Comment by joenot443 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joenot443 | Hacker News Reader

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For months after the election, both Clinton and Trump spoke publicly and claimed that they were the true winner and that the election had been stolen. Clinton was more pragmatic and reasonable with her claims, despite them still being a lie, but from the perspective of someone who _doesn't vote for either_, they both seemed to be playing the same tune. We're apparently supposed to accept that the Democrats adopted a new meaning of 'hack' immediately after 2016, but given the title of the site we're on now, I'm hoping we can be intellectually honest enough to say that it's a load to pretend that by 'hack' they actually meant 'used our own social media companies to promote the other team.'

Maybe watching MSNBC and reading Politifact is what I needed, but from my POV up in Canada, all I saw were two sore political losers who couldn't accept that they'd lost the vote, and a party who rallied around them to reassure their leader it was the other team (or Russia?) who cheated, and that the fault was anyone but their own. I'm aware there's some nuance to it, but try to really think about the case you're trying to make here, and the very obviously biased position you're making it from. I don't doubt you're a proud card carrying Democrat, and I'm sure on /r/politics most everyone would agree with you, but for the rest of the world who were forced to watch it out in real time, '16/'20 was truly like watching the same poorly-written American movie twice.

It is interesting that you say that the perspective of the 16/20 elections being a retelling of the same story is the case for the rest of the world.

My perspective was that, sure there were complaints from the democrats in 2016, but they mainly fell around “we won the popular vote” and “Russia interfered via targeted propaganda.” Contrast that with the structured attempt by Trump’s team to change results via finding votes, push forward false electors for the electoral college process, vilify elections workers, intimidate congress, etc.

This makes equating the two appear to be at best an incorrect account of the events. To say it was the same would be to equate a sore loser to one who refuses to be a loser.

Two things can draw similarities without being the same thing. If your prior is that we can’t make comparison between two things without them being equal, I’m not sure if that’s something I can help with. Obviously Trump was more outrageous with his claims because he’s an outrageous person, I’m surprised that even needs to be said.

In Canada though, when two people both claim to have won something that they fairly lost, instead blaming the rules, the electorate, or the competition, we just call them both sore losers. I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that.

I’ve noticed when dealing with Americans they have a hard time accepting criticism of their party without first hearing some criticism of the opposing team, so I’d like to make it crystal clear I’m defending Trump or his team here. I’d just like, for once, for the Democrat party to admit some of their hypocrisy.

The 2016 election _wasnt_ hacked, neither was the 2020, and no amount of “well actually they meant something else” will change that.

>The 2016 election _wasnt_ hacked...

The FBI, US intelligence agencies, and the United States Senate all beg to differ with your armchair assessment. They all concluded after extensive investigation that the election _was_ hacked. Whether any of the Russian social engineering and hacking had a significant effect is unknown.

If we call any US election which was unsuccessfully interfered with by a foreign country "hacked", I think every election for the foreseeable future will be "hacked", no?

Won't Russia continue "hacking" all of your elections, given it was apparently so effective in 2016? I feel as if I'm taking crazy pills when I deal with American die-hard Democrats and their insistence to change the definition of words to make their party look better. In Canada when we say a system was hacked we mean someone had unauthorized access to it, not that they hired teenagers to make memes.

If this happened at work, your boss asking "Have we been hacked?", would you answer "Yes, it was the equivalent of our 9/11" when what had really happened was just a lot of social media spam? If that's your definition of "hacking", I'm not going to change your mind, but just know it doesn't really match the rest of the world.

>If we call any US election which was unsuccessfully interfered with by a foreign country "hacked", I think every election for the foreseeable future will be "hacked", no?

No doubt Russia, and probably other nations, will continue to try and interfere in US elections, yes. To use the common term, they will continue to "hack" our elections. And whether they were unsuccessful in 2016 is unknown, it's premature to say they failed.

>In Canada when we say a system was hacked we mean someone had unauthorized access to it, not that they hired teenagers to make memes.

You're confusing a technical industry term with a colloquialism. And I'll bet if you look around, you'll find Canadians who have used the term "hacked" in an imprecise, non-technical way.

>...they hired teenagers to make memes

>...what had really happened was just a lot of social media spam?

This is an extremely naive way to describe a concerted, state-sponsored effort by an adversary to influence an election in its favor. It absolutely was equivalent to 9/11 in the sense that it was an attack with major national security implications that we were unprepared for. I'm not going to change your mind, but know that it doesn't really match the opinion of the US military and intelligence communities, who, as I've noted, beg to differ.

You claim the 2016 election was not hacked. This is demonstrably false:

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3165452/hacking-the-2016-e...

Specific examples:

Twelve Russians charged with US 2016 election hack https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44825345

If you are disputing these facts, there is no chance of honest debate.

You should know that the term, “Democrat party” is usually meant as insult and is used by Republicans:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

I’m sure it was just a typo, but you mentioned being from Canada so I wanted to let you know.

>The 11-count indictment names the Russians defendants, alleging they began cyber-attacks in March 2016 on the email accounts of staff for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Did you even read your article? If you're not going to read the things you link "there is no chance of honest debate".

If your definition of 'hacking an election' means 'unsuccessfully infiltrating the email accounts of a low level staffer' then sure, this election, along with every other one in your country's future, will be 'hacked'. This just isn't a normal or colloquial definition, and feels more like D (sorry about the slur, didn't realize it was so offensive!) goalpost shifting than anything. You see this kind of talk on reddit all the time, i.e. "if you use a definition nobody else does, it's clear that I'm right."

I'm not debating that 12 people were charged with hacking email accounts. You may be unaware, but people are charged with that almost every day. It doesn't mean an election was stolen.

I'm debating, as I have been the whole time, whether Russia hacked and influenced the results of the election itself, aka a "cyber 9-11" as Clinton was so happy to call it many times. If you think it did, let's continue, otherwise, I worry it's getting too sensitive and I'm touching the "Democratic" nerve.

>For months after the election, both Clinton and Trump spoke publicly and claimed that they were the true winner and that the election had been stolen.

This is not true. Hilary Clinton conceded on Election Night, and didn't publicly claim the 2016 election was stolen until the interview in the video, in 2019. Again, I think you're confusing statements about Russian interference (which were substantiated) with claims the election was stolen (which were not). You may also be thinking of references to her winning the popular vote (which was true) rather than winning the election, which in the US can be two different things.

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