[For the record, no this diary isn’t going to be rah-rah. But I do believe it’s timely (see Update). I’ve been vocal for a long time that 2018 signaled lessons learned and saying since last year the Senate would be ours and that 60 seats ain’t a pipe dream. I ain’t no downer. This is just taking a moment for, er, reflection.
I also took the ‘We’ out of the title cause it’s upsetting some folks.]
I like stories. No, I LOVE stories. I love the art of stringing together words, images, and ideas to form a narrative. I think the ability to tell stories is one of the great defining traits of humankind.
It’s also one of the worst — because of our willingness and capacity to believe in stories. Especially ones that confirm our biases, feed our fears, or just tell us what we want to hear.
2016 was all about stories. Politically speaking, Democrats have done an okay job of looking back at that tumultuous year and separating the wheat from the chaff.
Unfortunately, I think most of that clarity of vision stems from debunking myths and narratives *Republicans* told themselves. It took a little while — longer than it should have — but eventually most of us recognized ‘economic anxiety’ was a fairy tale; that the Russians DID attack our election system short of changing votes; that social media was and is over-influential in undermining our democracy.
But some of the stories we told *ourselves* election night 2016 still persist. The kind of stories people tell themselves to absolve responsibility, or deflect scrutiny. Or when grappling with denial. It’s understandable. It was a shock to our system, and as humans when we face such situations our minds go into overdrive to protect its sanity, to keep from falling apart.
One of these stories that persists is that Comey gave Clinton the election.
I’ll be blunt: That’s some bullsh*t.
It made sense back in November/December 2016. Back when we still didn’t know a lot about the length and depth of the coordinated attack on our democracy from dark forces domestic and foreign. But 4 years later, it’s time to let that security blanket go. It’s time to put it down and pick up a mirror instead.
This doesn’t even need some lengthy defense or multi-level conspiracy theory. It just needs accepting some hard truths about ourselves:
Americans thought Trump was more honest than Hillary: BEFORE Comey. Remember? Tough to hear, hard to accept, but there it was. We were told this over and over. Many of us just didn’t want to believe it. We can argue about why and wherefore all day, but that was the reality. Think about that. A majority of Americans preferred Trump’s fecal verbage. We Americans may be a lot of things, but we’re not dumb. We can be selfish, cruel, stubborn and whole lots more. But we aren’t dumb. A whole lotta folks just didn’t want to buy what Hillary was selling.
Hillary’s polling was never consistent: Up, down, up, down. Her leads fluctuated wildly and her support wasn’t rock solid. Mind you this isn’t a critique of her and her campaign. I’m just telling you as it was. Third party candidates were taking large chunks of votes, party infighting took a toll, and Americans as a whole were reluctant to commit to her candidacy.
Obama Intelligence Officials Blame Russia: After reading exhaustive books on the election like the best-selling ‘Rigged’ (recommended by Hillary herself), investigative articles by reporters like Carole Cadwalladr for the Guardian, Mueller Report, and on and on where intelligence officials get on record — know what none of them point to as being what changed the election? Comey. Nope, sorry. The blame is consistent across the board: Russia’s attack on our democratic process was to blame. Obama and his team didn’t recognize how serious it was until late in the game and the GOP threw him an anchor.
Sexual Predator Wasn’t a Dealbreaker: Now this, THIS, is about as solid an evidence that you could ask for: A Candidate for the President of the United States caught on camera detailing how he sexually assaults women in graphic detail. And it wasn’t a dealbreaker. No, I don’t want to hear about the media changed the narrative or whatever. Read that first sentence again. On camera, loud and clear, no mistaking the context. America saw the video and decided — meh.
That should have ended his campaign. Should have ended his *career* (as a showman, not a criminal of course). It didn’t. That’s not on the media or the Russians. That’s on us as a nation. At THAT moment it should have been clear that no matter what the polls showed, she was in jeopardy.
I’m not going to go into misogyny, sexism, her decades-long polarization as a public figure. That’s obviously a whole other discussion that will be debated (or should be) for years to come. For the record, yeah, I think it was a combo of all the above.
What we need to face here is that Hillary was on a knife’s edge well before Comey. LESS honest than Trump! Just stop and think about that as memes and gifs circulate now of “Hillary was Right”.
Nevermind that Comey’s magic letter managed to pull *just* enough votes in states that we know for a fact were targeted for disinformation, voter suppression, especially people of color. We have the proof now. We’ve seen the lists. We know who they marked for ‘Deterrence’.
Nevermind that just Jill Stein’s votes alone would have made the difference that night and yet we continue to only casually discuss her ties to Putin like watercooler chit chat.
Nevermind the data leaks, hacking, unprecedented social media AND traditional media campaigns to promote narratives that attacked Hillary’s character while flirting with Trump supporters in Ohio Diners.
But you’re gonna tell me that some unknown guy in the FBI wrote a letter that was a REHASH of what he’d heard before a week before the election and THAT’s what did her in?
Come on. Come on now. You gonna tell me that were it not for ONE MAN, the combined forces of billions of dollars, Big Data/Tech, Russia, China, Facebook, Treasonous GOP, NRA would have been foiled?
Very dramatic. Oscar-worthy material. It absolves us of our guilt, clarifies who the bad guys are, raises the stakes for the sequel.
But hey why not hear from the folks who would know best:
“Without Facebook we wouldn’t have won” — Teresa Hong, Trump Campaign Director of Digital Content, 2016.
The Comey letter was just another salvo in a year long bombardment of narrative assaults we endured on a weekly, if not daily, basis. A game of musical chairs bent on undermining our democracy that left him the last person standing.
Comey as the fall guy is great fodder for newspapers and polling analysis, analysis which cannot quantify interference, targeting, suppresion, or narrative-pushing. Nothing is that simple, that convenient. It’s a great story. But it’s still a story.
**If we are to really, truly move forward as a nation we need to face certain hard truths about ourselves. Sexism, racism, misogyny, purity — these aren’t going to magically go away even if the GOP are voted and shamed out of existence. These are issues that have been at the core of America since it’s inception. In 2016, for the first time, we faced an adversary we weren’t prepared for: ourselves. In 2018, we rose to the challenge of overcoming what divided us two years earlier — and did so in historic fashion. In 2020, we are poised to raise the mirror again — and this time, we will see the best of ourselves.
That’s a story worth believing in.**
UPDATE: Right now in real time, here’s a great example vs. 2016
Why is Trump mad? Because unlike 2016 this time around the narrative isn’t getting the same push *despite* efforts by media to give it traction without investigating/clarifying. It doesn’t matter what the story is, doesn’t matter how wackadoodle it is — all that matters is mainstream media coverage to give enough validation to sway voters chatting away on social media. Now go back up to that Facebook quote...