We’ve heard a lot of weird claims about Russia’s scope of influence over the 2016 election in the last three years, but Sen. Cory Booker may have taken the cake on Wednesday during the Democratic primary debate in Detroit. Without evidence, Booker said that if the Kremlin hadn’t suppressed the black vote in Michigan, Hillary Clinton would have won the election and become the President of the United States. Who knew the malevolent forces of Moscow were so powerful?
“Look, this is one of those times when we are not staring at the truth and calling it out,” Booker said. “And this is a case for the Democratic Party: The truth will set us free. We lost the state of Michigan because everybody from Republicans to Russians were targeting the suppression of African American voters.”
The crowd went wild with rapturous applause, the way crowds will sometimes do when a candidate spouts nonsense with the right mixture of confidence and charisma.
“We need to say that. If the African American vote had been like it was four years earlier, we would have won the state of Michigan,” Booker continued. “We need to have a campaign that is ready for what is coming: An all-out assault, especially on the most valuable voter group in our — in fact, the highest-performing voter group in our coalition, which is black women. And, so, I will be a person that tries to fight against voter suppression that can activate and engage the kind of voters and coalitions that are going to win states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
So, a few things. One, if black women are so easily influenced by a few Russian Facebook ads, how does Booker plan to “fight” that? Two, since when are propaganda campaigns defined as “suppression” of the vote? Isn’t that what all advertising is? Three, what evidence is there that Russian memes actually caused even a single black voter to stay home in 2016?
But here’s the big one: Why does Booker think that Russian and Republican “suppression of African American voters” explains why Hillary Clinton fared so much worse with Michigan’s black vote than Barack Obama? Is it not at least within the realm of possibility that there was something…else…about Obama that might have driven the black vote to record totals? Do we really need to resort to conspiracy theories about Vladimir Putin to explain that disparity?
But then, in the woke Democratic Party of 2019, we’re sure it would be racist to even think such a thing, much less say it out loud.
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