PESKY WROTE:
"And as I've already pointed out, if Russia really wanted to influence USA foreign policy, they'd be much better off trying to rig Senatorial elections. The Senate is where all of the foreign policy power is. But no one is suggesting Russia is trying to influence those elections. But if you're looking for motive, that would be the place to look."
Well, for the record, I don't entertain the notion that Russia might be trying to "rig" American elections, in the sense that the word "rig" is normally used(stuffing ballots, nowadays cyberattacks on ballots). I might be mistaken(can't recall the whole thread), but my understanding is that the debate was about whether the Russians were the ones who obtained the embarassing leaks about Clinton.
As for US foreign-polcy being heavily impacted by the Senate, and never changing between presidents, well, that's true in the broad contours, but I think there's enough differences in the micro-details to make a difference to a lot of people. It's now known that Richard Nixon secretly sabotaged the Vietnam peace-talks in 1968, in order to prolong the war into his presidency, so as to take credit for whatever positive(from his viewpoint) outcome entailed. I don't think the Senate ordered him to do that, and obviously it's not exactly the same thing as the Democrats would have done, since it was intended to sabotage them.