Most regular Daily Kos readers have probably followed The Rachel Maddow Show’s excellent work on the Trump-Russian nexus. And Maddow often asks an excellent question in the course of those segments: what if the Russian destabalize-democracy-in-the-US operation didn’t end with the brutal 2016 campaign? What if it’s ongoing?
Let’s engage in some scary speculation. Let’s suppose, hypothetically, that Putin’s cyber thieves develop the ability to directly screw with vote totals in a networked tabulation device in this polarized nation come the 2018 midterms. Let’s suppose Putin is able to deploy that subterfuge in even a small way on a handful of such machines. Only this time, they do it in favor of a democrat. What happens next?
It’s a fair bet plenty in the media world would fall over themselves writing up a storm of relieved both-siderisms. We can easily predict how Trump would exploit it. The conservative base is already told from podium and pulpit that democrats are corrupt and elections rigged in their favor. They’d buy any Putin-esque conspiracy claims in an instant. We’d have investigations with a predetermined end going full steam in both houses like dueling banjoes. And the United States would spend at least the next two years chasing its own political tail, devouring its own, and possibly even drift toward some kind of neo-civil war.
It might only take a few hacked vote tallies to cause this. … come to think of it, just a bomb scare to two at a critical polling station, much less an actual bomb, could have the same effect.
I don’t know if Putin has that ability or is likely to have it soon. But if he does, he has everything to gain by using it. He appears to be playing chess on a global board, thinking many moves ahead, with the US media and many politicians and some parts on the electorate as willing or unwilling pawns, and his ultimate long-term goal is to weaken the US and NATO. His opponent, Donald Trump, isn’t even qualified to play checkers.