I went down that rabbit hole. Here are my thoughts:

1. As to WHY: the US needs an aggressive Russia to justify the existence of NATO. Without NATO there will be no billions of dollars worth of military spending. Also, the evil Russia narrative helps create an excuse as to why Clinton lost. Everything could be blamed on Russia... even Pikachu bringing down the power grid. That is a very convenient escape goat to have. And an easy one judging by Putin's background and cold war history.
   We also need to note that the mainstream media is losing against the alt-media and RT. There are billions of dollars involved in media. I don't think that the MSM will not fight for those billions.

2. US and Western politics depend on victimhood in order to have political power. Being the victim will justify any action because the action is done out of "retaliation". There are also a lot of people who would like for there to be chaos, they profit from it.

3. If arguendo that Russia did in fact hacked the US election... I would think that they want to be the most powerful country in the world which is absurd because you not only have China but also Russia's (at least Putin's stance) view of the world is that of balance of power--in that Russia is the opposing force against the US. Putin is very open about this world view a simple YouTube search would reveal this. But of course, the mainstream only knows Putin and Russia = Evil and this narrative must be kept alive because there are people that depend on this narrative.

4. Invasion would be highly unlikely considering that the US has a very good buffer the Atlantic and the Pacific. If Russia wants to invade the US, the question there is how and what resources are they after? Definitely not oil. It will be an uphill battle for Russia to invade US. Unless their ships and submarine go undetected. There will also be US allies in Europe that Russia would have to deal with and of course Japan and South Korea on the other side to think about. So it's highly likely that this is not the case.

5. Could it be maybe Russia is after the dollar? Since 97% of the dollar is in digital form? If so, why didn't they hack banks or the Federal Reserves directly? Why hack the election?
   I don't think this is the case either as China, Russia, and India (you can add Brazil there to some extent) are trying to get away from the petrodollar.

6. With this I conclude that it's highly unlikely that Russia would hack the US election. Russia's military I would argue is not strong enough to stand toe to toe with the US. China+Russia+India maybe, but that is unlikely because we would see US+Japan+EU.

There's definitely something else going on beneath the surface that we see. I would say that Operation Mocking Bird is still in effect. I would not be surprised if the US would willfully hoodwink the population for whatever agenda they have as we saw in Project MK Ultra and in this 1967 CIA dispatch: https://thelastheretik.com/heresy/2017/10/8/cia-dispatch-weaponizing-the-label-conspiracy-theorists