Clinton Must Have Been A Really Weak Candidate To Be Beaten By Russian Facebook Ads

With claims that Russia hacked the election looking questionable, there has been increased concentration on the Russian propaganda argument this week, primarily based upon claims that Russia spent $100,000 on Facebook ads. Clinton must have been a really weak candidate if she lost the election due to Facebook ads bought by Russia.

Political Wire put this in perspective, showing how silly an argument this is:

The problem is that $100,000 — which bought about 3,000 ads — is inconsequential for Facebook. Just last quarter Facebook earned $9.3 billion. At that rate the company could earn $100,000 in just over a minute.

It’s not much for a presidential campaign either. According to Open Secrets, the presidential candidates spent $2.3 billion last year. Many donors to Super PACs gave millions by themselves. The $100,000 spent on Facebook disinformation from Russia is a rounding error.

The idea that $100,000 could swing a presidential election is silly.

We know for a fact that Clinton spent far more on propaganda promoting her, including a strong presence on social media. Why do some think that only the Russian propaganda influenced the election?

There are also reports claiming that Russia was secretly behind right wing demonstrations in Texas and Idaho, organized by fake Facebook groups before the election. Do people seriously think that Clinton would have won either Texas or Idaho if not for such Russian meddling?

In related debunking of excuses for Clinton losing to Donald Trump, Matt Bai dismissed the misogyny excuse:

Gender, while always an added challenge, never defined Clinton’s candidacy. And on the list of challenges that made Clinton a less than ideal candidate — her age, her perceived entitlement, her family history of scandal, her limited skill as a persuader — the fact that she was a woman probably hovered somewhere near the bottom.

In fact, you could make a reasonable case that, just as race actually helped Obama by giving white voters a chance to feel they were turning the page on an ugly historical chapter, gender probably benefited Clinton to some degree, too.

A lot of women who weren’t so excited by her personally were nonetheless inspired to support her candidacy anyway, because of the change she symbolized. That passion, more than anything else, probably enabled her to hold off Bernie Sanders’s ideological insurgency in the primaries.

Actually I would say it was a combination of Democratic Party rules going back to McGovern to promote more conservative candidates like Clinton, along with unprecedented interference by the DNC in 2016, which enabled her to hold off Bernie Sanders. There were also many reasons beyond those he listed which contributed to her loss.

He is right, though, in questioning whether her gender helped her. Most of those who would never vote for a woman would also never vote for a Democrat. While it is questionable how many votes she actually lost due to misogyny, her gender did influence many Democratic voters. A male running with her record and conservative views would have been a third tier candidate with no chance of winning, but far too many people ignored the facts in order to vote for a woman candidate. Unfortunately it was the wrong woman.

(Claims of Russian interference and misogyny are two excuses often used by Hillary Clinton, including in her fictional account of the 2016 election, What Happened. I am reading What Happened so you will not have to. I have started posting excerpts on my Facebook page, and will post them on the blog in the near future.)

4 Comments

  1. 1
    Joseph Auclair says:

    She was beaten by a number of factors not including the popular vote.

    How weak is that?

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Very weak to lose to Donald Trump.

    Winning the popular vote was meaningless. Candidates campaign based upon the electoral college if they want to win. Trump based his strategy on this, even if Clinton foolishly tried to run up the popular vote. If the election was based upon the popular vote, Trump would have run his campaign differently. He would have campaigned in states which he could not win, but where there were lots of votes to pick up, such as California and New York. He might have worked to run up his vote more in red states. He very well still could have won if the election was based on the popular vote.

  3. 3
    Nour Mye says:

    This Russian influence has gone too far why isn't anyone talking about how the Saudi Arabian government filtered millions into the Clinton Foundation and influenced past presidents. How about China and India. We are a country of immigrants and home countries have a great influence on how their expats vote. Wake up CNN, lets hear some real news…

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    Apparently only money spent by Russia has an influence on elections, regardless of comparative amounts.

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