. We’re somewhere in between. Which is what investigations are for. To do the best we can to get out of that zone.

So, in your mind our Disinterested Solons and Media Tribunes of the People are responding almost involuntarily to “a series of accidental and clumsy revelations of misbehavior” by doing the right thing, investigating smoke spotted in the distance, to see if there’s fire. This, now, is nothing like the Clinton Whitewater scandal or the run-up to the Iraq War. That was then, this is now. Those were “non sequitur accusations invented out of whole cloth”. Not like now. This time is different.

Boy, do I wish I lived in your world! (Faustusnotes probably does too; there he’d occasionally be right about something.)

I don’t know if I would say “sinister forces” are driving this process — I did use the word “malevolent” above but in the context of suggesting actors lacked awareness of consequences — but it doesn’t happen by itself, sua sponte. Recasting it as the outcome of a vast conspiracy with central direction misses my main point entirely. (I expect you are trying to miss my main point, but I am going to reiterate just in case your misunderstanding is my fault.)

I am not saying there’s a conspiracy and that’s what’s wrong here. The public discourse is being driven — there are actual drivers, people whose roles are to press forward particular narratives and critiques — but my complaint isn’t so much about the drivers’ course and conduct per se, as it is about the condition of the road. I am saying there has been an institutional degeneration that leaves the road the public discourse must travel, deeply potholed, badly marked or lighted and inadequately policed. This degeneration increases the danger that the drivers of the public discourse run democracy and the republic into the ditch or into a tree. Not intentionally — though their own blindness and irresponsibility play a part in increasing the risk of a wreck — but, rather, as a consequence of a deteriorating institutional “infrastructure”.

In principle, the remnants of the Clinton Machine and the Democratic Establishment pushing the narrative that Comey’s misconduct (and I agree it was misconduct which was misconduct precisely because it could affect the election outcome) and Russian interference in the election (“Russian Wikileaks”) is just part of the perpetual political campaign, a normal driver of the political discourse in a representative democracy with rotation in office: it is what the loyal opposition does. If partisan critiques from those out of office for the moment are occasionally “hypocritical” — as the OP tries to discern in this case — is by-the-by. Politics ain’t beanbag. Those out of power but seeking office are motivated to criticize those in power; that’s what makes democracy go ’round. Two cheers for democracy!

What’s gone very dangerously wrong here is the institutional degeneration. If the public discourse were travelling along a well-paved, well-marked road with vigilant traffic cops, there would be limits to what partisans would try, because there would be limits to what would work to partisan advantage.

You have said that suspicion should lead to investigation. It is very logical and I agree with the logic. We see what looks like smoke in the distance; we should send someone out to look to see if there is fire. Logical. But, I think you are being naive to the point of being obtuse to think that is the function of “investigation” in the present deteriorated state of our political system. Whitewater was investigated for years on end. Or, maybe, you’d like an investigation of Iraqi WMD?

I can almost hear you even as I type saying in tones of uncomprehending outrage: “So, is it your position that there should be no investigation!??” [Rolling my eyes.]

In a well-functioning political system, actual investigations employing effective methods of verifying facts and reaching balanced judgments in a finite length of time would put effective limits on what partisans and other actors could claim in accusing officials of misconduct. We do not have such a well-functioning system, and consequently there are no curbs on what suspicions can be raised and repeated as propaganda. In a well-functioning political system, a great newspaper covetous of its own reputation for integrity might be counted on to investigate and publish facts. In a well-functioning political system, great public agencies also covetous of their own reputations for integrity could similarly be counted on to arbitrate partisan bickering or bring miscreants to justice. We are not living within such a well-functioning political system.

“Investigation” in our political system means the farce Comey’s FBI conducted regarding Clinton’s email server. An “investigation” that continues indefinitely, stirring up suspicion but never really settling any facts or reaching any judgments, at least none that put limits on partisan accusation. And, it is not that “investigation” has degenerated in isolation — the whole ecology (I know I am mixing metaphors) is dragging “investigation” down into this dysfunctional generator of leaks. That the news media report the exciting headline of suspicion on Sunday’s Page 1 and then walk it all back on Saturday’s page A32 is part of the process, as is the public’s retreat from the common public square into tribalist cul de sacs and echo chambers of aligned voices. (See there, I got back to the road metaphor for a second.)

And, the intelligence community gets to play a role. The well-funded 17(!) agencies can have their consensus judgments reported by trustworthy figures like Comey and Clapper without any verifiable reference to actual facts. So, another flavor of “investigation” is available to us, to stoke groundless suspicion, and not incidentally to block any actual investigation (I’m sorry, that part had to be redacted.)

For those who like concrete examples, here is one from a relic of the ancient blogosphere, The Daily Howler: the “revelation” breathlessly reported by the Washington Post and New York Times that suggested that Comey asking for more money for the Russia probe got him fired.
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2017/05/days-of-excitement-and-scandal.html

Or, consider the example of James Clapper telling Meet the Press on March 5 that there is no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, but doing it in such a way as to stir groundless suspicions. The discussion by PolitiFact is absolutely classic:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/may/12/donald-trump/trumps-mostly-false-claim-clapper-said-no-collusio/
It is almost enough to make me sympathetic to Trump — not really, he deserves it, but it doesn’t give me much hope for the country.

First Act: You lie to gain an advantage. They lie to gain an advantage. Everybody lies to gain an advantage. Result: nobody believes anybody anymore, but they are confused.

Second Act: Lies get louder, smarter, and more expensive. Whole industries evolve to advance this or that quality of mendacity, and to produce it in blinding and deafening quantities. A significant percentage of GDP is sucked up in the process.

(Intermezzo)

Final Act: David Broder wannabes all over the developed world publish a flurry of suitably weepy and high-toned op-ed pieces about the tragedy of our intellectual commons. The curtain falls. The house lights come back up. People nervously check their twitter feeds as they shuffle toward the aisles.

(Yes, I know that everyone has already seen this play. It even won a Tony back in the 90s or something, didn’t it? I only bring it up because I read somewhere — on Facebook, maybe — that they’re bringing it back as a musical.)

So, in your mind our Disinterested Solons and Media Tribunes of the People

Painfully blatant strawman is painfully blatant.

This, now, is nothing like the Clinton Whitewater scandal or the run-up to the Iraq War. That was then, this is now. Those were “non sequitur accusations invented out of whole cloth”. Not like now. This time is different.

I mean, yes, there are differences. And to the extent there are similarities, I don’t think they really show what you seem to want of them. Let’s take the Iraq war. There we had on the one hand, a virtually united front of US intelligence agencies saying e.g., ‘there is no material cooperation between Iraq and Al Qaida and no reason to think they’d want to be allies — it’s like cats and mice teaming up to steal cheese’ and on the other, ad hoc ‘intelligence’ shops within the Bush administration run by such worthies as Dick Cheney saying, basically, ‘Saddam totally did 9-11, trust us. Mumble mumble. Mohammed Atta. Something something. Prague. Mumble. Anthrax!’

Now, are the press and the intelligence services hyper-flawed and manipulable institutions? Yes. Were we therefore unable to reach the correct conclusions about the Iraq/Al-Qaida connection based on the statements relayed to press by the various actors? No.

…What’s gone very dangerously wrong here is the institutional degeneration. If the public discourse were travelling along a well-paved, well-marked road with vigilant traffic cops, there would be limits to what partisans would try, because there would be limits to what would work to partisan advantage.

I’m more or less in agreement with this much at least. My quibble would be to point out that this ‘degeneration’, if that’s the right word at all, isn’t particularly recent. The low quality of the press and official institutions of various kinds has in fact been evident for decades (and your passing references to Whitewater, Watergate etc. suggest you might agree). Not to mention ‘Remember the Maine’ — I’m a little skeptical that there ever was a golden age of uniformly high-functioning institutions.

But I’m reading all of this very carefully in search of the point you mention you have, and coming up empty.

You have said that suspicion should lead to investigation. It is very logical and I agree with the logic. We see what looks like smoke in the distance; we should send someone out to look to see if there is fire. Logical. But, I think you are being naive to the point of being obtuse to think that is the function of “investigation” in the present deteriorated state of our political system. Whitewater was investigated for years on end. Or, maybe, you’d like an investigation of Iraqi WMD?

I can almost hear you even as I type saying in tones of uncomprehending outrage: “So, is it your position that there should be no investigation!??” [Rolling my eyes.]

Which suggests you agree and so DO think there should be an investigation. Again, searching for the point…

In a well-functioning political system, actual investigations employing effective methods of verifying facts and reaching balanced judgments in a finite length of time would put effective limits on what partisans and other actors could claim in accusing officials of misconduct. We do not have such a well-functioning system, and consequently there are no curbs on what suspicions can be raised and repeated as propaganda. In a well-functioning political system, a great newspaper covetous of its own reputation for integrity might be counted on to investigate and publish facts. In a well-functioning political system, great public agencies also covetous of their own reputations for integrity could similarly be counted on to arbitrate partisan bickering or bring miscreants to justice. We are not living within such a well-functioning political system.

Again. I may quibble with specific points, but not very forcefully. We can certainly wish and work for a better system.

That said, we also all have to do our best to find whatever thread of truth may be revealed by the system as it actually exists.

You know, deal with reality.

“Investigation” in our political system means the farce Comey’s FBI conducted regarding Clinton’s email server. An “investigation” that continues indefinitely, stirring up suspicion but never really settling any facts or reaching any judgments, at least none that put limits on partisan accusation.

I do not agree that these necessarily continue indefinitely. Perhaps they outlast your own patience, but it’s my perception that they do eventually roll to a halt.

Whether the partisans find the conclusions satisfactory is a different matter, and I think here is where I’d raise another point of difference: you’re wishing fervently for hypothetically unimpeachable intelligence and/or press institutions that you believe would serve as a check on endless partisan dispute of the facts, but that’s not necessarily the way it would work.

It’s chicken and egg, to be sure, but I think it is as least as much the case that partisan disputation of facts causes erosion in institutional trust and quality (via funding and autonomy mechanism) as the other way around.

Take the climate ‘debate’. Science is a far more trustworthy institution than e.g., the NSA, and is even — in the abstract — far more trusted by the public. And yet all it takes is a relative handful of outspoken corrupt/partisan dissenters to raise ‘questions’ in the mind of a substantial portion of the public and policymakers, and thus successfully block meaningful action in the halls of power. (Not all of the public however — which is another point I’d make. Polls suggest that a substantial majority of the public are not actually fooled on the facts. Somehow despite all the effort spent clouding the water, and the generally atrocious coverage in the press, most people have managed to find a thread of truth.)

And, it is not that “investigation” has degenerated in isolation — the whole ecology (I know I am mixing metaphors) is dragging “investigation” down into this dysfunctional generator of leaks. That the news media report the exciting headline of suspicion on Sunday’s Page 1 and then walk it all back on Saturday’s page A32 is part of the process, as is the public’s retreat from the common public square into tribalist cul de sacs and echo chambers of aligned voices. (See there, I got back to the road metaphor for a second.)

And, the intelligence community gets to play a role. The well-funded 17(!) agencies can have their consensus judgments reported by trustworthy figures like Comey and Clapper without any verifiable reference to actual facts. So, another flavor of “investigation” is available to us, to stoke groundless suspicion, and not incidentally to block any actual investigation (I’m sorry, that part had to be redacted.)

I think part of this is you appear to place far too much significance on leaks and other transient events. Perhaps even erroneously conflating leaks, or random comments by investigators, with the investigations themselves.

When substantial questions like this are outstanding, are we all going to collectively scrabble at whatever scraps of information, leaks and rumor are available and form our own preliminary conclusions? Yes, of course. That’s just human nature.

Will the later release of firm-ish ‘official’ conclusions down the road have zero effect on these preliminary judgements, rendering such investigations pointless? No. They still matter, even in our fallen state.

I for one will accept whatever conclusions the FBI/Senate/etc. reach in due course. If the result is negative, will I occasionally grumble to myself, “well, maybe they didn’t leave any incriminating memos lying around, but those bastards are still totally in bed with the Russians”? Maybe. But I’ll certainly accept that THIS is not the thing Trump is impeached for and it’s time to move on.

For those who like concrete examples, here is one from a relic of the ancient blogosphere, …

But an example of what, in service to what point?

An example of the press being breathless and incautious and terrible? Yes, probably. An example of the ‘remnants of the Clinton Machine’ or whoever planting fake news? It seems less likely.

And again, it looks a lot like you’re placing a lot of undue weight on small events. What exactly is the measurable effect of this 1/2 news cycle worth of possibly questionable material? In the middle of a news cycle with some pretty dramatic and less disputed events? (I mean, was this false fact the key evidence in the impeachment proceedings? What impeachment you say? Exactly.)

Or, consider the example of James Clapper telling Meet the Press on March 5 that there is no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, but doing it in such a way as to stir groundless suspicions.

That’s a weird reading.

Alternatively, the straight reading is that Clapper’s a bureaucrat in a sensitive position trying to be very careful with how he words things, knowing they’ll be read to death, one way or the other. Clapper says he hasn’t seen such evidence. Contrary to Trump’s claim, this really is not the same as either ‘nobody has seen evidence’ or ‘there is no evidence to be found,’ let alone ‘there is no collusion’. I’m not sure what makes the Politifact link ‘classic’ – it seems to more or less get all of that straight.

OTOH, your reading is rather more strained — it only really works if we assume that Clapper knows Trump is innocent or at least knows no evidence exists, which in turn seems to require that Clapper be aware of the details and ongoing results within not only his own area of responsibility but also every other corner of the state investigatory & intelligence apparatus (implying in turn either that Clapper is a mastermind who has everyone under surveillance, or that the intelligence establishment is monolithic and shares information freely). It also requires Clapper to have malicious motive – less of a leap than the first, to be sure, but still assumes facts not in evidence.

Those seem like pretty big leaps to be making for someone throwing out accusations of hysteria at the rest of us for the high crime of making a few fairly mild-mannered preliminary inferences about the presence of all this smoke we’re seeing.

The issue of Trump and Russia is not one for legal standards of judgement than for intelligence assessment. It’s worth remembering that the intelligence agencies and the UN assessed that Iraq very probably did not have WMD – something Cheney’s smokescreens were designed to obscure.

On this issue, it would be odd if Russian and Chinese bureaucrats did not elevate loans to Trump and associates, or meetings, or trademark grants, to the political level. That is what they are trained to do. The impetus may not come from above, and the answer may be just an acknowledging nod, but surely the awareness is there. And that should be of concern to the US establishment – that foreign powers have purely personal ways of influencing a key player.

That it is not of serious concern to the Republicans exemplifies Bruce’s point about broken processes. But surely the way to repair the process is to raise the issue and keep raising it.

Anarcissie: “Actually, the only alleged data I have seen about the effect of Comey’s act on the election was that there wasn’t any…”

Yet I offered you some, at #108. Did you read it?

To summarise the Russia hacking story as I understand it:

a) The evidence that APT 28 and APT 29 exist at all is only circumstantial – there is substantial doubt about whether the cybersecurity concept of “Advanced Persistent Threats” is of any use as a forensic or investigative tool
b) There is no evidence that, if they do exist, they are linked to any Russian intelligence agency – merely speculation
c) There is no evidence that, if they do exist and if they are linked to a Russian intelligence agency, that Vladimir Putin himself knew about and directed their activities – merely speculation
d) There is no evidence that if APT28 and APT29 do exist and are directed by Vladimir Putin, that Vladimir Putin directed their activities in order to get Donald Trump elected
e) There is no evidence that if APT28 and APT29 do exist and were directed by Vladimir Putin to elect Donald Trump, they were the source of the leaks to Wikileaks – Wikileaks could have obtained the leaks independently
f) There is no evidence that Donald Trump himself knew about, well, any of this

An alternative theory presents itself: Roger Stone, acting on behalf of Donald Trump, employed hackers to hack the DNC computers and passed the information on to Wikileaks, who published them. These hackers may have used some of the library of techniques associated with APT28.

Another alternative theory presents itself: a disgruntled DNC insider, perhaps a member of the IT staff, leaked the emails to Wikileaks, who published them.

It is also alleged that Michael Flynn met with the Russian ambassador after Donald Trump’s election and asked him, on behalf of the President-elect, to convey a request to Vladimir Putin not to expel American diplomats from Russia in retaliation for Obama’s expulsion of Russian diplomats for America. While obviously this can only be described as treason, treason to the Republic!, it seems like a minor treason in comparison to, say, Nixon sabotaging the Paris peace talks or Reagan sabotaging the Iranian hostage negotiations.

The Trumpists had no problem with the media shilling phony stories hinting at treason for years about Benghazi, email servers, Clinton Foundation and pizzagate. It is hypocritical of them to object now to how that game is played now (if your idea of political analysis is moralizing about hypocrisy.) Trumpists may think that joining in with the decades old tradition of Hilary bashing gives them more gravitas, but I think it makes them trashier. Sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, and everybody knows it.

The evidence that Comey influenced the election is much stronger than the evidence that Clinton or Trump are treasonous. A popsicle stick is stronger than a straw too, though, so you cannot honestly make of that what you will. The upshot is that Comey was fired because he couldn’t be relied on to stay on message. Defending that with the childish claim that objecting to Comey’s dismissal now is hypocritical is merely a way to defend Trump.

Hell, there’s plenty of context immediately above and below within the very interview transcript that above quote was mined from. For example:

Clapper: I can’t say– obviously, I’m not, I can’t speak officially anymore. But I will say that, for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, there was no such wiretap activity mounted against– the president elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign. I can’t speak for other Title Three authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity.

and:

[on the January hacking report] It did– well, it got to the bottom of the evidence to the extent of the evidence we had at the time. Whether there is more evidence that’s become available since then, whether ongoing investigations will be revelatory, I don’t know.

I’m really not sure what else Clapper could have said to satisfy you…

I don’t think anything good is happening in this thread at this point, but one last comment here (by me) (I hope) on a possible misunderstanding, re:

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist making fun of the Times. 80,000 votes would be about 0.06% of the total electorate (unless I’ve lost a decimal point somewhere) and thus we are in the realm of noise and jitter, not reasonably computable behavior.”

Apology gratefully accepted. But the rest of the paragraph (not all of which is quoted above) seems to me to be assuming that 80,000 is an estimate of the number of voters who changed or made up their minds at the last minute (or so). It is not (see original comment). For a statistical estimate of the number of voters who changed their minds, see the Nate Silver analysis linked to previously by myself and repeated by Layman. It is bigger than 80,000. The point of the 80,000 was that even such a relatively minute effect of the Comey letter could have been enough to change the election result (and the Comey letter was the last big news before the election).

JimV 05.15.17 at 8:57 pm @ 133 —
Hence my belief that we are looking at ‘noise and jitter’, not a probable chain of causation from the Comey letter (or anything else).

Raven 05.15.17 at 10:53 pm @ 134 —
I imagine Katsue means that there is no evidence available to the public, that no evidence has been published. Of course we cannot know if there is some secret evidence hidden away in a cupboard somewhere with Vlad’s guilty fingerprints upon it.

I wish, for the sake of my Social Security and Medicare if nothing else, that the Democratic Party leadership would stop blame-shifting and try to figure out how to win something in 2018.

One thing that everybody ought to be made aware of, is that the polls almost always tighten in the few months before a U.S. Presidential election. I’m not sure if anyone has bothered to tease that effect out of this last election however.

That is what we are witnessing: the gamesmanship of secrets and lies in a politics gone senile.

That strikes me as an…incomplete summary of what we are witnessing.

Politics, the security state, etc. has been bad for a long time, decades at least.* That alone doesn’t sufficiently explain all the excitement and…novelty inherent to the trend in current events.

The new and interesting part, the large, orange-whiskered pachyderm your explanation tries unsuccessfully to sweep under the rug, is a presidential administration with a genuinely unusual level of ineptness and/or corruptness.

—
* Assuming it was ever good in the first place, which it wasn’t. That’s a just a big ol’ rosy retrospection fallacy. Politics has *always* been kind of rotten-ish. Rotten in a variety of different ways, sure, but rotten is rotten.

Layman 05.16.17 at 3:09 am @ 136 —
‘You read an analysis….‘

No, I looked at the data. I assumed, maybe incorrectly, that the graph represented data. That’s what I thought we were talking about. Again, I have no way of checking the validity of that particular slice of data, but it was recommended twice, so it must be good stuff, right? Anyone can analyze or explain or frame or filter a set of facts — even I did that.

jack lecou 05.16.17 at 8:54 pm @ 142:
‘… My view is that was hardly the only thing to cost her the election, but it was one feather among many. And it took ALL of the feathers to tip the scales to Trump. The critical margin was very small.’

Well, that won’t serve to delegitimate Trump.

Meanwhile, in the real world of fake scandals, Trump reportedly asked Comey to quash the Flynn investigation, this after first asking him to pledge his personal loyalty, and before firing him because he declined to stop it. As bruce wilder will shortly explain, none of these are attempts to obstruct justice, because reasons.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/16/trump-james-comey-memo-michael-flynn-fbi-white-house-denial?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

As bruce wilder will shortly explain, none of these are attempts to obstruct justice, because reasons.

How could they be? There’s nothing unusual going on whatsoever. You — and the so-called ‘press’ — ought to be embarrassed for even mentioning it. Those reports are but mirages. Phantasms and optical illusions which appear only if we gaze too raptly with our less enlightened eyes upon the hypnotic — but perfectly normal and meaningless! — self cannibalizing oscillations of a senile and dysfunctional machine of state.

Layman 05.17.17 at 3:41 am @ 147 —
Facts are faithless, loyal only to themselves.

In post 127, I made a number of points. It’s my view that if my point (a) is accepted, then (b)-(f) are necessary logical consequences.

I don’t see how that works.

For example, your (b) *assumes* APT 28 and 29 do exist [i.e., are coherent entities], and then asserts that there is no evidence that they are linked to any Russian intelligence agency.

But this doesn’t follow. If we’re granting that these groups do exist, it suggests the
methods you dismissed by assertion in (a) — i.e., identifying groups based on consistent characteristics including methods, means, fingerprints left in code, and choice of targets — must in fact be at least partially successful. And yet some of the characteristics which (by assumption) are successful at identifying these groups also point specifically toward the conclusion that they are e.g., Russian (indeed Moscow-based), well-funded, professional, and conduct activities in support of Russian state interests. All of which is basically a long winded way to say “an arm of the Russian intelligence/covert operations community”.

Granted, you are basically correct that the inference grows weaker the further down that list you go — but you don’t need to go very far for the events to be damning.

For example, (c) is essentially irrelevant: if you grant that these groups exist and are linked to a Russian intelligence agency, does it matter whether Putin specifically knew about or ordered a particular attack? Wouldn’t he still be responsible for the actions of his agencies and subordinates, especially if they continue to occur? Or (d) does it matter whether the attacks were specifically attempts to get DT elected vs. merely to sow dissension generally?

And for their part, if they did organise the hacks, then obviously they had no reason to involve the Russian government. America is well supplied with hackers, many of whom are politically on the far-right, and there was no reason to borrow them from Russian military intelligence.

Scenario 1: Russian surrogate casually whispers to a Trump surrogate, “Aren’t all these DNC leaks fascinating? I sure hope you guys appreciate the effort of whoever is responsible. [wink, wink].”

Scenario 2: Trump pulls Kushner (or whoever) aside sometime in early 2016 and says “I need you to go on that 4Chan thing and find us some really good, all-American hackers. You know, maybe some overweight guys from basements in New Jersey. The best. I’ve got a job for them…”

It should be obvious that those are totally different scenarios. In all sorts of ways.

YMMV may vary, but finding #1 at least vaguely plausible in no way suggests that #2 is. “Obviously no reason to involve the Russian government” my foot.

Why did the same thing happen with the Brexit vote? The key charactertic for Sikver was that the very late undecideds broke for Trump. They broke similarly and uncharacteristically for “leave”. Comey’s letter came after the Brexit vote, so the trend may mean something else. (It may even mean something in support of a Comey hypothesis like a two odd tricks social media change) but it seems a big enough TWO recent deals to maybe consider them together.

Well, were there other factors? Almost certainly. Does it look like something weird is going on to make polls less reliable then they (arguably) used to be? Yes. But that doesn’t affect the basic point here:

…it’s not credible to claim that the Comey letter had no effect at all. It was the dominant story of the last 10 days of the campaign.

It’s not really plausible to argue the Comey letter had zero effect. And yet if it had anything like the effect you’d expect — or indeed, almost any effect at all — that was likely enough to tip the election.

It’s obviously not unique in this respect. It was a close election, so there are any number of small factors like this, any one of which would have been decisive had they tipped the other way. It is kind of unique in being more or less the direct result of one individual’s voluntary actions, though.

@151 I presume you’re trying to make the scenario of “Donald Trump hacked the DNC” sound ridiculous by bringing Jared Kushner into it. I submit that given (a) the fact that Donald Trump is a billionaire and (b) Roger Stone’s alliance with Donald Trump, there is no reason to be sceptical of Trump’s ability to find hackers without Russian help.

Regarding the direction of hackers by Vladimir Putin, I’m not interested in whether Vladimir Putin micromanages everything. The question is whether he ordered or was aware of hacks on any given target (e.g. the DNC, the RNC, the Clinton Foundation, etc.) or not.

Regarding the direction of hackers by Vladimir Putin, I’m not interested in whether Vladimir Putin micromanages everything. The question is whether he ordered or was aware of hacks on any given target (e.g. the DNC, the RNC, the Clinton Foundation, etc.) or not.

I don’t see what you think the difference is supposed to be.

We’re not talking about impeaching Putin, so the details of the Kremlin’s control structure — who knew what when or whatever — are wholly irrelevant. We’re concerned about US national security and the domestic political implications.

And you’re accepting ad arguendo that the hacks were carried out by hackers associated with the Russian government (“…if they do exist and if they are linked to a Russian intelligence agency…”). If that’s the case, that’s already the whole ball game. All that matters is that the Russian government is effectively responsible, full stop.

Two of the same unprecedented things happening in similar elections with similar outcomes shouldn’t at least create a strong inference that something that happened in only one of them wasn’t the big cause.

I think this is where we’re talking past each other a bit. Silver is not looking for “THE big cause”, he’s looking at a particular thing (the Comey letter) to see if it was significant enough to be A cause.

And in the counterfactual sense of “if X hadn’t happened, would the election have gone the other way”, the Comey letter pretty much has to be one of the decisive factors. You can’t get around that without assigning an unreasonably small impact to a major piece of negative official news that hit very hard in the last days of the election (one otherwise reliably associated with poll effects of several full points).

It’s entirely possible there was a general and separate “Brexit phenomenon” of undecideds breaking heavily toward Trump — one that was larger than the Comey effect even. And still, without even 1 or 2 points of Comey effect, that wouldn’t have been quite enough to tip the scales.

The only slightly reasonable way I see to make the Comey letter non-critical would be to suppose that there were essentially *no* genuine undecideds at all by mid-October or so (i.e., everyone was already firmly committed, mostly for Trump, whether they were admitting that to pollsters or not, so the letter couldn’t change any minds).

That is possible — and as a hypothesis it’s possibly consistent with Brexit too — but almost by definition there’s no empirical data to support it directly. The assumption is basically that polls can’t be trusted, after all. Certainly the passages you quote above don’t support that — I believe the whole point of including those was to show that, as far as the numbers can tell, there were still plenty of tractable undecideds with whom the letter might have made a difference.

The biggest factors in Trump’s rise is the enormous amount of publicity given gratis by the mass media and the Electoral College swindle inflicted on us by a bunch of so-called realists who thought they were smart. But yes, the Comey shenanigans may have been the last straw. But how can we ever prove or disprove that? Trump is having trouble taking advantage of his “victory” because he lost the election, and people are at some level aware that pretending winning the Electoral College really gives legitimacy was just Al Gore being a coward, a fool and a sleazeball.

This crap about Russian hacking is like whining about the DNC hacking the Democratic nomination. Bitching about an ingrown toenail when you have a knife sticking in your back is all about agenda. The main factor in Sanders’ loss was the mass media snuffing his story. Pointing fingers at a handful of individuals than the system is how you fight rivals, not opponents. (Rivals fight over the same goal, opponents fight for different goals.)

faustusnotes 05.19.17 at 1:49 am @ 162 —
But, how long can the tail wag the dog, and by what means?