> I find it endlessly fascinating that Putin et al understood our election system better than us. I think you’ve been brainwashed on this one. Local campaigns

> I find it endlessly fascinating that Putin et al understood our election system better than us. I think you’ve been brainwashed on this one. Local campaigns spend orders of magnitude more money and are run by extremely capable social media strategists. The IRA struggled with proper English grammar and mis-targeted their ads to staunch Republicans. It was by all actual evidence an extremely shoddy effort run on a shoestring budget that made no difference at all. Which when you look at the general competency level of Russia these days, I guess it’s par for the course. For me the big takeaway isn’t arguing about political bygones. It’s that by and large, these boogeymen are entirely incompetent at what they purport to do, and don’t deserve a fraction of the hand-wringing that they seem to elicit. They are hyped up boogeymen for political purposes. The reality is that they are poorly trained, underfunded, and entirely corrupt, and so the results of their efforts are predictably lame.