Stop Blaming the Russians for the Loss

Accept Responsibility for the Loss and Take Legitimate Steps to Reform Your Party 

Stop Blaming the Russians for the Loss.... Even IF you believe the Russian hack was an organized attempt to tilt the election in favor of Trump, it could only be effective by showing the unvarnished dialogue about their primary process and incestuous relationship between the DNC and old line media outlets.

For the first time in our nation's history, Americans received real time transparency, during a presidential election, of what was going on inside the DNC infrastructure with regard to how they tilted the outcome away from Bernie Sanders and towards Hillary Clinton.

In a system of only two major parties, it's more than relevant to see how insurgent candidates, who are outside the party establishment, are treated by party leadership and operatives. What we found out was what was suspected. The GOP demonstrated the exact same antipathy for their insurgent candidate, only it was very public in nature. Such hacking would likely have bolstered that view.

Bottom line? Stop blaming Russia for the loss. Yes the intelligence community says that Russia tried to help Trump by exposing the emails. Yes the emails didn't help the DNC or the Clinton campaign. Yes Putin is no doubt celebrating helping to divide our nation, which is a rival nation on the world stage. But in no way did exposure of the emails result in Hillary Clinton losing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio, all of which went for Obama in 2012.

It's time for five things to happen. First, Democrats need to stop using the Russian hack as a reason for losing the election. Second, Democrats need to shift their focus from fake reasons for their failure in the 2016 election to larger internal problems they face as a political party and take steps to allow insurgent candidates the ability to progress to the nomination and rid itself of delegate quotas, super delegates, and tamp down identity politics.

Third, Trump needs to acknowledge that the Russians did in fact attempt to affect the outcome of the election, stop defending Putin, and pledge to take measures to prevent this from happening in future US elections. Fourth, Trump needs to lead a bipartisan review of the Russian involvement in a joint house-senate committee investigation with the aim of determining how the election was impacted by the election and to advance reforms that bolster confidence about the outcome of US national elections. Fifth, Trump himself needs to renounce and clarify his comments about American elections being "rigged" all the way down to voter precincts. And then promise to stop using American Intelligence agencies to meddle in the elections of other nations.