Dem senator claims "Russia massively intervened in our elections"--no proof, of course

You really have to be impressed by the Democrats for being able to develop a strategy to impeach Trump and then sticking with it in every single media appearance.

The latest act is Democrat senator Mark Warner: when Attorney-General Sessions testified before the senate "intelligence committee" today, Warner said this:

"Russia massively intervened in our elections. The threat is real.”

Immediately, commenters on conservative sites asked "And your evidence for this claim is...what?"

Of course for the Left/Democrats there's no need for such trivia as "evidence," cuz, like, "everyone knows" that Trump got his buddy Putin to defeat the sainted Hilliary and elect the Orange Satan, right?

Unfortunately for the Dems, so far there isn't any evidence that Trump got Putin to do anything.

On the other hand, there may be a link between Russian hackers and the copying of thousands of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's emails from the email server of the Democratic National Committee, and their subsequent release by Wikileaks.  This "hack" was actually the result of Podesta falling for an e-mail "phishing" scam--an email telling him the password for his non-DNC email account had been compromised, and asking him to "Click here to reset password."

Podesta clicked, and as almost everyone knows, the first thing an email org wants you to do to reset your password is...enter your current password. 

He did--and the rest is history.

The theory that all the DNC emails released by Wiki came from this source is strongly supported by the fact that in every case, Podesta was either the sender or recipient (if just of a "CC").  No other emails have surfaced.  But if the Russian government had hacked the DNC server, and wanted to damage Hilliary, wouldn't they likely have released emails that *didn't* get sent to Podesta?  Sure.

The fact that none have been released suggests it wasn't a Russian hack.

So...is the what Warner had in mind as a "massive intervention"?   Highly doubtful.  Warner's purpose was to confirm for their low-information voters--a category that now seems to describe about two-thirds of Democrats--that the long-repeated claim by the Lying Media that somehow Trump's people got the Russians to throw the presidency to Trump is correct.

If this is ultimately unsupported by evidence, why say it?  What does it gain for the Democrats?

It's called "prepping the battlespace."  Top Democrats really are intent on trying to impeach Trump.  Impeachment requires 50 percent of the votes of representatives, plus one.  If Trump becomes any less popular, the RINO's in the House may well vote with the Dems.  If so, there are enough RINOs to easily reach the threshold for impeachment.

Of course impeachment does not remove the president.  As everyone over 30 or so knows, Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton was impeached, but served his full term because the senate failed to "convict", which would have removed him from office.  Conviction--thus removal--requires the votes of two-thirds of those senators present.

At last count the GOP held 52 senate seats, with Dems holding 48.  (One nominal independent consistently votes with Dems.)  So getting to 67 votes for conviction would require 19 Repubs to defect.  Most observers have no trouble identifying 14 senators who would vote to impeach without much difficulty IF it looked like a majority of their constituents were for impeachment.

So the chances of Trump being removed from office hinge on whether just five more senators can be persuaded to switch sides.  This is why the battle for public opinion is so critical--because the first rule of politics is re-election, and no senator is willing to damage their chances of re-election by taking a stand contra to what they believe is the will of a majority of their voters.  Which gets down to propaganda, as pushed by the Mainstream Media.

Finally, an amusing aside:  In one of the 2008 presidential debates between Obama and his GOP opponent Mitt Romney, Romney described Russia as a serious threat.  Obama sarcastically replied "The 1980's called.  They want their foreign policy back."  The Mainstream Media repeated this line endlessly to show that the Republicans were delusional to think Russia was a threat. 

So which is it, Democrats?  Was your brilliant leader--and all of you followers--right?  If so, what could make non-threat Russia "massively intervene" in our election just a few years later?  And since Obama was running the government for the eight years before the November 2016 election, wouldn't it seem that the failure to block this alleged "massive intervention" (not Podesta's falling for the phishing scam, obviously) have to be blamed on him?

Oh wait, NBC has already blocked that avenue.  Here's NBC:

 The Obama administration didn’t respond more forcefully to Russian hacking before the presidential election because they didn’t want to appear to be interfering in the election and they thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win and a potential cyber war with Russia wasn’t worth it, multiple high-level government officials told NBC News." 

Note there are three excuses here--NBC has covered all the bases: 1) didn't want to appear to be interfering in the election; 2) they thought Hilliary would win in any case; and 3) "a potential cyber war with Russia wasn't worth it."

Wow.  Brilliant.