The Plot Against America?

With the announcement that Russia is interfering to aid the candidacy of Bernie Sanders and repeated comments by Donald Trump seeming to support Sanders’ candidacy, the question is naturally asked why? Why would the Russians favor Sanders and why would Trump be so supportive of Sanders? The easy answer is that both parties think Trump’s chances for re-election increase significantly with Sanders as the opposition. I offer a different reason for the support.

It has long been apparent that Russia has been engaged in a strategy intended to so damage the United States that it can no longer function in its traditional role as antagonist to Russian interests and a counterbalance to Russian desire to resume its role as a global power since the fall of the Soviet Union. When the strategy first took root can likely never be known. What we do know is that its clearest manifestation is the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 and while it may be naïve to call the interference in the 2016 election Phase One (given the near certainty that that interference was simply one part of a many-phased strategy that had been in the works for many years), for purposes of this discussion the election is but the first phase of a forward-thinking strategy deployed by Russia with the ultimate goal of not only removing the United States from its traditional role, but to ultimately rip the country apart to such an extent that it will not soon recover thereby allowing Russian global interests to be realized.

The goal of Phase One was to ensure that Donald Trump would become President in 2016. His temperament, intelligence, incuriosity, lack of knowledge of the world around him, his vulnerability to manipulation explain, in part, why he was selected by Russia as the principal tool of its strategy. While the strategy during the post-convention period was to inflict damage on Hillary Clinton, the strategy pre-convention was designed to ensure that Bernie Sanders, Ms Clinton’s principal rival for the nomination, not receive the nomination. The Russians had bigger things in mind for Mr. Sanders, but allowing him to pitted against candidate Trump (as opposed to a President Trump) with a chance to win the general election was not something the strategy could allow. While I cannot speak to the methods employed by Russia to ensure that Sanders was not the nominee in 2016, the fact remains that rules were changed to undermine a Sanders candidacy and votes cast by so-called, “super delegates”..delegates not bound to a particular candidate... cast in secret which assured that Mr. Sanders would not gain the nomination and would have to wait another cycle before again seeking the nomination.

The result was a close election that turned on election results in several counties in several states that yielded to Trump the votes needed to secure election via the Electoral College.

The framework for the next Phase has been gradually taking form over the past few months. Not surprisingly, Sanders chose to run despite his advancing age and, predictably, the emotional fervor that accompanied his run in 2016 returned in spades and while he faces competition from the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobachar, Joe BIden, and, of late, from Michael Bloomberg, none, other than Sanders, has gained sufficient traction to overcome the emotional and “revolutionary” trajectory of Mr. Sanders who has returned to his uncompromising, belligerent attacks on the historic structure of American society. Not surprisingly, we now learn (assuming the claims are correct and themselves not a product of Russian disinformation) that Russia has been working to help Bernie Sanders gain the Democratic nomination. Understanding how sophisticated the Russian disinformation machine was in 2016 and how it has only improved upon that experience, it is not hard to see how such a strategy could aid Mr. Sanders.

Part and parcel with pushing Sanders to the front of a crowded field, Mr. Trump’s perceived principal rival, Joe Biden, was  victimized by a disinformation campaign that accused Biden of possibly illegal conduct in his dealings with Ukraine allegedly on behalf of his son. Though, as it turns out, the strategy need not have been employed as Biden appears to be his own worst enemy, the strategy nevertheless left Biden’s candidacy weakened to the point of it likely becoming untenable. With regard to the remaining candidates challenging Mr. Sanders, the Russian goal has likely been to sow increasingly hyperbolic dissension among the current group of candidates who are easily triggered to attack one another thereby removing a cohesive challenge to Mr. Sanders’ candidacy. The strategy also (successfully) served to drive other, deserving candidates out of the race early on in the process. Though significant questions surround Sanders’ candidacy…his age, his unyielding and uncompromising politics which, it is feared, are too extreme to attract mainstream, independent voters and his health…remain, he nevertheless continues to follow an arc that will, with near certainty, garner him the nomination and pit him against Donald Trump.

The outline of how the strategy plays out to the 2020 election and beyond continues to take shape. It is an interesting and revealing confluence when, on virtually the same day, Sanders obtains a significant victory in the Nevada primary and the National Security Advisor..a Trump accolyte, Robert O’Brien…makes statements announcing that Russia is not working to help Donald Trump but is working to help the Sanders’ campaign. The comments are a now-typical and (apparently) successful Trump strategy of distraction…directing attention to others to distract from the truth that it is Trump and not the accused target who is guilty of the accused of transgression.

It matters not whether the accusation…here that Sanders is being aided by Russia…is true or not. In Trump’s world which has now become our living nightmare, accusations of this type alone can and often do become an accepted truth, often to fatal effect.  With the current confluence of events…Sanders surging in the polls and the Trump administration announcing that Russia is helping Sanders to win the nomination and presumably the general election…the strategy then unfolds on two tracks.

In the first, Sanders successfully secures the nomination. With a relentless strategy dispensing disinformation through both social and mainstream media that is too interested in profit to protect the integrity of its platforms, Sanders, as with Trump in 2016, pushes through against all odds, and ultimately is elected President. At the same time, Trump, with Russian assistance, pushes a strategy to not only delegitimize Sanders but paint Sanders as a Russian asset who, with Russian assistance, has sought the Presidency, at Russia’s behest, to turn the United States into a Communist state. The notion, without question, is ludicrous. Still we should all be prepared for this line of attack from Trump and his Republican enablers. It is, after all, an easy argument for the GOP to make. They will clam that Sanders is pushing, without any sense of a willingness to compromise, a socialistic framework for governing with appearances on Fox and other right-wing news platforms that we should all be prepared to die before allowing the country to become a socialist state. Never mind that the governing framework at the heart of Sander’s politics is akin to a successful realization of this form of governing all throughout Europe where it is understood as Democratic Socialism. In this country, it is not hard to portray what Sanders is pushing for as not simply socialism but Communism (we heard Mike Bloomberg make the claim in a recent debate) drawing comparisons to the hybrid forms of communism followed in China but in the bygone days of the former Soviet Union. Playing into a nationalism that has seen an uptick in anti-semitism and the belief held by many that Jews are part of a cabal to control Christian lives, Sanders is Jewish. That fact, together with the candidates’ politics makes it an easy sell to portray Sanders as a Jewish Communist with ties to Moscow (after all he honeymooned in Moscow) who, with Moscow’s help is trying to gain the White House and turn the United States away from its historic roots.

So how does this answer the questions posed at the outset? Why would Russia support Trump and why would Trump support Sanders? To be clear, neither is providing this support with the hope that Sanders wins the Presidency so what is the endgame?

There are increasing fears that Trump, should he lose in 2020, will not leave office despite constitutional requirements that he do so. He has spent the entirety of his presidency building an army of the disaffected who appear ready to answer his call to protect him from ceding his office…the Dershowitz (and Nixonian) argument that if the president does it it is for the good of the country...in order to protect the country from President-elect Bernard Sanders. In the context of a Sanders versus Trump election, it is not difficult to recognize the real possibility of Trump refusing to leave office, citing, by then, the long established “fact” that Sanders is a Russian asset from whom the country needs protection rekindling Trump dystopic speech at the Republican convention and substantively repeated at his inauguration…that he alone is able to protect the country from (himself) the evil in the world.  Is it too far-fetched to imagine Trump ordering Sanders arrested? Probably but still…After all Sanders, it will be said, is a (Jewish) Communist who has had dealings with Russia in the past and was aided in his campaign for the Presidency by Russian intelligence services all for the purpose of destroying the American way of life.

It is not difficult to imagine how Trump’s base would respond to a call to arms issued by the White House to fight the Commuinst menace waiting to take his seat in the Oval office. While that alone is a frightening prospect, the impact that such a constitutional crisis would have on the country as a whole and in particular, upon the millions upon millions of Sanders’ supporters who fervently carried their candidate to victory and the hope of new tomorrow, would like put the country on the precipice of total collapse and fulfilling Russian aims of removing the United States from a prominent player on the world stage.  

Far-fetched? Probably. Possible? Time will tell.