The Biggest Story of the Decade

When the “Hamilton” cast made its respectful plea to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, it was huge news.  (Whatever you think of their having done so, hats off to Pence for the gracious way he brushed it off and made a point of praising the show.)

When the FBI notified Congress it planned to sift through yet more emails — having found nothing in the first 45,000 — it was a “bombshell.”

But when Russia was revealed to have massively meddled in our election through acts of espionage and disinformation, it was ho-hum.

Yet Senate Intelligence Committee member Angus King calls it “the biggest story of the decade.”

. . . I happened to be in Eastern Europe last spring with a group from the Intelligence Committee in Ukraine and Poland.  The officials there took us aside, and warned us of this. They said this is what Russia does. They mess around with your elections. They put in fake information. They hack into your systems, and they’re trying to sow discord and influence elections.

And we talked about it. We understood it. We didn’t think it was going to happen here. It has happened here.

Per the Portland Press Herald . . .

Angus King: Russian involvement in U.S. election ‘an arrow aimed at the heart of democracy’

. . . On Wednesday, King was among seven senators – all of whom receive top-secret briefings as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee – who urged President Obama to authorize the public release of additional details on the alleged Russian involvement in the recent elections. The request comes amid growing evidence compiled by independent researchers and cybersecurity experts about the extent of Russia’s alleged use of hackers, social media and fake news stories in a bid to influence the race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. . . .

The tragedy, of course, is that these revelations will have come too late to do much good.

Russia won.

They helped install their preferred candidate to lead our country.

Even though, through the quirks of our system, he got 2.5 million fewer votes.

(And even though, according to one pollster, 25% of his votes came from people who — knowing for certain he had no path to 270 electoral votes, because that’s what the media assured them — voted for him to make a statement, but would not have if they had thought he might actually win.  If that’s true, and had they voted for Hillary instead, the vote would have been something like 47 million for Trump, 80 million for Clinton.  Even more if some Jill Stein and Gary Johnson voters would have voted Clinton if they’d thought Trump could win.)