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.