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It's important to realize that McConnell is first and foremost protecting the GOP-connected voting machine firms that have monkeyed with our elections to an incredible degree from 2000 onward. If the Russians disappeared tomorrow, our elections would be as exactly as vulnerable
to subversion as they are now. Because the main subverters - good old red-blooded American companies run by and for some of the most extreme rightwingers we have -- would still be here. I and many others have been writing about this for almost 20 years. The Democrats
should have made voting security one of their top priorities after the theft of the 2000 election. They didn't. They should have made abolishing the undemocratic Electoral College a top priority at the same time. They didn't. We've now had 20 years of even deeper entrenchment
of partisan-linked voting machine companies in our electoral system, not to mention 20 years of ever more brazen voter suppression efforts by GOP state legislatures, with only th very mildest pushbacks from Democratic leaders.
Does McConnell take Russian money? If it's being offered, no doubt he is. The vast extent of foreign money permeating both parties and the US Congress as a whole is one of the hallmarks of US history. Is this pernicious and dangerous? Yes it is. Should it be stopped? Sure.
But the idea that the security of our electoral process is being systematically subverted solely due to Russian interference is a dangerously naive reading of our crisis. McConnell & co don't care if you think Russian money is behind electoral subversion. They don't even care
if you somehow force some kind of action against Russian interference. They know (and our history proves) that the real subversion, and the real money for it, comes from within the US itself. And they'd probably be delighted with some cosmetic anti-Russian measure that would
make people think the problem was over and we can all stop worrying about it now. But the subversion would still be there: it is in fact baked into our electoral process now, as long as partisan state officials oversee elections and private corporations control and count (or not)
all the votes. Until we have a fundamental transformation of voting in America, with paper ballots, neutral oversight and a raft of other reforms, we will continue to have unsafe elections, over and over. We shouldn't flatter ourselves with the comforting notion that our main
problem is the Russians (or the Saudis or the Israelis or the Chinese or perfidious Albion, etc.). WE are the problem. The voting system that we have concocted and countenanced for years is the problem. What the GOP is chiefly concerned with is protecting this system, which is
the only way they can remain in power nationally (and in many states), given the unpopularity of their extremist agenda and the blight it inflicts on so many lives and communities. This has been thoroughly attested for years. It has degraded our democracy -- and decimated the
Democrats -- for years. Why the Democrats have not fought against this system, not made its basic reform one of its overriding priorities, remains one of the mysteries of our time. But they too are delighted to blame the Russians for it all; it absolves THEM of the responsibility
to do something about it now, and obscures their egregious failure to do anything about it before.
