Reports that Putin’s Russia has been attempting to load the
electoral dice in favor of Bernie Sanders, likely startled adherents of monolinear manicheanism, but
that sort of thing is a time-tested gambit. There is a notable parallel from the Presidential campaign
of 1972. A historian writes:
What all the 1972 dirty tricks that
had become known as “Watergate” were intended to accomplish: sabotaging all the other Democratic
candidates in order to leave Geroge
McGovern, the field’s weakest link, as the last man standing.
-- Rick Perlstein, The Invisible
Bridge (2014), p. 170.
Additionally, Nixonian operatives went about “drumming up
fake enthusiasm for the black female candidate Shirley Chisholm" (id., p. 171)
The strategy worked. McGovern received the nomination, then a shellacking
in the general election, losing in 49 states.
~
~
Hunter Thompson, describing the Democratic convention in his
entertaining Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, via interviews with the pols and pros
of the delegate floor, describes considerably more byzantine maneuvers --
feints, pawn sacrifices, “shaving”, sitting-out a round, taking a dive,
lowballing your vote-totals till the propitious time -- telos and kairos being
the watchwords.
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