How many on the progressive wing of the Democratic party were duped by Putin?.

[GaryCnf]

69. The "real issue of Russian meddling?"

There is ZERO doubt that there were widespread efforts by Russia to influence the 2016 election and not just at the presidential level, but up and down the whole ballot.

BUT to contend that this was the #1 reason we lost and claim that the "facts" bear it out is incorrect. Russian bots, active though they were, can't explain away our dismal failure to get black voters to the polls in Blue Wall states like Michigan and Wisconsin. We got 60,000 less votes in Wayne County, Michigan in 2016 than we did in 2012 - and 2012 was Obama's "off" year (there is heavy here because even in Obama's "off year" he got 3% more of the popular vote than we did in 2016, 8% more than we did in 1992, and 2% more than we did in 1996). That 60,000 in Wayne County ALONE was more votes than Jill Stein got across the ENTIRE STATE.

Russian bots didn't keep those voters home. Our campaign's SILENCE (and, yes, sticking it in the platform and forgetting about it is STILL silence) on criminal justice reform (you know, like the partial repeal of the 1996 Violent Crime Act), on the cold-blooded blue on black murder of Michael Brown and other people of color (in fact, we have one Democrat who actually vouched for the prosecutor who ran the grand jury whitewash), on rolling back welfare reform and on all of the other atrocities we acquiesced to in the hopes of winning back the "middle of the road" is what cost us those voters, MAY cost us the senatorial election in Alabama and WILL cost us our seat in Missouri.

Those are facts. Those are numbers.