Netanyahu will remain for some time the head of the Likud Party, which typically holds over a quarter of the seats in the 120-member Knesset or parliament. A loss like this, could, however, over time bring out rivals inside the party who attempt to replace him as party leader, according to the Israeli Arab 48 newspaper.

Netanyahu is as slippery as an eel in olive oil, and no one could rule out a comeback, especially given that the ruling coalition looks like a bar scene in Star Wars and may well fall out with one another (as often happens in bar scenes in Star Wars). This is a moment, however, to look back at his career. As an American, I’m particularly interested in the ways in which Netanyahu had a negative impact on my country. Here are the top 5:

1. As prime minister the first time, 1996-1999, Netanyahu destroyed the Oslo Peace Accords by refusing to abide by Israeli commitments to withdraw from all Occupied Palestinian territories by the late 1990s. Netanyahu openly boasted of having torpedoed the last chance for a peace settlement based on two states and he was caught on video, saying he could do it and get away with it because he could easily manipulate the American government:

Netanyahu: This is how I broke the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians

For all its flaws, the Oslo agreement could well have settled the conflict.

Most Americans do not understand that the rest of the world blames the U.S. for the terrible way the Palestinians are treated, and it is one element in anti-Americanism in a range of cultures, both Muslim and leftist. The terrorism the U.S. experienced at the hands of Muslim extremists was in part wrought up with Washington’s role in crushing the Palestinians. Usama Bin Laden gave Israeli actions in Jerusalem as one of the reasons that he launched the 9/11 attacks.

Netanyahu’s brutal wars on the Palestinians in 2014 and 2021 again harmed American interests.

By breaking the Oslo Accords, Netanyahu brought the U.S. loads of grief.

Then as I wrote elsewhere,

2. “Netanyahu scuttled the George Mitchell peace process initiated by President Obama when he first took office in 2009. He pledged a freeze of squatter settlements on Palestinian territory for 6 months in spring of 2009, then just as negotiations with the Palestinians were to begin in earnest, Netanyahu abruptly cancelled the freeze, ensuring that the talks would fail. (There is no reason for the Palestinians to negotiate for their share of the cake if Bibi is going to gobble it up in front of their eyes while they are talking to him.)

3. Netanyahu scuttled the 2013-14 Kerry peace talks. He allowed one of his cabinet members to smear Mr. Kerry as having ‘messianic’ pretensions. He kept announcing increased new squatter settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, aiming to drive the Palestinians away from the negotiating table. Then he started demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ even though over a fifth of Israelis are not Jews (most of them are Palestinian-Israeli).”

4. Netanyahu openly interfered in U.S. politics on more than one occasion. He more or less campaigned for Mitt Romney in Florida in 2012 against President Obama. There is also evidence that Netanyahu had Israeli intelligence intervene for Trump in the 2016 presidential contest. Netanyahu weaponized Israel for the Republican Party, ensuring that it was no longer a matter of bipartisan consensus.

This role for Netanyahu is well known. What isn’t usually considered is that it demonstrated to other world leaders such as Vladimir Putin that it is possible for a foreign country to develop American constituencies, spread around alarmist memes, and interfere in American elections. Netanyahu paved the way for Russian dirty tricks against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

5. Netanyahu openly lobbied Congress to vote against President Obama on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. I have never in my life seen anything like it. Does French President Emmanuel Macron come to Washington and connive with legislators to defeat President Biden’s infrastructure bill? Did German Chancellor Angela Merkel address Congress in the Trump era trying to get it to vote against Trump’s dismissive policies toward NATO?

Netanyahu was caught on tape boasting that he got Trump to cancel the Iran deal.

The Joint Plan of Comprehensive Action (JCPOA) or Iran nuclear deal would have greatly reduced tensions between the US and Iran and would have contributed to peace in the region. President Biden is trying to reinstate it for that reason. By lobbying against it and helping destroy it, Netanyahu kept conflict raging. That is because he perceives himself personally to benefit from having an Iran bogeyman with which to scare his constituents and the American public. Yet in America’s most recent big fight in the Middle East, against the ISIL terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria, Iran was of far more value to the US effort than was Israel.

Again, Netanyahu’s success in this regard certainly encouraged Putin to attempt to get Trump to approve Russia’s Ukraine policy. After all, as Netanyahu said, the Americans are easily manipulated.

Could “fake news” have helped determine the outcome of the 2016 presidential election?

Social media users and intensely partisan news broadcasts disseminated a massive number of messages during the campaign. Many of these messages demonized candidates and seriously distorted the facts presented to voters. One recent study of nearly 25,000 election social media messages shared by Michigan voters identified nearly half as “unverified WikiLeaks content and Russian-origin news stories” that fall “under the definition of propaganda based on its use of language and emotional appeals.”

What hasn’t been clear, however, is how much of an impact – if any – these “fake news” items had on the outcome of the election. To our knowledge, there have been no empirical studies that have systematically assessed the extent to which believing fake news stories influenced voting decisions in 2016. So, we set out to do one.

We are scholars associated with the Comparative National Elections Project, which is coordinated at The Ohio State University. In December 2016, we commissioned YouGov to conduct a nationwide post-election survey. Our study concludes that fake news most likely did have a substantial impact on the voting decisions of a strategically important set of voters.

Here’s what we learned.

Our research questions

The survey had 1,600 respondents. We focus our analysis on the 2016 electoral behavior of 585 respondents who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012. This strategic subset of voters was selected for two reasons.

First, restricting our analysis to former Obama supporters allowed us to weed out those respondents who were hostile to all Democratic candidates.

Second, if Hillary Clinton had retained the support of Obama voters, she would have most likely won the 2016 election. Instead, just 77 percent of Obama voters supported Clinton. Our survey data show that 10 percent of these former Obama voters cast ballots for Trump in 2016, 4 percent switched to minor parties and 8 percent did not vote.

Our key research question is: What accounts for these defections?

Study methodology and results

Our survey asked 281 questions, including three false statements best characterized as fake news – two negative statements about Hillary Clinton and one positive statement about Donald Trump. All three were widely disseminated through social media and spread by mainstream and partisan news outlets.

The first is that “Hillary Clinton is in very poor health due to a serious illness.” Twenty-five percent of all survey respondents believed that this was “definitely true” or “probably true,” as did 12 percent of our former Obama supporters.

The second is a statement that asked our respondents if they believed that “During her time as U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton approved weapon sales to Islamic jihadists, including ISIS.” Thirty-five percent of our national sample believed that Clinton had sold weapons to the Islamic State, as did 20 percent of former Obama voters.

Finally, the third is a statement that “Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump for president prior to the election.” About 10 percent of our national sample and 8 percent of Obama supporters thought this statement was true.

Belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters. Among respondents who didn’t believe any of the fake news stories, 89 percent cast ballots for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Sixty-one percent of those who believed one fake news item voted for Clinton. But only 17 percent of those who believed two or all three of these false assertions voted for Clinton.

To be sure, data from a one-time survey cannot “prove” that these fake news items caused former Obama voters to defect. It is also possible that someone who chose not to vote for Clinton might endorse these false statements after the fact in order to rationalize their voting decision.

We also explored a number of other possible explanations for these voters’ defections.

What else could explain these defections?

The Clinton campaign heavily emphasized gender issues in an attempt to mobilize female voters. Could this have alienated men to the extent that they abandoned their prior support for the Democratic presidential candidate? Our data provide no support for such a claim. An identical 23 percent of both male and female respondents who had voted for Obama in 2012 defected from the Democratic ticket.

Did the lack of an African-American presidential candidate lead black voters to waiver in their commitment to the Democratic candidate? No. Indeed, fewer African-American voters (20 percent) defected from Clinton than did white voters (23 percent).

Age is weakly related to defection from Clinton. While 20 percent of voters over 35 abandoned the Democratic ticket in 2016, 30 percent of younger voters did so.

Education is also weakly associated with defection. Among college-educated former Obama voters, just 16 percent did not vote for Clinton, but the percentage almost doubled to 27 percent defecting for those with lower educational attainment.

More overtly political variables had a stronger impact. Half of those who placed themselves near the conservative end of the ideological scale defected from the Democratic candidate, while only 14 percent of those on the left did so.

Similarly, dissatisfaction with the condition of the economy also had an impact: Just 12 percent of those who thought that the economic situation at the time of the survey was “good” or “very good” abandoned Hillary Clinton, while 39 percent who regarded the economy as “poor” or “very poor” at the time of the survey defected from the Democratic ticket.

Party identification exerted a stronger influence. Among the former Obama voters who identified themselves as Democrats, 7 percent did not vote for Clinton. This rose to 40 percent among independents and to 68 percent among those who identified with the Republican, Libertarian or Green parties.

Controlling for alternative explanations

So do all of these alternative factors mean it’s impossible to measure the unique impact of belief in fake news on the vote in 2016? Actually social science offers us a way. Multiple regression analysis is a tool that allows researchers to account for many different factors influencing behavior, in this case defecting from the Democratic ticket in 2016.

We used this tool to estimate the joint impact on the vote of all of these alternative explanatory factors. The first equation we ran included gender, race, age, education, ideological orientation, dissatisfaction with the condition of the economy and party identification. All together, these variables “explained” 38 percent of the likelihood of defection.

We then added the fake news items to the equation to measure their impact. The three fake news items explained an additional 14 percent of the likelihood of Obama voters defecting after the influence of all of the other variables had been taken into consideration.

We also added one more compelling element to our study. Using “feeling thermometers,” we measured how much each respondent liked or disliked Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. If defection of Obama voters was only due to disliking Hillary Clinton or liking Donald Trump, then the introduction of this thermometer variable into the equation should make the link with fake news disappear.

Though how people felt about Clinton and Trump did somewhat reduce the strength of the relationship between fake news and defection, it did not eliminate it. Belief in fake news remained a significant predictor of defecting from Clinton. In sum, even after the impact of all of these other factors is taken into consideration, former Obama voters who believed one or more of these fake news stories were 3.3 times more likely to defect from the Democratic ticket in 2016 than those who did not believe any of these false claims.

That may not seem like much, but Clinton lost the presidency by about 78,000 votes (0.6 percent of nationwide vote) cast in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Though our evidence does not “prove” that belief in fake news “caused” these former Obama voters to defect from the Democratic candidate in 2016, our study results suggest that it is highly likely that the pernicious pollution of our political discourse by fake news was sufficient to influence the outcome of what was a very close election.

Richard Gunther, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, The Ohio State University; Erik C. Nisbet, Associate Professor of Communication, Political Science, and Environmental Policy and Faculty Associate with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, The Ohio State University, and Paul Beck, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, The Ohio State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

—–

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

TYT: “Trump Supporters LOVE Fake News”

Former interim chair of the DNC Donna Brazile highlights the agreement that effectively gave the Clinton team full control of the organization as early as 2015.

In an explosive and “deeply disturbing” piece for Politico Magazine on Thursday, former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Donna Brazile drew upon her brief experience at the organization’s helm to reveal the extent to which the 2016 nomination process was “rigged” in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In her account, Brazile details the deep “internal corruption” of the DNC, the role the ostensibly neutral governing body played as a “fundraising clearing house” for the Clinton team, and how those dynamics unfairly handicapped primary challenger Bernie Sanders.

Many of the DNC’s most deeply embedded issues, Brazile notes, spring both from former chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s poor management and former President Barack Obama’s neglect, which left the committee deeply in debt.

In August 2015, the Clinton campaign—along with the joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund—came to an agreement with the committee to begin to pay off this debt, which had soared to $24 million. In exchange, the DNC’s finances were placed “fully under the control” of the Clinton team, “which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp,” Brazile writes.

“When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party,” Brazile observed. “This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed…just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.”

Brazile goes on to describe the terms of the agreement, which she describes as “unethical”:

The agreement…specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

Brazile concludes the piece, which is an adapted excerpt from her forthcoming book, by detailing a conversation she had with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) shortly after she found the “cancer” at the heart of the DNC—this so-called “Joint Fundraising Agreement.”

“How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks. By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart,” Brazile writes. “I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee….Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were.”

Unsurprisingly, Brazile’s account immediately caught fire on social media, provoking a mixture of outrage and vindication—particularly given that it comes from a “stalwart” establishment insider who admitted to passing debate topics to the Clinton team during her time as a CNN contributor.

“Shame on the DNC, on Hillary Clinton, and every Democratic operative responsible for this bullshit. What a mess,” The Intercept’s Shaun King wrote on Twitter.

“Since the election, it is not clear that the DNC has dealt with these problems yet,” writes Clio Chang of Splinter News, building on King’s point. “Tom Perez was installed as DNC chair over Keith Ellison, a move that was largely seen as giving Democratic elites more control over the party….The DNC is not doomed to repeat the problems of the past, but from Brazile’s account, it’s clear that the organization requires a major reckoning.”

Via Commondreams.org

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

TYT: “BOMBSHELL: Donna Brazile Admits DNC Rigged Primary Against Bernie”

Nobody should be surprised that Hillary Clinton’s new book What Happened includes a section on misogyny and sexism. Since the 1990s, I have watched people launch personal attacks on Clinton, whether about her hairstyle or the rumor that she had murdered Vince Foster. It would take me weeks to systematically list the conspiracy theories, mean insults, and other personal attacks on Clinton. Since I am currently writing a book about fighting misogyny, I automatically agreed with her latest statement about sexism affecting the 2016 election. Then I realized that Trump bashing has parallels to Hillary bashing that are not necessarily related to misogyny.

Despite earlier efforts to refrain from personal attacks on politicians, my strong aversion to Trump broke down any self-restraint. He had entered the political realm through his racist insistence that Obama was not really born in the U.S. On the day he announced his candidacy, he denigrated Mexican immigrants. Besides Trump’s overt racism, of course, was his blatant sexism that included snide comments about women’s appearances. He provoked in me a sense of moral disgust that caused me to enjoy the insults. Clinton haters (not critics like me, but actual haters) also felt justified in laying into her with slogans such as “Trump that bitch!”

If Clinton was attacked for her physical appearance, so was Trump. His weight seemed to be fair game because of all the times he had called women fat. A sculptor even displayed a nude statue of him, complete with pot belly and sagging buttocks. If any sculptor had made a similar statue of a female politician, I would have been the first to arrive with a sledgehammer. However, many did not react with outrage to this humiliating portrayal of Trump because they felt that he deserved it. Besides his body shape, how many times have Trump bashers also called him orange or mentioned his hair?

Another aspect of appearance is clothing, which has been a point of derision for Clinton bashers for decades. If she had decided on pantsuits as more practical and/or comfortable than skirts or dresses, this wardrobe choice should not even matter. Trump also has faced criticism for his clothes, from the too-long ties to the ill-fitting suits. Although people judge women much more harshly for their clothes than men, both genders have to deal with cutting remarks about what they wear.

Probably more painful than an insult about dress is a comment about one’s gender identity, with Clinton being de-feminized and Trump being de-masculinized. Because Clinton is not afraid to show off her strength and intelligence, she has been called Killary, Shillary, a ballbreaker, and a lesbian (in this context, a deviant and perhaps defiant person who is not truly female). Clinton played the roles of mother and wife as well as any other woman, but her career ambitions inspired her critics to de-feminize her. Similarly, Trump has had to deal with questions about his manliness. The assertion that his fingers are smaller than normal, which is associated with smaller penis size, even emerged in a Republican debate. Trump felt the need to boast about his physical attributes, thus indicating an anxiety about his masculine image. His chest-thumping foreign policy, public putdowns of women, and other macho behaviors are likely related to the threat of feeling de-masculinized.

Ageism is yet another ugly facet of the attacks on both Clinton and Trump. During the 2016 election, commentators questioned whether Trump or Clinton (who are around the same age) could be too old for the presidency. More than one website had this pre-election article: “These 11 photos prove Hillary Clinton is a tired old woman who should never be president.” After Clinton’s granddaughter was born, the Drudge Report called her “Grandma Hillary” as an insult. Nancy Pelosi, also a grandmother, faced the same kind of contempt that no grandfather politician ever experienced. Decisions about marriage also became controversial for both candidates–Clinton for not divorcing her adulterous husband, and Trump for his three marriages.

By comparing the personal attacks on Clinton and Trump, then, I must conclude that neither candidate emerged unscathed. Several questions come to mind, including whether the American public insulted Clinton and Trump to the same extent or if Clinton faced worse treatment. After researching the multiple anti-Clinton themes, I am convinced that misogyny did play a role in the 2016 election. However, I cannot be sure whether misogyny was the primary cause of Hillary bashing or merely a tactic. As discussion of the 2016 election continues, though, I am hopeful that we will better understand the impact of misogyny in politics.

Gail Ukockis, PhD, MSW, MA, is an educator and social worker with an eclectic background that includes graduate studies in history. For eleven years, Dr. Ukockis taught a women’s issues course at Ohio Dominican University, which served as the foundation for this textbook. Her research interests also include HIV/AIDS, cultural competence, and human trafficking. She is author of Women’s Issues for a New Generation: A Social Work Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

People TV: “Hillary Clinton Shares Her Life After Losing: Yoga Power Poses & No Pantsuits | PeopleTV”

            The image of Donald Trump looming ominously behind Hillary Clinton still disturbs me on a visceral level. He may have belittled his previous opponents (e.g., “Little Marco”), but he never threatened to lock them up. Trump’s attempt to intimidate Clinton had nothing to do with electoral politics and everything to do with raw power.

            The theme of gender, then, is inescapable when analyzing the 2016 election. Clinton’s recent revelation that she wished she had said “Back off, you creep!” to Trump has revived the debate on how much misogyny had affected the voters’ decisions. I cannot blame her for second-guessing her decision to ignore Trump’s inappropriate behavior and to act as if everything was normal.

            If only she had confronted Trump about his violation of her personal space. Like many other women, I have had to turn around on the street to challenge a guy to back off. However, Clinton was on a public stage trying to do her job. Although many of us would have felt relief and gratification by a verbal self-defense from her, I doubt that commentators and opponents would have agreed with that action. I could hear them mock her as being hysterical, irrational, and even unstable. “How could she overreact like that?” they might say before launching into the latest wisecrack about the weakness of women. Clinton’s dilemma was a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” moment that many survivors of domestic violence can understand.

            Last January, I was teaching about domestic violence to my social work students. When I came to the part about nonverbal threats such as “The Look,” I could not resist using Trump’s lurking behavior as another example of intimidation. My students instantly recognized the connection between a silent threat and the Power and Control Wheel (Duluth Model), which shows aspects of abusive behavior that commonly occur.

            The Power and Control Wheel includes “Using intimidation: Making her afraid by using looks, actions, gestures.” His repeated calls to “lock her up!” were the first time that I heard an American politician threaten an opponent with imprisonment instead of defeat. Hopefully, it will be the last time. The incitement of violence against rally protesters made the threat to Hillary on the stage even more credible, besides his references to “Second Amendment people” solving the problem of her future court picks.. He was playing a mind game that may have endeared him to his supporters, perhaps because some voters liked the idea of a hyper-masculine, rule-breaking candidate.

            In fact, “Male privilege” is another component of the Power and Control Wheel. “Being the one to define men’s and women’s roles” is the line most relevant to the Trump/Clinton situation. Although Trump has promoted the careers of women other than his daughter, he is also famous for his demeaning treatment of women. For instance, his ownership of the beauty pageants made him feel entitled to walk into their dressing rooms—even to be a voyeur in the teenagers’ quarters. He had the power to dictate standards of beauty despite his own appearance flaws. His beauty pageant experience may have magnified his attacks on the appearances of Carly Fiorini and Hillary Clinton. In his worldview, he had the male privilege to judge and insult women because they were beneath him.

            “Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming,” another section of the Power and Control Wheel, is also related to Trump’s behavior. An abuser’s refusal to take any responsibility for the damage they have done is a common trait in domestic violence, especially “Making light of the abuse and not taking her concerns about it seriously.” How many times did Trump do something appalling and then call it a joke? Denial also occurs, such as when he denied that he had mocked the disabled reporter, thoughany child could see the cruelty of his action. When Trump first exaggerated the crowd size of his inauguration, my initial thought was that he was testing us to see how much untruth the public would accept. Abusers also use this ploy early in a relationship because it sets the stage for further deceit. Additionally, blaming is involved in asserting power and control, such as Trump’s delusional claims that Clinton had rigged the election (to lose!) despite evidence that he himself had collaborated with the Russians to undermine the integrity of the election.

            What is the best way to handle an abuser, especially one who is the Commander in Chief? Hold fast to the truth and do not let him take it away. Although Clinton had kept her calm while Trump loomed behind her, we must confront him for his abusive behaviors and refuse to back down. Unfortunately, we may have to yell our own versions of “Back off, you creep!” many times before his presidency is over.

Gail Ukockis, PhD, MSW, MA, is an educator and social worker with an eclectic background that includes graduate studies in history. For eleven years, Dr. Ukockis taught a women’s issues course at Ohio Dominican University, which served as the foundation for this textbook. Her research interests also include HIV/AIDS, cultural competence, and human trafficking. She is author of Women’s Issues for a New Generation: A Social Work Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

——

Related video added by Juan Cole:

Hillary Clinton Shares Doubts, Acknowledges Mistakes In New Book | NBC Nightly News

“In this Majority Report clip, we watch FBI Director James Comey defend his decision to send a letter to Congress (which was immediately leaked by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) alerting them that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was re-opened FOR A WEEKEND while the FBI looked through Huma Abedin’s forwarded emails to Anthony Weiner. The FBI concluded that there was no criminal intent—so, the situation was exactly the same as it was before Comey sent the letter—but the damage was done. Also, the FBI is still investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

We need your help to keep providing free videos! Support the Majority Report’s video content by going to Patreon.com/MajorityReport!

Watch the Majority Report live M–F at 12 p.m. EST at youtube.com/samseder or listen via daily podcast at http://Majority.FM”

Majority Report with Sam Seder: ” CATASTROPHIC FAIL: James Comey On Letter To Congress About Hillary E-Mails That Maybe Swung Election”

FBI Director James Comey confirmed Monday that his agency has since last summer been investigating the circle of Donald J. Trump for their contacts with the Russian Federation during last year’s election campaign.

He also denied Trump’s allegations that former president Barack Obama ordered wiretaps on him at Trump Tower last fall before the election. Trump had called Obama “sick” in his tweet making the charge. Trump should retract and apologize to president Obama, but of course he will not, since the meaning of Trumpism is never having to say you are sorry.

For reasons that no one can fathom, none of the Democrats on the committee bothered to ask Comey about his own out-sized role in the election.

He reported to Congress that he was investigating Hillary Clinton’s private server and combing through her emails, attempting to discover whether she had been careless with classified material. He thereby cast a pall on her integrity that certainly had more public effect than anything the Russians may have done. It was an egregiously unfair announcement.

I would argue that no such investigation should have been launched publicly of a major candidate in an election year. There was not actually anything suspicious about a private server. As for the charge that her personal server was more at risk of being hacked than a government one, this is not true in any way that matters. Government servers are hacked all the time. The private information on 4 million government employees was hacked, allegedly by the People’s Republic of China. Even the CIA servers have been hacked.

Yet Comey was carrying on two investigations, not one. He was also investigating the Trump circle for their Russia ties.

But he did not let the public know about that investigation last summer or fall.

By revealing the one but not the other, he tipped the scales in favor of Trump.

While I appreciate the hard and dedicated work of FBI agents who actually catch criminals or break up terrorist plots, the ambiguous role of the agency in establishing the rightward political tilt of the country also has to be acknowledged. It is easy for directors to fall into believing that bolstering the current power elite is the same as supporting The American Way. This is not the first time in American history that the FBI gave covert help to the right wing. What is mystifying is that Hillary Clinton was the least leftist Democrat you could imagine, being in the back pocket of Wall Street and of billionaires like Haim Saban.

Then, when Trump plunged in the polls after his salacious interview with Billy Bush came out, Comey blunted Clinton’s momentum by announcing that he’d found more emails (on the laptop computer of Anthony Weiner, who appears to have had some Clinton emails shared with him by his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin).

It is arguable that Comey violated the Hatch Act by openly intervening in the election in its last days.

The FBI at no point found anything prosecutable in Hillary Clinton’s emails, whether on her own server or on Weiner’s laptop. But the general public was given the firm impression that she’d done something so wrong that she was under an FBI investigation.

If you were looking for reasons for the black swan event of Trump’s election, Comey’s unfair actions toward Clinton and in favor of Trump would have to be at the forefront.

I’m not alleging that Comey is or was in the tank for Trump. I’m only saying that Comey acted in such a way as to disadvantage Clinton unfairly.

Comey inflicted significant damage on Trump by his testimony on Monday. So he is not showing signs of attempting to shore Trump up.

It is possible that Comey was being procedurally correct. His intervention after the Billy Bush interview was leaked has been interpreted as a case of being careful with Congress. He had told them he’d reviewed all the Clinton emails. Then Weiner was investigated for some sort of sex charge, and new emails showed up, and Comey was afraid word would reach Congress that his investigation had not actually been complete. So he announced the further examination of the laptop and cleared the emails on it as not having been classified within a couple of days. (I’m not sure why it took so long; it is just a keyword search).

On the other hand, the Tea Party Congress was not pressuring him about Russian contacts with Trump’s people, and that investigation was not conclusive, so he may not have felt the same duty to report to Congress.

The conspiracy-minded might conclude that Comey is a Pence supporter, and has cleverly maneuvered Pence into a position where he has a shot at the presidency if Trump is forced out over the Russia scandal.

I am not among the conspiracy-minded, and would need to have proof before entertaining any allegations that Comey is deliberately interfering in domestic politics and engineering individuals into power.

In fact, I can’t make any sense of his actions at all. Why taint Clinton with nothing investigation that went nowhere? Why protect the Trump campaign by keeping knowledge of the Russia investigation from the public? Why drag the Russia investigation on from last July till now (surely the transcripts and emails either provide evidence or they do not)?

On the face of it, it seems most likely of all that the hard line Tea Party Congress managed to coerce him into this behavior.

I conclude that Comey has acted in an unwise and non-neutral way and that historians will place a good deal of the blame for the Trump disaster on him. Whether he has been driven by a narrow proceduralism, or a form of unconscious sexism, or an unspoken GOP bias is at the moment impossible to know. What is clear is that the vast majority of Americans have less reason than ever to trust the politics of the FBI. And maybe we need another investigation, with subpoenas for Comey’s emails.

—-

Related video:

CNN: “Comey confirms FBI investigating Russia”

James Comey is keeping a low profile these days. Not even a peep. Not even after the FBI, CIA, and NSA finally agreed on something: Russia hacked the election and Puttin, who was directly involved, hoped to install Trump as president. Comey’s silence is odd, to say the least, for a man who felt he had to interfere not once but twice in the closing days of the 2016 presidential election. In his vaguely worded letter to Congress, Comey insinuated that the politically charged wedge issue of Hilary Clinton’s emails might still come under investigation.

Candidate Trump took up the cudgel.

Democracy Betrayed: The Rise of the Surveillance Security State

He broke the news to a raucous crowd in New Hampshire: “Hillary Clinton’s corruption,” Trump said, “is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office…this is bigger than Watergate.” The hall erupted with an ugly chorus of “Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!” And that message was instantly transmitted to tens of millions of voters by MSNBC and FOX news. It’s a message we should not soon forget, and Comey still has to answer for it.

The FBI director acted against the advice of his superiors in the Justice Department. What must he have been thinking? Perhaps he thought he was above the law, or perhaps only that he could meddle in electoral politics with impunity.

Whatever his intensions, it is entirely possible that Comey’s action changed enough votes to sway the election. It could have been as few as 60,000 in the swing states. Hilary Clinton thinks so. And so do plenty of others, including House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. She said Comey’s intervention was “like a Molotov cocktail.” But the public outcry was muted at best, and the media seems to be complicit by omission. Comey dropped out of sight as the news cycle careened from Trump’s nuclear tweets to Russia’s hacking of the DNC, subsequent sanctions, and Putin’s response.

The FBI is, of course, notorious for its political machinations, dating from the 1919 Palmer Raids when 10,000 “slackers” were arrested, to McCarthyism in the 1950s, and the secret Cointelpro Programs of the 1960s—that sought to stifle peaceful protest and harass civil rights and anti-Vietnam War leaders. Hoover packed Congressional Committees with FBI agents, and kept allegedly incriminating files on members of Congress in his inner offer. During his half-century as director, it seemed, the FBI could do no wrong.

After Hoover’s death in 1972, Congress stiffened it spine, legislating a 10-year term limit for the FBI director and empowering the Church Committee to investigate the FBI and publish its most secret documents. Top secret papers described illegal activities like “black bag” break-in jobs, targeting protest groups for infiltration and disruption, and widespread warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens.

In the closing decades of the 20th century it seemed as though the FBI had been brought to heal by superior power emanating from the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.

That was before, however, the 9/11 when the FBI was predominately a law enforcement agency. The Bureau has since built up it counterterror mission. It has dramatically increased its surveillance of Americans and the Internet, its infiltration of groups, and its futile attempts to locate “lone wolf” terrorists before they can commit their crimes. FBI manpower and budgets have increased precipitously.

But make no mistake: There are good reasons to keep a wary eye on the intelligence agency over which Comey presides. The FBI now operates some 15,000 “confidential informants.” They are permitted to engage in “otherwise illegal activity” (i.e., break the law), indeed 5,939 times in 2012, the last year for which statistics are available. In addition to his electioneering, Comey is a leading advocate of Internet-based government surveillance. He would mandate “back doors” or “special access” into iPhones and all kinds of applications—enabling the FBI to spy on criminals as well as unwitting Americans. Never mind that Internet experts at MIT and in Silicon Valley have demonstrated unequivocally that “back doors” weaken encryption, introducing vulnerabilities that criminals and state-based hackers—say the Russians or the Chinese, for example—can exploit.

All this pales, however, in comparison to Comey’s electoral malfeasance. The FBI is first and foremost a police organization with broad internal security and intelligence powers. As such it must continuously be monitored and brought to account, especially when it takes liberties with our democratic ideals and institutions.

So it’s clear, Director Comey has to go. The media needs to focus again the electoral misconduct of the FBI director so it never happens again. And so does President Obama. This should be his last act as president. He is the only one in a position to send an unmistakable message to law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and all other appointed officials to keep their hand off the elections—because it’s hallowed ground.

William W. Keller worked as a security analyst for the U.S. Congress for ten years, as executive director of the Center for International Studies at MIT, and as professor and director of security centers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Georgia. He is the author and editor of seven books and has written extensively about the FBI, defense technology, the intelligence community, and the arms trade. His latest book is Democracy Betrayed: The Rise of the Surveillance Security State, from Counterpoint Press.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “Labor Unions Step Up Presidential Election Spending,” labor unions contributed to Hillary Clinton at a scale that is without precedent. The article pointed to $108.2 million contributed in this presidential election cycle. These contributions raise questions and are a political symptom of a larger problem for organized labor. One obvious question is, did Clinton’s campaign rhetoric on labor match her record? The largest labor unions, such as the American Federation of Teachers, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union all have endorsed Clinton. But her record is not exactly pro-labor. As First Lady of Arkansas and as Secretary of State, her actions were actually anti-labor.

Given Clinton’s loss, and her inability to attract as many votes from workers as had Barack Obama, does organized labor need to rethink?

Andrew Kolin, The Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States

In Arkansas, from 1986-92, as a board member for the retail giant WalMart, she was silent on labor issues and bestowed praise on Sam Walton. She continued her association with Walmart in the 2016 election. In fact, Alice Walton, Sam’s daughter, contributed $350,000 to Clinton’s campaign. Her record on trade also is clear: Secretary Clinton never saw a free trade agreement she did not like. She supported NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and only back-pedaled after Bernie Sanders put her on the defensive in the primary.

The question is, why does labor continue to support Democratic Party candidates who, once in office, abandon or ignore labor? Because labor’s collaboration with the Democratic Party is not a free choice. To explain labor’s ties to the Democratic Party, it is essential to examine the history of labor repression in the United States, the subject matter of my new book, “The Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States.” Labor’s association with the Democratic Party is the result of institutional exclusion dating back to the Post-Revolution Era. Institutional exclusion from policy-making in the state and economy is produced and reproduced as political and economic elites have established a monopoly over the resources of power. This institutional exclusion is recreated through the use of covert and overt repression. Covert repression is built into the fabric of both the state and the workplace in order to exclude labor from decision-making. Overt repression is publicly expressed through violence and the legal system.

To make a long historical story short, labor only began to achieve a greater role in institutional decision-making during the Depression in the context of the New Deal. At that point in time, organized labor’s collaboration with Roosevelt’s Democratic Party began. In this collaboration labor was, at best, a junior partner in decision-making. The return of the Communist Party and its association with the CIO, fostered a greater role for organized labor in the workplace.

Fast forward: labor anti-Communism, the Cold War and the economy’s downward shift starting in the 1970s limited any gains that labor had made in the previous decades. As the New Deal coalition, which labor was part of, collapsed, and as finance capital assumed a more dominant role, the managerial state shrank as new Democrats, from Carter to Clinton, turned their backs on organized labor. In the workplace, starting in the 1980s, a leaner and meaner version of capital expanded the use of contingent and temporary labor, engaging in strike-breaking, further undermining unions.

The question is: where does this leave labor after this presidential election and in the 21st century? The challenge is for labor to fight to initiate reforms that truly uplift the working class. To do this, organized labor will have to disengage from its current collaboration with the Democratic Party and, functioning as an independent social movement, work toward creating genuine political and economic democracy.

Andrew Kolin is Professor of Political Science at Hilbert College and author of The Political Economy of Labor Repression in the United States