If the CIA just decides who wins an election based on the interests of the ruling class, why didn't Hilary win 2016?

If the CIA really did just push a button at Langley and decide the next president, why not Hilary?

That's not how it works

The CIA doesn't need a president that they can manipulate.

They aren't elected, don't need a budget (Google Air America and CIA, they sell drugs to find off the book operations), and have killed a president before.

Plus they have Senators willing to look the other way when they break the law, like destroying taped evidence of torture.

Not to mention their links to Epstein and the ability to blackmail powerful people.

Who says that the CIA decides who wins elections?

The CIA is less like a puppet master pulling the strings and more like a fixer behind the scenes that does a bunch of shady things, often incompetently, but has enough resources and tries enough times that it often works in their favor.

They have the most success against opponents with no strategy aor power gainst them. Like poor foreign governments under the misapprehension that the US might be friendly to them. Or spying on US citizens. Or just straight-up running terrorism campaigns like Gladio.

They can't like, make Hillary likeable.

There is not some eyes wide shut meeting where at the end they call the CIA, also different ghouls like different candidates there no hive mind. it's that there are a handful of things they all agree on and politics is them fighting bout what they disagree on. a who is saying what you're describing? and yeah I really don't think the CIA is as competent nowadays as people seem to think, also also also, the CIA and FBI is their own ecosystems its own wants. like took at the Comey guy, he was clearly rooting for trump before trump betrayed him. the pentagon, fbi, and CIA all hate each other too.

1. Their priority in 2016 was taking down Sanders. Part of the runaway effect of taking down Sanders was Trump got platformed as the alternate "anti-establishment" candidate.

2. They underestimated how much of a mess Trump would make. I think they just assumed Trump would just sit on his ass all day browsing Twitter, playing golf like Bush Sr, and taking afternoon naps like Reagan when Trump had the energy of an incompetent micromanaging boss.

If you look at US presidents post-FDR, pretty much all the presidents who toe the national security state line serve two terms while the ones who are outsiders either serve just one term or get ignobly removed from office.

Truman: Company man who did as he was told. More or less let the Dulles bros completely dictate foreign policy and for that, he was rewarded 2 terms. I think there was also some weird political maneuvering where FDR's vice president Wallace got replaced with Truman, further supporting the assessment of him being a company man.

Eisenhower: Cold War warrior who more or less 100% agreed with the Dulles bros on foreign policy. Not a company man on par with Truman, but being a WWII hero and not rocking the boat with the national security states means he also was able to serve 2 terms. I think it would've been a completely different story if he gave that military-industrial complex at the beginning of his first term than at his farewell speech right when's able to leave the White House.

Kennedy: He fired Allen Dulles and we all know what happened next. Didn't even finish his 1 term.

Johnson: Most sources paint him as an incredibly corrupt politician who committed voter fraud at key moments in his political career. And it's incredibly sus how he benefited so much from JFK's head exploding. Almost like he had a hunch feeling JFK's head would do that. LBJ would wind up serving 1.25 terms, and he probably would've served another term if it wasn't for massive demonstrations and the Tet Offensive tanking US's morale in Vietnam.

Nixon: Tricky Dick was an outsider of the political establishment, and so he was treated like an outsider. He served 2 terms, but his second term ended abruptly with Watergate, so he didn't make it halfway through his second term. Some JFK-pilled people say that Watergate was itself a coup fashioned by the national security state to off Nixon because he was too rebellious.

Ford: A lame duck president who served a term without ever being elected, basically a Kamala Harris if Biden dropped dead in 2021. Finished Nixon's second term.

Carter: Another self-styled maverick who came from outside from the political establishment. Served one term.

Reagan: A company man who, after a floundering career as some mediocre actor, began being a shameless sycophantic spokeman for corporate America before moving on to being a shameless sycophantic politician acting on behalf of corporate America. Rewarded with 2 terms.

Bush Sr: The CIA director who doesn't remember where he was when JFK got owned becomes president. Honestly, the fact that he only served 1 term is very surprising, but the 1992 election is pretty weird in general.

Clinton: While he didn't come from a political dynasty, he quickly integrated himself within it and was rewarded with 2 terms. I suppose you could argue that the national security state sees value in an ostentatiously left-leaning president further enacting neoliberal policies. Clintonites have been great damage to American progressivism, to say nothing of socialism in general.

Bush Jr: Poppy's incompetent failson served 2 terms in what would be the more mask-off moments of the national security state picking who they want to be president. The 2000 election was a sham election. Like Dubya's brother Jeb! basically handed the electoral vote and election to his brother and the Supreme Court went, "Stop the count, this country has to move on" right when a bunch of ballots that were like 80% Gore was found. And I know Parenti has eluded to the 2004 election also being subject to voter fraud in Dubya's favor.

Obama: Obama's mom was almost certainly a CIA asset, and his fathers, both his biological and step-, have extremely sus backgrounds as well. He played his part in US domestic COIN extremely well, and we still are living within his COIN shadow. Rewarded with 2 terms.

Trump: A maverick who disagreed with the blob mostly for petty self-aggrandizing reasons. Served 1 term and hit with multiple impeachments.

Biden: He seems to just be another company man who does as he's told. His senility is a liability, but it's not like Trump isn't also a genocidal senile geezer, so it's not as much of a liability as it would be.

The only real counter to my hypothesis is Bush Sr.'s single term presidency. For almost every other presidency, people who toe the national security state line serve 2 full terms while people who don't don't get to serve 2 full terms. LBJ not serving 2 full terms is probably the only real instance when American popular opinion actually forced their hand, and I don't see people rioting in the streets for a Trump presidency. If anything, there will probably be celebrations among certain crowds that Trump ate shit.

Because the CIA are incompetent doofus. Look at their history of fuckups, they are not as competent and powerful as popular fiction made it to be. But they were surely trying to tilt the field against Trump with Russiagate and other nonsensical news pieces about how Trump would end Democracy and NATO via their outlet NYT, WaPo and such with attributions like "sources close to intelligence agency says..." It's just all their usual tactics failed because there was legitimate distrust in MSM news, they haven't figured out how to reign in social media yet, and Hillarylol

The "deep state" doesn't literally just decide the next president. I think the point is that there is an entire apparatus of intelligence and media all designed to manufacture consent for bourgeois interests. However this is never as sure fire a thing as the way we talk about it. But it is the most likely outcome.

Another thing you could say is that the deep state did decide the president in 2016, just not in the way they would've liked. The Clinton campaign "pied piper" strategy of elevating Trump.

The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party.

--memo from Clinton campaign to DNC

In fact they wanted Clinton to run against Trump, since they were scared mostly of Jeb Bush and Rubio. They were also more focused on defeating Bernie who also posed a huge threat to the Clinton campaign.

So contrary to the popular narrative of Trump being the unexpected force that just could not be stopped, he was deliberately put in place as Hillary's opponent by elevating him in the media and focusing most of their energy on Bernie and other GOP candidates who they considered bigger threats in a general election with Hillary. Then Trump got the nomination and everything fell apart since they had spent less time on figuring out Hillary's strategy against Trump, they fundamentally did not understand Trump's rise, Trump was also part of the ruling class and not some schmuck outsider, and Trump could rest on a lot of benefits that the Hillary campaign had given him in elevating him as a serious candidate in the media and everything.

Instead of Trump representing an exceptional case, we can see the deep state consent manufacturing apparatus at work in his rise and election also. But these things aren't the sort of well-oiled machines we often speak of them as, and mistakes can be and are made, and ultimately the whole Trump thing very badly backfired on them.

my take, at least

Edit: “tipping the scales” or “putting a thumb on the scales,” as I saw it put in another comment, is a good way to put it. This is the purpose of the consent manufacturing apparatus, but they can’t literally pick the new president.

Trump and any of his supporters weren't seen as being against the interests of the ruling class. You wouldn't see such an intervention unless the opponent was believed to seriously endanger the fabric of class society in the United States, any of its allies or countries with a neutral relationship with the US.

Someone like Corbyn, for example, for supporting a fairly internationalist foreign policy instead of one that would benefit the west's position in politics and business, even though the commitment to socialism is mild at best. Meanwhile Trump was seen as someone willing to use the United States' power to improve its own position at the cost of its allies. It had its opponents, but had the goal to strengthen the status quo in the United States. Biden did the exact same thing, but that was Europe's thing to find out.

However, if countries of Europe were to look toward a different partner in capitalism, or try to become a big imperialist player (too late now, probably) - barring the gates of open trade to US companies, the American Bourgeoise would become openly hostile to Biden or whoever was in power.

After all, the role of the state under capitalism - no matter if authoritarian, no elections, military on the street, etc. or through the ballot box, is to ensure that capital is happy (or be deposed under capital's influence). That is not just one state's objective. It's all's. Be it trying to join forces into something like the EU or do it independently, there is competition and there is conflict over who is the top dog.

She already did. Well at least from a certain briber point of view.

Trump's #1 briber in 2016 was Clinton's #3. Renaissance Technologies, a Aritifical Intelligence trading algorithm company headed by former cold war profiteers connected to Jeffery Epstein, was most certainly involved in the Pied Piper Strategy which was also to purposefully prop up Trump. MSNBC and late night shows can't seem to STFU about Trump. It's called Earned Media, and it's happening again.

They also gave millions to John Bolton on Super Pac and ordered Trump to hire Bolton.

They also seeded the troll army aka Shareblue / Correct The Record as well as the infamous Cambridge Analytica. machine.

I wrote a diddy up about it a few years ago on archive link

Trump ended up knocking down all the barriers and laying out the carpet to what we are all seeing play out in Ukraine and Israel now. The investor class got pissed off becausse he'd go right up to the line, do some assassinations, but wouldn't cross it and fired John Bolton.

Biden on the other hand seems to have no issue with tripping over the line.

Elections in the USA are decentralized and difficult to control but only a few midwestern swing counties really matter anyway so conceivably you would only need to use a relatively small number of agents to tilt the election your way (and you would only need to change a few votes). But I think in this case the CIA was high on its own supply and also did not believe that Trump could win. They already control the corporate media and the federal government, and they can always just have someone assassinate Trump if he becomes an actual problem (which he never did), so I think they chose mostly to just stick to talking to the elderly bourgeoisie via CNN and MSNBC. Trump could have also responded by ordering a MAGA mob to sack Langley, which would have made 1/6 look boring by comparison.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101090855/https://berniewouldhavelost.com/

insert Destruction of Reason quote about how America doesn't even need Hitler

Since when was either Trump or Hilary any better in government for the ruling class? Lesson 101 on American democracy is that they're both pro-ruling class, so it doesn't really matter. Neither was going to seriously affect the status quo for the bourgeoisie.

Because they have to keep the distracting circus and the illusion of democracy alive. Dems had two terms under Obama, they can't win too much, they needed to keep the illusion that there was a democracy going on.

Also, the anti-Trump shit keeps people distracted and gives the Dems an excuse for the shitty things capitalism does under both parties. Just like when Bush was president and everyone hated him, then Obama came along and blamed the bad economy on him while doing all the same bad shit Bush did. Now when leftists complain about shit under Biden people have Trump to point to "Well he fucked the supreme court etc, so it's not dem's fault things suck."

It's good cop, bad cop shit.

Why are we assuming that the CIA was upset that a fascist sympathizer won? I'm sure a lot of them hate Trump's cultural signifies, but on a fundamental level they had nothing to fear with a Trump presidency other than working (indirectly) for an overbearing asshole

"Because nobody at the CIA wants to work anymore!"

That’s not how American deep politics work. It’s not as easy as the CIA stuffing ballots and assassinating people like in the global south. American deep politics really is the hesitant collaboration and conflict between the bourgeois. They are usually more united in foreign policy and prefer to have control of a country first before worrying about factional disagreements, which is why fixing elections is about as “simple” as giving a ton of guns to fascists and committing massacres everywhere.

From what I’ve observed and read, American/western deep politics tend to favor legal/political institutions over extrajudicial. By that I mean they favor finance engineering, lobbying, and leaking to the media. And when they do utilize the extrajudicial, it’s often in the form of oppo research and intelligence. The GOP may be bolder and come in direct contact with fascist paramilitary groups but usually it’s not directly related to a political campaign, but as an extension of its power. Rarely are there straight up assassinations, disappearances, and tortures directed by the intelligence on US soil unless the target is related to foreign policy.

They did not have a real idea of how bad he would be for US hegemony until after his first term. There was a lot of "4d chess" and other shit rhetoric that made people believe (including those that work in intelligence) that he might not actually believe everything he actually says.

They can put a thumb on the scales, not completely tip it. They are going to be placing a larger thumb on the scales this time.

There's a lot of factionalism in the US bureaucracy, I mean remember Comey on the emails and then all the Russia gate and secret dossier shit?

Trump was fundamentally fine for the ruling class. Same as Biden. Same as Clinton would have been. At that level the fix is in the candidates running the race are chosen. So it doesn't matter who wins. It is probably better for the health of the system they don't fudge things that hard. Just making sure the candidates chosen are on the team is more than good enough

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