Jonathan Chait frets about "the left" and Russiagate

You have to feel sorry for Jonathan Chait. The poor guy is stuck in some kind of time warp in which it's always August 1968. And the disgusting hippies are about to mess up Hubert Humphreys' Presidential prospects by rudely bashing their heads against the clubs being held politely by Mayor Daley's Gestapo police force.

Chait wants you to know the hippies love Russia. Beause they're Commies, or Putinists, or something. "Trump is the enemy of the left’s enemy," he writes in Why Are So Many Leftists Skeptical of the Russia Investigation? New York 07/29/2018.

Pssst... don't tell him that there was a big war in 1939-45 where the United States and Russia were formal allies, i.e., they actually were friends. It might give the poor guy an aneurysm.

Chait links to an April article of his own, Corruption, Not Russia, Is Trump’s Greatest Political Liability New York 04/01/2018, which he opens with this:

“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” declared Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.” To the extent that Trump’s candidacy offered any positive appeal, as opposed to simple loathing for his opponent, this was it. He was a brilliant businessman, or at least starred in a television show as one, and he would set aside his lifelong pursuit of wealth to selflessly serve the greater good. This was the promise that pried just enough Obama voters away from Hillary Clinton in just enough upper-Midwest states to clinch the Electoral College.

So, Chait in April thought Trump won and Hillary lost in 2016 because he sold himselff successfully in the Midwest as a successful businessman. He added, "The Russia scandal is substantively important, but it is also convoluted and abstract and removed from any immediate impact on voters’ lived experience."

Cenk Uygar on The Young Turks' second hour on July 30 talks about two Russiagate skeptics who are part of his own TYT Network, Jimmie Dore and Kyle Kulinski, saying, "They are super upset that the Democratic Party is using this as an excuse for the loss [in 2016]. and trying to misdirect people in that way. I agree with them on that. I think the Democratic Party is over-focusing on it as a reason for Hillary Clinton's loss." He notes that he has some disagreements with Jimmie and Kyle "about to what degree Trump colluded with Russia and on what issues. But it's fair disagreement."

That is the kind of thing that happens when serious people take a serious issue seriously. We're also talking about a massive international espionage and influence opertion. If Chait would read a couple of John Le Carre novels, he might get the idea that such cases are messy and confusing and clouded by disinformation intentional and otherwise, and that serious journalists, analysts, and activists following the unfolding news will come to different conclusions and will be required from time to time to revise them as more facts become available.

And at least back in April, it looks like Chait thought that it was not the Russians who decided the election for Trump. And it's true that Hillary's campaign immediately after her 2016 loss started pushing the Russia-is-to-blame notion. In reality, the election result was overdetermined and we can't honestly say based on the information in the public record now that Russian influence was decisive.

In fact, he sounded then a lot like a Russiagate skeptic himself!

t should take very little work — and be a very big priority — for Democratic candidates to stitch all the administration’s misdeeds together into a tale of unchecked greed. For all the mystery still surrounding the Russia investigation, for instance, it is already clear that the narrative revolves around a lust (and desperation) for money. Having burned enough American banks throughout his career that he could not obtain capital through conventional, legitimate channels, Trump turned to Russian sources, who typically have an ulterior political motive. Just what these various sources got in return for their investment in Trump is a matter for Robert Mueller’s investigators to determine. But Trump’s interest in them is perfectly obvious.

But in his July 29 piece, he goes for ritual hippie-punching on Russiagate.

"The purest form of this sentiment on the far left is a vein of attacks that are almost indistinguishable from Republican rhetoric about the investigation," he writes. This is one of the laziest of stock political assumptions, that the far left is just like the far right. But for a mainstream reporter, it's perfectly respectable to express lazy assumptions - as long as the lazy assumption is part of the conventional wisdom.

This is cute: "Some of the skeptics complain that Democrats are emphasizing Russia too heavily, but this complaint confuses liberal journalists and activists with Democratic politicians, who are mostly concentrating their rhetoric on health care and other economic issues." Wait. Chait's April 1 argument sounds a lot like what he scolds the leftie skeptics for doing in the July 29 one.

Chait singles out three Russiagate "skeptics" who particularly bug him: Glenn Greenwald, Stephen Cohen, and Aaron Maté. And he lists some lesser offenders: Katherine Krueger, Seth Ackerman, Corey Robin, and Osita Nwanevu. I actually talked about recent comments by Ackerman and Robin a few days ago. I've commented on Cohen's position back in February (Russia-Russia-Russia (again) 02/02/2018), and posted a video featuring Maté (Russiagate and the left 02/19/2018). I posted a tweet by Greenwald in More warnings of the need for realism on the Trump-Russia issue 03/31/2018, which reflects his antiwar concerns in the Russiagate issue.

I haven't seen any reason to think that any of those commentators/reporters/scholars are engaged in bad faith arguments over Russiagate. And in all those cases, I have definite points of agreements with their cautionary warnings. I'm not so familiar with Krueger's or Nwanevu's work on the topic, so I'll leave them for another time.

This is Cenk Uygur's discussion with Kyle Kulinski on Russiagate, which is a far better airing of the how-seriously-should-we-take-Russiagate matter than anything we're likely to see from Jonathan Chait, RUSSIA DEBATE: Kyle Kulinski vs Cenk Uygur 02/07/2018: