[malvosenior]

Yet it was Clinton who spent far more than anyone on marketing and Russia spent pretty much nothing. Only here we are talking about the impact "Russia" had and ignoring that the tens of millions Clinton spent didn't accomplish her goal.

[willis936]

And this somehow isn’t evidence of the effectiveness of undisclosed campaigns based around lies presented as truth? All Clinton did wrong was not involve foreign governments to operate guerrilla smear campaigns.

Oh wait. That isn’t wrong. What are you arguing in favor of again?

[malvosenior]

Clinton not winning the election isn’t proof of Russian interference.

[willis936]

It isn’t not proof either. It seems rather strange to posit that dollars spent is the only factor dictating the effectiveness of marketing.

[repolfx]

Your position is unfalsifiable. If there had been Russian advertising at scale, it's proof of foreign interference. If there's basically no spend at all, that's still proof of foreign interference because dollar spend doesn't matter.

Look, the whole Russia angle is a hoax. When put under enormous external and internal political pressure (remember Twitter/FB are filled with Trump haters), all they could come up with was a tiny number of ads labelled "Russian" that appeared to support nobody in particular. Hardly anyone saw them, so they can't have had much impact. And was that some plot directed by Putin or just ads by people who happened to be Russian? It's never made clear.

Back when Obama was in power and there was Citizen's United, he said words to the effect of "we must consider changing the constitution to limit political spending" and the Clinton wing of politics was spitting bullets about how in future Republicans would just buy elections outright.

Then Trump came along and beat Clinton, despite being outspent 2:1. Clinton's campaign steamrollered Trump's financially yet still lost. The whole theory of elections that had been pushed until that point, that marketing spend determines victory, it was just completely invalidated overnight. Democrats who couldn't psychologically explain voter disagreement via policy arguments could no longer explain rejection as a function of ad spend either, so had to come up something new - hence, this spectre of "foreign interference", as if Putin has some kind of mind control rays.