These are crazy times

We have a major party which claims that Russian interference occurred in the 2016 election and that this interference determined the outcome of the election. This claim is made by a major party candidate who was soliciting foreign government endorsements in the run up to the election.

The only evidence about Russian interference to have emerged so far, after eleven months of searching, is that Russian sources spent $100-150,000 on ads across the political spectrum on Facebook.

Russian-funded Facebook ads backed Stein, Sanders and Trump https://t.co/C8ZYGQrwgN

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) September 28, 2017

That's $150,000 out of $10 billion in political advertising in 2016.

In the past week we have new research out, The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact in General Elections: Evidence from 49 Field Experiments by Joshua Kalla and David E. Broockman, that says that none of $10 billion in advertising spending, much less that infinitesimal $150,000, had any affect on people's voting behavior.

For all the hoopla and media spinning, all we have right now is that the Russians spent $150,000 on a left-leaning social media platform for ads supporting parties and candidates across the political platform in a fashion of advertising that had no discernible influence.

Who knows what evidence will turn up in the future, but right now this looks like an enormous distraction from reality.