Free stock photo courtesy of Dreamtime.
A great deal of attention is being paid today to why the anticipated Red Wave failed to materialize. I’ve heard some great analysis this morning. Let me posit another idea.
The Russian Federation took deliberate steps to interfere in our elections in 2016 and 2020. Yevgeny Prigozhin announced just last week that Russia would continue to use the benefits our open society to attempt to sabotage our government. Many believe that Putin worked to elect Donald Trump, the whole truth of that is yet to be revealed. Still there is an unmistakable connection between many Republicans and operatives from Putin’s inner circle. We have to assume that Russia wanted to influence yesterday’s election. The results suggest that they failed.
I believe that Russian interference in the 2022 midterms failed, and that the War in Ukraine is partly responsible for that result. Russias failure here has many causes both direct and indirect including:
Russian cyber warriors are tied up dealing with Ukraines surprisingly effective cyber campaign. RU leaders cant find resources to provide new recruits winter uniforms, loose cash or extra manpower for foreign advantures is in short supply.
Global sanctions have hog tied the Russian Oligarchs who have acted as conduits for dark money activities in the past. Under intense global scrutiny, their ability to move money around for Putin has been blunted.
Social Media companies are under intense pressure from western Governments for responsible moderation. The volume of Russian misinformation allowed on Twitter in 2016 is simply intolerable in 2022. Deplatforming Trump likely helped. Cyber bros tolerated disinformation to drive page views and the ad revunue this created. Possible regulatory responses may have tempered their laissez faire attitudes.
Suddenly, Putin is worried about his own political survival. The failure in Ukraine has badly dented Putin’s reputation as some kind of dark wizzard. He is starting to lose his constiuency at home. Putin’s attention must be focused on that. Foreign meddling may be rewarding, but like all autocrats, his greatest fears are home made.
Disruptive, destructive political candidates served Putins interests, but failed to help constituents. Russia’s chaos agents, like Lauren Boebert, served Putin’s need for disfunction, but failed in terms of basic constituent services. Voters turned against the reddest of red hats for their focus on Trump generated nonsense to the exclusion of basic governance.
Republicans accepted back channel help from Vladimir Putin in 2016 and 2020 to win races they should not have won. (ie the Presidency). Russian money flowed through the NRA to republicans. Russian propaganda flooded the facebook news feed, and social media discussions. Russian operatives (ie Lev Parnas) assited individual Republican Candidates to win elections. Russian Leadership bragged openly about this. Republican leaders admitted it privately (Paul Ryan).
In my opinion, a wounded and distracted Putin regime was unable to repeat his prior election interference. While great credit goes to all who ran, and those who volunteered to help this election cycle, I think that yesterdays result may have been made possible by the inability of the Russian Fedration to act on their stated intentions to interfere. The failure of Donald Trump to control the outcome in 2022 seriously degrades his usefulness to Putin. The Ukrainian debacle may yet cost Putin his job, and likely his life. Without Russian back channel support, Republicans may have to start talking to American voters.
