I don't want to refight the primaries. But I have questions

[wasupaloopa]

I was here with a different name. I could not use that name because I could not use the email I signed up with after the highjaking in November.

Anyway, I was wondering how much of the things said about Hillary on this board back then may have come from Russian operatives?

It seems now that they were working to get Trump elected even before the Repub primaries. So maybe they were trying to influence the Dem primary.

Could they have used social media in an attempt to get Bernie nominated thinking he would be easier to defeat than Hillary?

Or possibly they were attacking Bernie thinking Hillary was easier to beat seeing Bernie's huge rallies.

I am not trying to stir up the fights that went on back then. They are over and we have a common enemy.

But I felt during the primary that some of the worse things said about Hillary did not come from the hearts of DUers.

I always felt there was some other source for them.

Please understand I am not trying to dredge up the past or to fight those fights again.

Just wondering if others felt there was an outside influence in the Dem primaries. And could it be Russian.

[NightWatcher]

1. Thom Hartmann who is paid by RT (Russia's propaganda arm) was a huuuuge advocate for Bernie...

Annnnd this will be locked as conspiracy theory, but I've only stated two facts. Dispute that Hartmann is paid by RT, then dispute that many people (outside of the Northeast US) first heard of Bernie from his weekly hour long segments on his show. It's where I first heard of him.

[NurseJackie]

6. Makes sense to me.

[demmiblue]

2. Lol... trash thread. n/t

[mahina]

3. I have no idea about this board but we know DU didn't escape their notice, and we know they were

Working everywhere, and working very unethically. It's likely.

I thought the uglier and more divisive posts were trying to (obvs) divide us, and we now know that was their goal.

I admire and respect both Hillary and Bernie tremendously and tried to stay positive at all times about both of them.

[David__77]

4. Use of the word "but" generally invalidates whatever precedes it.

I'm referring to the original post headline.

[NurseJackie]

7. And when you hear "with all due respect..." it means that something disrespectful follows.

[David__77]

11. Indeed. And then there's "bless his/her heart."

Even "just kidding" after a statement that may occur as confrontational may simply be an evasion of personal discomfort rather than a true denial of seriousness.

[wasupaloopa]

12. How many replies over the years are like yours

At lease accuse me of something don't repeat something posted a million times.

Be original why don't you?

[Squinch]

5. The news reports I am seeing all seem to say (for example, Rachel said it last night)

that Bernie supporters were a prime target for Russian bots. The bots stoked the hatred and sowed a lot of lies about her in Bernie spaces. They provided a lot of links to stories about horrible acts committed by Hillary that never happened, which accounts for a lot of the JPR-style Hillary hatred. And not for nothing, but sites like JPR are very closely tied to RT, getting a lot of their links and ideas from there.

So yes. I would be very surprised if some of those DU users who were so very vocal during the election but who we haven't heard from since were not bots.

These people were not messing around, and they had all the resources they could ever need to create chaos.

[Orsino]

8. Might as well try to build a herd of cows out of a truckload of hamburger.

Hillary Clinton was edged out of the presidency by a confluence of factors, some obviously criminal and some legitimate if misguided. We may learn a lot about a few of the unsavory elements involved, but we will never know exactly how these things affected our alleged voting system.

[4139]

9. Very well established that Russia was pushing the anti-fracking movement

Nov 2014
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/world/russian-money-suspected-behind-fracking-protests.html

https://www.google.com/amp/www.newsweek.com/intelligence-putin-funding-anti-fracking-campaign-547873%3Famp%3D1

Fracking pushed people toward Bernie and Jill Stein

[Iggo]

10. Trashing thread. Nothing personal. (n/t)