Hard Truths for Democrats
1) Trump 2016 was both a true grassroots revolt & a Kremlin-abetted auto-immune disease engineered to turn democracy against itself (also here).
2) The success of the Russian Federation in affecting the outcome of the 2016 election, which set us on a path to the present, was an intelligence and national security failure of the magnitude of Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
3) That failure took place entirely on the watch of President Barack Obama.
4) As Commander in Chief, President Obama held the ultimate responsibility for the failure of intelligence services to appreciate and mitigate Russian Active Measures in their new and (it turns out) far more effective form.
5) What is more, through its profoundly misguided policy of a “reset” with Russia, the Obama administration set a precedent of appeasement that it did not succeed in reversing following the annexation of Crimea.
6) The economic and social conditions that prepared the soil for the seed of MAGA populism were at least as much the creation of Democrats as Republicans. This includes the hollowing out of US manufacturing due to Washington Consensus trade policies; the implosion of the coal industry due to a fracking-driven surge in the domestic extraction of natural gas (which was cheered on by the Obama administration due to climate concerns, with no meaningful response for the communities affected); and the opioid epidemic.
7) Rather than acknowledge any of these failures following the 2016 election and address the threats to the Constitutional order that the election represented, the leadership of the Democratic Party (Sen. Mark Warner being among the exceptions) mostly kept to it pre-2016 partisan talking points, gamely playing along when baited by President Trump on the news cycle topic of the day. It was only after the January 6 insurrection that the language of concern shifted at all persuasively to focus on the national interest (President Biden’s September 1, 2022, address at Independence Hall being a notable turning point).
8) If we include Wikileaks, the Kremlin has almost certainly expended comparable or greater energy/resources backing “left” narratives/groups as they have backing the “right” over the past 15 years. Sure, playing the long game with Trump paid off spectacuarly. But all along, even now, the point has been to sow division and undermine confidence in democratic institutions — to undermine the US at its foundations — not to advance one side or the other (see 1, 2, and 3).
9) Ironically, for the above reasons, Democrats have had the tendency to underplay the effectiveness of Russian Active Measures (that are, in fact, not well-described as simply “election interference”). Instead, Democrats incline toward portraying the MAGA takeover as evidence of an array of underlying moral failings on the so-called “right” that have by-now, been exhaustively enumerated. The reality, however, is the the tactic could have just as easily worked on the historical “left”, where most current MAGA talking points originate — and, in some instances, did (see 1, 2, and 3).
From a national security standpoint, the Obama presidency was a failure of epic proportions.
See also “Hard Truths for Republicans.”
