About what I suspected form someone that consumes Lou Dobbs and Tucker on the regular
spoiler (click to show/hide)
I get the gist and agree with aspects of your arguments so far, but seriously, I don't know anyone personally, or in this thread, that has claimed Russia has done more damage than anything else that exists in terms of influencing power toward the electorate. Heck, I'm pretty sure Jack is on some lists at this point for his fury over the Comey letter.
Russia has, with a pretty strong degree of certainty, developed and incubated a cooperative and active cyber and political influence strategy that has been used in many countries to advance their political goals. Nearly a dozen(or two dozen depending on different investigations) we know about. An asymmetrical warfare strategy likely to compensate for their inability to project power directly(or at least in combination with more classic levers). A strategy of propaganda, collusion, indirect funding, targeted hacking, and disinformation used to sow chaos in democracies and create doubt in political institutions, and hopefully drive people to choosing politicians that most favor their foreign policy agenda. Or at a minimum create enough suspicion in those they deem opponents to cripple their ability to govern effectively.
The difference is they now turned it on the US. Which is not something that is a nothing-burger IMO. If other countries are the map to what Russia seeks in America, that is not something you can just scoff at and brush off. It is a major threat, which is different from saying it is the ultra causation to Trump's ascent.
What we are fairly confident(if not all but confirmed) is knowing the Russians engaged in is a sustained disinformation campaign using troll farms, sanctioned hacking groups, and attempted(potentially successful) coordination with politicians they deem aligned with their self-interests. They have successfully hacked and disseminated information that was able to be weaponized by attacking the DNC, DCCC, several political campaigns, breached voting software companies to attain voter rolls and apparently wanted to go further, and showed some suspiciously sophisticated understanding of political dynamics down to very micro levels in how they targeted their efforts. Something that was not really seen in even recent history from the Kremlin's prior efforts.
As to Trump, I think there is more than enough smoke to justify suspicion, scrutiny, investigation, and not offer the benefit of the doubt in the court of public opinion. This is a guy that has had known(or at best blind-eye passivity) dealings with criminal aspects of the Kremlin for decades. From washing their dirty money through his real estate holdings, to surrounding himself with Russian actors like Felix Sater to Manafort to Flynn. From his suspicious consistency on matters of Russia compared to almost everything else about his political agenda(and behavior in pushing back on this issue), including his own holdings and business interests with Russian groups tied to some of these activities.
My personal view of Russia's influence is that clearly served both as a catalyst for propaganda with their hacking efforts, and an amplifier with their disinformation campaign. However, I have long been more critical of the enormously powerful apparatus of disinformation that is the right-wing media echo chamber than anything Russia could do with disinformation directly on their own. There is no greater in-kind contribution in American politics than getting Fox News, the Mercer's, Sinclair's, and those echo chambers fighting for you.
The moment the Podesta emails were released it was all but guaranteed that right-wing chamber was going to catastrophize and amplify the issue as far they could. Because it was in their self-interest to do so. You only need to look at opinion polls from almost any point in the last two decades to see how powerful they are at getting a decent chunk of the population to believe their narratives, specifically those narratives that are objectively false or at best highly misleading. A topical example would be threads like this where multiple people peddle the long pushed false equivalency narrative between right-wing and fringe outlets with 'mainstream' news outlets in print and broadcast. As if they are on equal planes in terms of their standards, motivations, credibility, and historical trustworthiness. A consequence that leads to a greater openness to even less vetted fringe outlets and an over-ruling trust in highly questionable actors like Wikileaks.
Back to the point, if anything, Russia's greatest success(which likely had nothing to do with their direct actions at all) has come because those echo chambers, aware of it or not, see mutual opportunity and self-interest to advance the disinformation and actions they(the Russian groups) have pushed or initiated with their efforts. So the question becomes, absent Russian actions, would you have places like Fox News and every right-wing outlet defacto defending the Kremlin's actions? Pushing narratives of false equivalence that serve Russia's interest? Running with specific whataboutisms right out of their handbook? Pushing hyper-partisan institutional distrust narratives? Propping up a full-time Russian apologist president in a way that seeks to push legitimacy to those views by feeling an obligation to defend and spin them? Pushing conspiracies like Seth Rich in response to damaging interviews admitting obstruction of justice? Softening the hawkishness on the right-wing voting public toward Putin and Russia? Does Russia deserve some credit for that? IDK, I think at least a little.
Likewise though, we likely wouldn't have seen the sort of backfire-effect institutionally that has hardened those institutions in scrutinizing Russia and politicians seeking harsher measures to counter-act Russia. Which, at least in the short-term, has been unsuccessful in achieving policy goals.
