Yet another reason to depart the whited sepulchers masquerading as Holy Mother Church (and there oh so "objective and helpful" diocesan voter guides and become a recovering former practicing Catholic - and activist for the Christian principles set forth in the Beatitudes.
2
Catholics voting for...Republicans...?
The the core of the Roosevelt coalition sent the same man to the White House four elections in a row. It consisted of:
- Blue collar workers
- Liberals
- Jews
- Catholics
- Blacks
Until Roosevelt, these groups were effectively politically and economically disenfranchised.
Beginning with the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Democrats sought to craft a new majority around....around...well, they never really figured out how to do that.
"Hand-wringing among Democrats about the party’s declining support among white working-class voters goes back a long time...to the signing the Civil Rights Act...the crime wave, riots ...Vietnam War protests...white flight...Reagan Democrats, NAFTA, gun control...many liberals had gotten so fed up with hearing about these woebegone voters...and were openly declaring them a lost cause...and declaring that the expanding Democratic coalition of racial and ethnic minorities and college-educated white voters obviated the need to cater to the white working class."
"Revenge of the Forgotten Class," by Alec MacGillis, ProPublica, November 10, 2016
And in 2020, only Andrew Yang has figured out what the real problem is.
And he has been boxed out by Corporate Democrats who still control the party.
Cheers
3
He will be re-elected and then impeached again.
3
The lion’s share of conservative rabble vote for Trump for two reasons: his purely opportunistic stance on abortion and his willingness to trample on minority rights. They don’t care that he’s transforming the country into a fascist state.
5
Duh! Democrats are behind because they have too many candidates and they can't get behind anyone. They need to abolish the circular firing squad and get their act together before it's too late.
3
"Mr. America, walk on by your schools that do not teach
Mr. America, walk on by the minds that won't be reached
Mr. America try to hide the emptiness that's you inside
But once you find that the way you lied
And all the corny tricks you tried
Will not forestall the rising tide of HUNGRY FREAKS DADDY!"
"Hungry Freaks, Daddy" by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, 1966.
These lyrics still resonate today except for the fact that many of the "Hungry Freaks" are now fat, lazy, complacent, white, baby boomer Trump supporters.
Trump thrives in the dark. Vlad Putin is amused.
At the very least, TELL populations that their churchgoing is being spied on, by data-miners selling them to Trump.
How? Just put up billboards: Are you Catholic? Donald Trump has your private lives on file.
4
This is creepy on so many levels but I don’t know how to begin.
Geo fencing, data mining, call it what do you like, propaganda, free speech etc etc
Sometimes an earbud is just a pair headphones and an opinion is an ......
When I Vote, I think for myself, my community and my country, no matter what.
3
If you're a "one-issue" voter, then you are asking to be taken advantage of. Any reprobate or criminal who supports your one issue is guaranteed your vote?
It's extremely lazy, but I guess it gives justification to those who claim to be "religious," yet support a man who locks children in cages. If you are so anti-abortion that you are willing to overlook cruelty to children, then your belief has been divorced from what your religion teaches overall.
7
It's not the digital advantage that is freaking us all out - it is his and his minions willingness to spread outright lies and disinformation. We should all be freaking out.
7
Not all church going Catholics support Trump
3
Sure, with Putin’s troll centers in Cypress, and with the help of the outlawed but very weird Chinese cult, Falun Gong (New York Times, please do an article on these nuts, who have spent millions in online pro-Trump ads).
With all his tweeting, brashness and vile, that rile up his base, Trump is still a crook. And the 2020 election, will be his indictment.
“En Er doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that has.” ~ Margaret Mead
3
It's time for the Democrats to get ruthless. This isn't a game. It's for all the marbles. Absolutely all of them.
The Republicans are playing dirty. We all know this, but our wonderful Democrats seem to want to play by the old playbook, and that just won't work these days.
It's time for them to realize this and utilize the Roy Cohn playbook. Scorching the Earth is how they must deal with these dishonest, lying, back-slapping sycophants.
It breaks my heart to say this, but if the Democrats don't coalesce as a party and play dirty, they won't win in November. This is about saving our country and how we do it doesn't have to be pretty, or even right, it just has to get done.
Democrats, pay attention and learn from their misdeeds, pandering and groveling. The majority of the country is counting on you to get it right.
5
Its not the digital advantage that's freaking out DNC. Its the amoral, bombastic, schadenfreude, mendacious flavored kool aid Trump and his propagandists keep serving up. No Dem strategy will ever reach a single Trump voter. The best they can hope for is to galvanize ALL Dems and Indies to show up in November no matter who the prevailing candidate is.
5
Frankly I don't believe this story. Can't be true. Must be fake news. Trump is lazy, ignorant, inept, stupid, surrounded by yes men, etc.... That must be why he is POTUS and Hillary is wandering the woods of Chappaqua. LOL!
3
It is the problem of evil: The evil obsess over and chortle over their plans while the good are about pleasantries w/friends and such.
1
This repeats the absurd meme we have heard for years: targeted ads on the web influence people. How many more times will I buy the same, say, underwear that I just bought? The number is zero. How many more times will I vote for the candidate whose ads follow me? The number is still zero. That’s the American Dream - make money from selling stuff people don’t need. Power to the ad makers.
Progressives need a candidate with the stage-presence of Bernie and the intellect of Buttigieg, Wang, Warren, Klobuchar, Bloomberg. And someone who can talk of things other than personal identity. Each side has special interests, but if progressives want to win, then need to tone things down. In a nutshell, we need another Obama. The right-wingers, trumpians, are all fired up. It'll take every little bit to stop trumpy.
3
Churches shouldn’t be allowed to participate in politics. Separation of church and state is necessary for a functioning democracy.
3
Because the Trump digital team is not beholden to the truth.
3
Jaron Lanier did a NYT video piece that helps explain how and why deactivating your Facebook account helps, too. And we can and should push our representatives to insist that we own our private information.
1
Democratic strategists make money when they worry democratic candidates.
This is so sad. Trump and Sanders supporters are the ones using this tech the most and it so happens they are the most annoying supporters as well as the most disingenuous and mean spirited. I don’t know who I’ll vote for but right now both of those candidates turn me off because of the psychological toll they are inflicting on us.
Re: Left and right agree on one point. The president’s re-election campaign is way ahead online.
But there are other factors
A look at the numbers for 2016
Hillary Clinton : Total spending $ 1.4 billion.
Hillary Clinton Capaign $623.1 million
Party and joint fundraising committees
$598.2 million
Super PACs $204.4 million
Donald Trump : Total Spending $957.6 M
Personal Spending $ 66 million
Raised mostly small donations $ 280 m
total 346 million (NZZ)
(the WP reports $334.8 million)
Party and joint fundraising committees
$543.4 million
Super Pacs $79.3 million
But : Experts estimate that he received free advertising by worth $ 5.9 billion from the media by making controversial statements, Clinton only barely half.
Digital spending was useful but even more useful were the liberal media that provided Trump with free advertising resulting in a 2:1 ~ $ 3 Billion advantage for Trump
Todays's NY Times online check for Trump : 13
Todays's NY Times online check for Biden : 1
Todays's NY Times online check for Sanders: 0
If Democrats stopped waging philosophical battles and socialist theories that will NEVER win in Key Battleground States and be STRATEGIC, maybe we can win the White House, Senate and House and GET THE JOB DONE.
Someone explain that to the crowd that has their head in the clouds which will only ensure 4 more years of the Criminal!
3
Please consider what we can do to strengthen the chances of the strongest candidate to winning against Trump online. FeelTheBern
Fakebook and Sinclear. If the Dems can reduce their influence, they'll greatly improve their chances in 2020.
Today's technology can track you. I wouldn't be surprised if every commentator on this post is not tracked. Google, etc. is way to intrusive and there is no reason for it.
Of course they have an advantage. Apparently, 50% of the American people get their news from Facebook—a horrid fact if true. And, what we now know of Facebook's perversities, Cambridge Analytica, we know that there's a lot of fake news out there. I abhor Facebook. It breathes sleaze. And, sleazy players will us sleazy tools.
Catholic vote shift put Reagan in the White House as they did Trump. Catholics are typical thoughtful Americans. Not elites. They will again put Trump in a second term.
1
Interesting to see the comparison between the Trump supporter and the Sanders supporter’s memes.
The Trump supporter calls Biden an idiot.
The Sanders supporter quotes Joe’s actual words and offers a pretty reasonable interpretation of what they mean.
That’s a massive difference and illustrates well the howling intellectual void in which Republicans operate.
The left is actually arguing over policy and governing philosophy.
The right is name calling.
It’s sad to see adults acting like this.
After watching the Times' impeachment coverage I find the anonymous Democratic strategists' claim that the Times and other MSM outlets knock down Dem claims laughable. The Times, especially, is as much a mouthpiece for the Democrats as Fox News is for the GOP, but they're even more effective since everyone knows FNC is in the tank while the Times somehow enjoys a reputation for objectivity.
Also, I couldn't help but notice that as I read this piece I was shown ads from websites I recently visited with pictures of products I had viewed - the same kind of highly targeted advertising CatholicVote.org is doing here. Does Edsall consider that manipulation, as he labels these Republican efforts?
1
Im sure Biden could round up enough people to fill a grammar school gymnasium - and thats no malarkey.
Or maybe Bernie could find enough socialists and folks with their hands out to make a respectable showing.
But it aint gonna be enough.
This is still America.
I am not on Facebook or Twitter, or any other social media.
Social media is stoopid. It is nothing but a childish game of gossip. It is the gateway drug to the New Dark Ages (the antithesis of the Enlightenment philosophy that inspired our Founders, and the very advent of the American Experiment).
I am not a luddite. I am very much pro-technology. I teach Computer Science at a major STEM university.
Please grow up, my Fellow Americans. Democracy is not a spectator sport. Use the brain that God gave you.
2
President Obama was very effective in using technology to promote his campaign. The results were that he was elected on hope and change. The trump election campaign is now using technology to their advantage. Why would anyone think that candidates would not take advantage of technology.
4
@Mona Costa: What happened to Obama's support in the census year election of 2010 that paralyzed the rest of his presidency?
Didn’t need Parscale’s digital prowess to turn me away from the Democrats, they managed to do so with the first debate.
Searching for sanity in the Democratic Party is a losing battle; I wish it wasn’t so because we need a political party to care for our environment, however, Democrats can’t handle the big issues such as the environment when they are obsessed with bringing any potential immigrant into the country and demanding that they be given sanctuary.
6
The Republican plan started in the mid 80'2 when Regan did away with the fairness doctrine. Since that time, they have monopolized talk radio and introduced Fox news and now Sinclair. They know exactly what they are doing.
During the 16 elections they went into hyper drive in using social media driven by manipulated data (algorithms) in a form of psychological warfare.
Unfortunately, we are all subject to this type of manipulation. However, those who are aware that it exists have a leg up, in that they can be on the look out.
This is not going to get better. It will get worse. Trump and the whole Republican party are angling to control the laws that will prevail. The 1996 communications act was a set up to where things will go. The Dems don't have a clue.
1
@Walter Ingram: All claims of divinity are fake. People are evolved animals co-evolved with cultures that work like software in computers to carry information from generation to generation.
"Finally, there’s the question of the size of the value of Trump’s data/digital advantage. Big enough to enable him to win the popular vote? Almost certainly not. Big enough to win Wisconsin? Frighteningly so."
"Frighteningly so"? No. How about "thrillingly so". When the Democrats finally have a nominee, Republicans will focus on defining that person in terms of what his or her policies will do to Trump's many successes.
Even "moderates" like Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar will need to keep their left flank under the tent. This will mean caving to enough Bernie-like policies to threaten the economy - and make South Korea vulnerable to the North, Taiwan to China, and Ukraine and the Baltic states to Russia.
4
@HurryHarry: Secession is an international issue now. Which secessions are legal, and which are not? Who is entitled to support someone else's secession?
Mr. Edsall,
Speaking as an educated "average joe", on-line political advertising is annoying and a direct turn off. The more a candidate puts put there on line, the more it turns me off. In my work, I speak with people across the Country for all stripes and bents, television advertising is more than enough. We don't want it in our inboxes, we don't want to see it on social media and we don't want phone calls. If a candidate has an advantage by plastering all media streams, it probably means they don't have my vote.
2
@Bill: Political advertising is almost always about how awful the other side's candidate is. Who advertises that all federal voters are shareholders in a public corporation that has been hijacked to asset-strip?
1
The true importance of what Edsall describes transcends the coming election. Its implication is that anti-American divisiveness has been industrialized, mass-produced. Once we were Americans, even if passionately disagreeing about many things. Now we are primarily some sub-grouping, sold on that definition by profit-makers and blindly accepted by most people, who rather be reassured in whatever they currently believe than do the hard work of thinking for themselves.
Trump is not the cause. He is an effect. Long after he is gone, we will still be stuck with the seriously invidious effects of the internet and related technologies. One does not have to be a Luddite to see that.
4
@Steve Fankuchen: When the best ideas don't propagate, bad ones fill the void.
Will someone please include the real Americans sequestered on reservations across what was once their ancestral lands?
They are almost always left out of any talk of electoral blocks of significance.
2
Thank you for highlighting this problem. It is time that Democrats wake up and take effective counter measures: Focus on the battle ground states - and campaign to win the electoral college.
2
Eye opening. Well the pathway seems clear to only one candidate, Bloomberg. He has begun the slow but sure pathway to becoming a presence in social media. May I please suggest tactics to win over folks if the less religious, liberal left wants to win folks over? Take a page out of politicians from South India. They go to poor neighborhoods and gift them appliances. They set up stalls to distribute enormously cheap foods. And you know what? It works. Soft gifts, immediate low hanging fruits. Get celebrities who are popular amongst these people to go distribute these incentives. Create dissent in the Trump voters ranks. Organize neighborhood parties exactly when republicans go there to canvas. Create websites which look like comics about how the GOP has ruined the lives of rural Americans. Distribute the same as colorful comic books that kids there will read. Talk about childhood poverty and how as a super power we rank dismally close to the bottom. As for digital presence, why most of the super talented tech folks are liberal voters. Get them (and this is not easy, they are a shy bunch), to volunteer to create information bases that disseminate actual information. We need to fight Fox and the false prophets in churches with weapons identically forged.
5
Democrats are policy mavens and addicted to ‘principles’; Republicans are more management-oriented, focused on results and outcomes. So Republicans almost always run circles around Democrats when it comes to organizing and executing national campaigns.
Until Democrats wake up and decide to become (in Will Rogers’ words) an organized political party, their campaigns will perpetually be at a disadvantage to Republican campaigns.
2
Moreover, Democrats try to play clean while Republicans play dirty without shame.
@Michael N. Alexander: Going by Trump and his lawyers, his crowd is all Milo Minderbinders living on Catch-22.
Democrats are policy mavens and addicted to ‘principles’; Republicans are more management-oriented, focused on results and outcomes. So Republicans almost always run circles around Democrats when it comes to organizing and executing national campaigns. Until Democrats wake up and decide to become (in Will Rogers’ words) an organized political party, their campaigns will perpetually be at a disadvantage to Republican campaigns.
@Michael N. Alexander: If the Democrats were smart, they should consider taking a page or two, from Barack Obama 's campaign playbook.
The digital advantage was apparent in the 2016 campaign and is apparent now for the 2020 campaign. Russian influence totaled over 3600 bots and 5000 trolls in the 2016 campaign and not been limited by the administration or the DOJ for this campaign. The Koch brothers i360 data and the Mercer's Cambridge Analytica are evolving for the 2020 race. Russia outspent Trump 5 to 1 in the battleground states in 2016 and can be expected to do that again. Russians have already been discovered pursuing a disinformation campaign to aggravate the differences between Democratic candidates. Brad Parscale is an IT specialist and is Trump's campaign manager. The only fixture for the campaign that is in doubt is Murdock. Murdock's ability to use polls and publicity to purpose was evident when he removed an Australian Prime Minister for his belief in climate change, his pursuit of Brexit which included electing two Prime Ministers, and his support to elect Trump. Mueller's report described the transfer of polling data from Trump's campaign manager to a Russian representative every Wednesday morning at 9:00 AM. Mueller sin=mply could not show that the campaign directed the Russin activities. I wish he had asked Parscale or Murdock who helped with that. If reelected, watch Trump remove the sanctions.
3
I do not doubt that liberals are behind on this particular curve. They have spent the last five or ten years, here and abroad, being surprised. And, these unpleasant surprises are always, of course, someone else's fault.
Maybe this columnist, and others of his persuasion, should ask themselves "What are we doing that so much of the population finds offensive?"
5
On various how to do-it yourself websites (sites Trumpsters would likely visit) Bloombergs long ads are inescapable with no 5 second skip option. Ominous dark pictures of Trump and music, then happy playing kids,flowers, pleasant music showing Bloomberg. Apparently very professionally done but still very irritating and distracting
He's wasting his money, that worked on Goldwater and previous Republicans but won't for Trump IMO.We already know about all his flaws,shortcomings and such.
3
Meh! Not really new. Karl Rove was doing this in the 1980s and 1990s helping to flip Texas and the South from blue to red.
Granted, then, Rove did not have powerful computers and sophisticated software to help him, but his metrics were every bit as then as they are today.
Targeted advertising. Always been the case, but now, with better tools and data. To overcome it, you need voters who can think and research issues if they are in doubt i.e take responsibility.
2
Encouraging minority voter turnout is good. Encouraging white, conservative voter turnout is bad. OK, I got it.
And then there is the opening anecdote: an effort to reach conservative Catholic voters. Be afraid, Edsall implies. Just look at the scary folks these people are targeting. They aren’t like us. They don’t share our beliefs. Be very afraid.
Before a campaign can micro-target a group, the group has to exist. We live in a time of increasing cultural balkanization. When articles like this imply the other is a threat, it increases our sense of divide. I remember an Illinois senator who tried to remind us that what matters is what we share in common. But he has become unfashionable. That’s a shame.
12
Catholic John F. Kennedy, staunchest President regarding church/state separation ever, may have been an sectarian outlier./ Conservative Roman Catholics dominating Supreme Court, high church based dogmatic judgements superseding especially women’s civil liberties.
1
This is actually a privacy violation story that is dressed up as a political story. Churches and politicians gleaning cell phone data to spy on their parishioners. I'd stop going if I were one of these people.
4
Trump must have had help from the Russians if he has a digital advantage. But I wonder why Democrats are not getting help from Hillary Clinton. She had a lot of experience in 2016 with digital information.
2
It's easier to lie, fake spread digital online diatribes than present truths. The motivations to create and spread fake information are stronger.
It's not even that expensive, as we learn from the success of the Russian hackers from 2015-16. Know who you target.
1
Thanks , Mr Edsall.
In the UK the Tory party was recently re-elected with an increased majority.
This is the Party that has spent recent years trashing public welfare and cutting living standards. They have also engineered Brexit - the UK’s withdrawal from its biggest trading partnership.
Perhaps the explanation lies in the manipulation you are throwing light on.
33
How can we expect Republican lawmakers to protect our privacy from data brokers when Republicans depend on those brokers in order to win?
1
Plea to Bloomberg and other deep-pocketed liberals and liberal organizations: quickly ramp up use of all available dark digital methods to create negative feelings towards Trump among key swing voters.
Time favors Trump on the positive-message side, since the Democratic candidate has not been selected. But we know who our adversary is!
I am deeply troubled by this kind of digital targeting activity - yes, we need to address the problem! But since this is the world we currently live in, we can't afford NOT to fight dirty.
8
When U.S. pilots were shot down over North Vietnam, one of the first questions was, "Are you Protestant or Catholic?" The theory that followed from communist experience with the French was: Protestants rely on CONSCIENCE as an ultimate guide to personal action. Catholics rely on AUTHORITY for the same, said guidance. The interrogation tree would branch from that point targeting known weaknesses in the intellectual properties of each 'reliance.' If your religious predisposition is to look for authority, wouldn't it be understandable for you to gravitate to an AUTHORITARIAN to tell you what to do? Catholics for Trump or 'geofencing' for Catholics for Trump. CONSCIENCE be damned.
3
This piece makes it crystal clear that politicians cannot be expected to legislate any meaningful internet privacy protections.
Readers of comments and those who make comments on news websites should also be very concerned about the extent to which websites prohibit / deny access to those who use anti-tracking browser add-ons.
1
Bloomberg’s got his campaign rolling online - hard to spend any time online without seeing his ads.
Just saying.
It appears that we Democrats can count on the DNC pretty much screwing up everything, especially the more obvious.
4
At what point does corruption become unsalable regardless of the technology?
2
How have Democrats allowed this to happen? It’s absolutely unbelievable how Democrats are their own worst enemies. If there’s a way to screw up, the Democrats will always find it.
3
Stopping digital psyops is the single most important issue of our times. The cold war went digital and we blindly went on like nothing was happening.
People should have been freaking out ever since Chris Wyliie made his revelations about the tactics used by Cambridge Analytica/ SCL/Mark Turbull/ Alexander Nix.
Voters in key districts were manipulated in order to win the electoral college by identifying the most persuadable voters, using targeted ads, based on their psychological profile, to trip their deepest fears.
They have weaponized facebook and social media, no one has stopped them, and they have had 4 years to get better at it. With out stopping the shadowy group operating that technology now, accept life under Trump DyNasty, Brexit, and all else from here on out.
56
@Reading the paper We have to stop Trump with available technology, and then put most of this trade in stolen lives out of business. Ajit Pai should be fired for cause and replaced with an FCC leader who would support net neutrality and digital security. We should all be wearing Faraday bags, but that won't be enough.
We have to campaign against Trump on this issue. And we can't campaign against it and use it at the same time. Rich and poor, we all use phones, and we're all vulnerable to this corporately sanctioned crime wave, of whichTrump is beneficiary Number One.
3
Seems like Moore's law also applies to the amount of disinformation that is propagated every successive election cycle - i.e it doubles every couple of years.
The amount of disinformation we are going to see in 2020 is just staggering.
Fact-based journalism is truly fighting an uphill battle against tsumani after tsunami of deliberately misleading (aka "weaponized") disinformation.
It's yet another force eating away at what's left of our democracy.
Probably a lot of NYT readers remember the days when the internet was hailed as the great democratizer. Instead it has become the great destroyer of democracy.
With the information age, we have unleashed a societal force that most likely we'll never be able to control. For better or for worse, we're doomed to be swamped in information we didn't ask for, and sadly, most of it will be wrong, and a good percentage of it deliberately wrong and deliberately targeted at us individually.
Welcome ro the New World Order.
6
When will the media in this country stop calling Fox a news outlet and start calling it the propaganda wing of the GOP?
5
@E.G. when they start calling the NYT, WAPO, and NBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS propaganda wings of the Democratic Party. It is almost impossible to find fact based, opinion free news ANYWHERE. It’s really sad and terrible for the country but that’s the world we live in.
It's really funny to see the following comments in this article.
"Trump has two relevant advantages deriving from the asymmetry between the flow of Republican and Democratic information. First, when Trump says something, Fox repeats it. When a Democrat says something, The New York Times and the rest of the MSM knock it down if it’s false or debatable."
What the New York Times has been doing is hurting Trump with all means imaginable. This paper is 'the best biased' media in the human history. It is not just biased, but thoroughly, creatively, exhaustively and so perfectly biased.
I can say it is devilishly biased. I mean the real devil, not just an expression.
4
So whoever is the most unscrupulous wins? Unacceptable. Delete Facebook and protest Zuckerberg. No political ads!!!
2
It's because of Catholics like those described in this article that made me leave the Catholic Church, among other reasons, years ago.
I've always said even though I was a crumby Catholic, I think I'm a fairly decent Christian. The two are definitely not inclusive.
These kinds of Catholics scare the commandments right out of my skin.
5
One of the troubles for anyone using digital messaging is that there is such a flood of it that we develop ways (psychological and digital) to bypass it to get to the information we hope to seek. We have to because more options don’t create more time in our day. If anything, we resent the time it takes to wade through this cacophony. There can be very sophisticated ways of tracking our every move but that should not be presumed as equal to influencing our every move.
Meanwhile, democrats are still succored by their dream of realizing a demographic advantage. There is not an ounce of power the GOP is willingly to yield without a battle on all fronts. Indeed, they are demonstrating they willing to undermine the interests of the nation if it secures their political power.
Why are the Dems not ahead on this? Who are their consultants? What strategy is behind their online campaigns, data collection, analysis, and message targeting?
Do Dems really think that integrity and demonstrating their respect for American governance is the only thing necessary for electability? You have a competing party harnessing the power of propaganda to mislead, sow division, and demonize the Democratic party and leaders.
The old rules don't apply. Many citizens are not rational calculating voters seriously assessing which policy options are best for the nation. They are misinformed, ruled by passions and grievances, blame others, refuse to recognize others rights, and generally fail to test reality beyond their right wing thought bubble.
9
I hope that the Democrats, should they win the House, Senate and the Presidency ever again will establish One Person One Vote rule across the land and abolish the Electoral College. That institution is wholly responsible for rigging the vote.
2
@BBB
Control of the House, Senate, and Presidency by the Democrats will not eliminate the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is in the Constitution. It requires a Constitutional Amendment to change it.
First, two thirds of BOTH the House and the Senate have to vote to start the process. Then three quarters of all state legislatures have to agree to it as well.
Does anyone think that three quarters of all the states will agree to allow California to decided every presidential election?
7
@BBB
Winning all 3 branches is not enough. Eliminating the EC requires a Constitutional amendment
3
"Geofencing."
One more terrifying article like this and it is back to a flip phone with a REMOVABLE BATTERY. Turning off your phone does nothing. It still pings.
4
Welcome to the Surveillance Economy.
You are owned and manipulated in ways you don't even notice.
Keep basking in the wonderfulness of technology as you constantly peck at you phone like a starving hamster in a experimental cage.
Because that is what you have become, a pecking hamster that is the subject of continuing experiments.
And like the hamster, you are blissfully unaware.
Keep pecking, you are a source of knowledge and power, but not for you.
4
Well considering what we have just heard from Trump's lawyers, that anything a POTUS does to stay in power is in the national interest and that s/he has sole power over foreign policy, I would start targeting Libertarians and even some rightwingers with ads about this.
The GOP is arguing for a Caesar, that while the forms of the government remain, one person will have unchecked power
That means Trump can take us to war on his whim, use his power against any critics, gin up false prosecutions of anyone he chooses, not just Joe Biden. And cover up any crime he commits with the consent of the Senate.
This is horrifying and any American who says s/he values freedom but yet would put up with this , is a liar. And a threat to anyone else's.
6
I'm heartened to read that the Democratic Party is ready to spend in the neighborhood of $300M in advertising to defeat Donald Trump, but Trump's campaign has already spent so much not just money but time on pinpointing and persuading the wayward voters in battleground states. If Trump wins re-election, which currently seems quite possible, if not probable, Brad Parscale will be one major reason why.
3
@Asra Jawaid: The Republicans want Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination.
2
A lot of people are one or two issue voters, whether it be abortion, gay marriage, gun control, or global warming.
My youngest brother professes his Catholic faith by wearing it on his shirtsleeve while being a deacon at his church.
He is more Republican than any other Republican I know. Opposing abortion and gay marriage are his two righteous bookends. It's difficult to even being in the same pew much less same room with him because of his rigid discrimination.
What concerns me about him and others who share a similar cold and chilling mindset is that he firmly believes he is following the word of the bible and its creator. There is no gray in his religious color wheel.
When I asked him about forgiveness, compassion and love, he said he has those qualities, however, they do not apply to gay people or women who have abortions.
Now my brother is a highly educated, successful business man who makes a very good living. Sometimes I wonder if I was adopted as an infant because my other siblings share his skewed and misguided mentality.
This is the kind of hateful and hurtful attitude that seems to be blossoming rather than wilting. And what's more scary is that folks like my brother feel the Republicans have all the answers and are guiding them along the "right" path.
11
Nominate Biden: dont worry about the Catholic vote. Nominate Sanders: kiss a winnable election goodbye and with it the Democratic party for a generation or two if not forever (like Labour in UK with Corbyn...how did that work out?) Sanders is an independent and a Socialist and the GOP'S dream nominee.
5
Everybody knows that Facebook impression impacts are fabricated out of thin air. They mean nothing, and to use them to shed light on campaigns and elections is tantamount to malpractice.
hm, if only there was a democratic candidate with a massive, dedicated group of online supporters that could counter Trump's digital strategy. Oh well!
3
I'll add to my earlier comment that one bright spot when it comes to technology and politics is the younger generations. Millennials are liberal by a hugely more significant margin than Baby Boomers were in the 1980s at the same point in their lives. The up and coming Gen Z/iGen are less likely to identify with a specific party - which I consider smart - but are even more supportive than millennials of progressive positions on climate science, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ protections. And by and large these younger people are all much wiser to the ways of social engineering and manipulation than the older generation.
1
Dystopia. And the US has a relatively benign - relatively - government at present. That could change, and given the pending climate catastrophe and attendant strife likely will. Xinjiang here we come.
I only have a couple of decades here, give or take, and am perhaps selfishly thankful for that - this is increasingly an inhumane habitat. But I worry greatly about everyone's kids and grandkids.
2
They only have one agenda too, pro-birth. They don't care about health insurance or clean water, schools. So this pro-birth is what it's all about.
3
Trump by far has the advantage on TikTok. For anyone that doubts young people will for Trump, download TikTok on your phone and scroll your FYP (for you page). You'll be unpleasantly surprised. There's not much in the way of politics, but what's political is mostly in support of Trump.
4
A tip of the hat to Evan Vucci (AP). That photo says it all.
1
Actually, since Trump has been running since the day he was sworn in - 3 years plus ago - by now he should have every vote in this country in his pocket.
...instead of only 40%..... a number that never goes any higher.
However, we have seen it go lower.....
I suspect that he will lose the popular vote this time, too, and likely at a far greater margin than 3 million votes.
He's the "Biggest Loser" alright.
4
I think this is all smoke and mirrors. The headline should be "Trump's Strategy Is to Freak Out Democrats by Boasting About Their Digital Dominance." How many Trump supporters spend their days glued to their laptops? How effective is "geofencing" advertising anyway? Aren't we all savvy to it and more irritated by it than anything? I believe one of the Republicans' strategies is to have a performative online presence that mainly reaches -- and alarms -- Democrats.
6
@Kristy asks: How many Trump supporters spend their days glued to their laptops?
Truly, every Social Security recipient I know is a huge Trump supporter. They don't have anything to do all day except surf Facebook and like/re-post conservative memes. This not a statistical analysis, just my observation.
2
@David Bosak That was too huge a generalization on my part. Thanks for the perspective. I realize Facebook has ridiculous reach -- it really is the opiate of the masses.
The Democrats are simply incompetent. They are the team that can't shoot straight.
8
@Grace: The Republicans have cornered the market in single-issue voters. The more issues people have, the harder it is to satisfy them, and the less their issues align with those of others.
1
@Grace : I'm a Dem and I agree with you. It's embarrassing. They seem to be sitting around waiting for the "demographics" to fix everything for them. Drives me crazy.
1
@Steve Bolger
Many, many identity single-issue voters, too.
Their issue: Identity.
1
I’m wondering how the NYT verified Parscale’s findings. Given that it is in his best interests to make it look like Trump is winning the digital war, it is in his best interest to lie to the NYT and the rest of us. Could you tell us please how convinced you are that his ”findings” are factual?
4
Easy to do when you’ve had Russian troll farms working on your behalf for the last five years. Perhaps the Democrats should enlist MI5 or Mossad to even the playing field. (This is tongue in cheek but who knows these days.)
1
@Tim
or perhaps the Dems should put forth candidates & policies that people will actually vote for?
6
The Democrats can't even convince the US public that the federal government is every citizen's corporation. It is amazing how primarily psychopathological garbage goes viral on the internet.
2
If this is not an envasion of privacy, what is? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Nothing is more evident than these people who have lost their way. I will pray that they become compasionate Catholics and will realize the eveil perpetuated on Americas as a result of their actions.
2
When injustice and unfairness triumph over justice and fairness, because of the mechanisms of the digital Spectacle Society, then truth, the rule of law, and the will of the majority are perverted. Whatever enables a pathological liar, racist, and fraud to lead Amerika, must have its roots firmly planted in the soil of hatred, greed, and the lust for money. Once you poison that soil, the plant dies a well deserved death. Those that believe in justice as fairness are armed with that poison. May they spread it liberally over the UXA, and subvert the digital mechanism.
1
Maybe just maybe the more progressive-leaning vote class get their news from real news sources oh let's say something like the NYT.
4
Hello Tom Perez, are you listening?
3
Why did the article only highlight an example from Sanders team and not one from the Catholic team. Is it because, the NY Times is so anti Sanders that it cannot help itself from attacking Sanders?
1
If Sanders has such a great digital ground game,
How is that his team has not found this fiercely liberal Democrat?
1
I am wondering why some people in the article photo are raising their right arm straight out? It reminds me distrubingly of the Nazi salute. This is quite scary.
2
The more undecideds they reach, the better. The majority of the USA is against Trump so getting more people in the race is even better. I know Catholic/Jesuit Republicans who are against Trump.
(Yes, they're claiming they will only get those those for them but once they open the can of worms nothing prevents the other party from using the opposite set of data.)
2
*Why* are the Democrats way behind? Get on the stick, people! Fight dirty!
3
It also helps to have an entire army of Russian hackers, bots and trolls on your side.
4
It is remarkable that those of us who do not spend time on social media but who read and listen to a few different "mainstream" media (newspapers, radio, TV (other than only Fox)), are not fooled by anything Trump says or does.
6
Maybe liberals have a hard time getting used to this manipulative idea because it is just so creepy.
4
All Fortnite players support Trump.
@Pilot : Or Yang.
Stop trying to freak people out. We don’t even have a candidate yet.
2
Well, at least this time around you won't have (the) Russians to blame for Trump's victory. Which WILL happen, unless there is some kind of miracle. All because the Democrats want to debate issues, whereas the Trump campaign just uses (negative) emotions. And because the Democrats are too busy cat-fighting among themselves to get ready for the dirt that'll be coming their way.
1
@Rudy Flameng
The underlying (emphasis on “lying”) data are as likely as not being pushed by Russian security services. This does not mean that conservative Catholics (I know - an oxymoron, right?) think of themselves as friends of Putin like Trump does; it just means they have failed to read Scripture and have let charlatans like Brian Burch convince them of convenient excuses for failing to do as Christ commanded men and nations to do.
1
When will our tech -deranged world began to admit to some of the serious downsides of, in some cases, the monsters that are being created. Do people really want their every movement mined by god knows who? Sounds to me like all those old white men in our Congress should start looking at legislation to address this invasion of our collective privacy. I can see some amoral, crazed wannabe dictator using all of this in a most nefarious way. Oh wait, Donald Trump and his acolytes already are.
3
Bloomberg take note!
1
I appreciate Mike Bloomberg advertising in Tennessee
Such beautiful people! Filled with hate, ignorance, and acrimony from their vacuous little heads all the way down to their tiny little toes.
2
Parscale, who is now managing Trump’s 2020 campaign, claimed in a 2018 tweet that the Trump campaign tech operation was “100 times to 200 times” more effective than the Clinton campaign’s, adding “@realDonaldTrump was a perfect candidate for Facebook.”
**********************************
Yes, and in 2018 the Republicans got creamed, in the House anyway. There are limits to this.
2
@Rick
The Republicans were not creamed in the House as badly as Obama during his first midterm election. Trump lost 44 seats in 2018. Obama lost 63.
2
Sanders beats Trump like no one else can -- and he knows it:
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/trump-sanders-2020-election/
4
Didn't I just read an article here about how Robby Mook's obsession with data is what cost Hillary the election?
Hard to take such pontification any more seriously than I do the latest "study" revealing what food is good for you.
1
Trump’s advantage is his potential opponents.
Biden - was great and has obviously lost a step since his Obama days. His son getting a million dollar paycheck for being on the board of a Ukrainian energy company is a disqualifying, especially where his son knew nothing about energy or Ukraine.
Biden - is not even a Democrat but really a Communist, which is obvious to everyone
Warren - racially misappropriated Native American identity for decades and has been defined by Trump as “Pocahontas”
Butblig - has a sexual orientation that many in battleground states find to be a sin and immoral according to their religion
4
"Freaking out"? For a moment I thought I was reading a Buzzfeed article.
3
The Russian influence.
2
Mr. Edsall, if you can't tell the difference between a snarky Trump ad calling Biden an idiot and a substantive Sanders ad attacking Biden's corporatism, you might apply for a job with the Trump campaign.
3
Why is Trump ahead?
Because he can do there and no where else what he does far better than anyone: make things up, exxaggerate and lie. No one can check him, verify what he says or what his "followers" say online. It's an echo chamber of repeated falsehoods, half-truths, and innuendo.
4
Im sorry, anyone relying on the digital world is in trouble it is not representative of the real world.
Duh! Trump won in 2016 because his team, led by Kushner's Cambridge Analytica, was so technologically apt. Meanwhile Clinton and her DNC were in the stone age, with Podesta getting hacked, an inarticulately ineffective, uncoordinated tech presence and a campaign that was wholly unable to feel the political pulse of many counties and states.
Duh! Clinton and her inept staff should be so ashamed. They're not but they should be.
Duh! Have the Democrats learned from 2016's debacle? Duh! Apparently not. I am a Democrat. But the Democrats had better realize right away that we're in the 21st Century now. Technology rules and it is not going away. Get with it or else!
2
If the Dems had half an ounce of creativity, there would already be an online video game of "Dems vs. Trump" where everyone could join team Amy or team Pete and go on missions destroying Trump and his minions.
1
Our GOP or how i like to call them Grand old polluters can loose the election if more town hall meetings discuss the fact coal and fossil fuels are going to kill us. What is worse
1
This is the political horror story of the still emerging Big Brother foreseen by Huxley and Orwell. Those so intent on supporting Trump are in fact enabling the transformation of the US and no doubt other parts of the "Free World", as Lands of the Free into a regimented dystopia where any freedom, even or perhaps even especially the freedom to think independently, is an illusion. To those Freedom Loving supporters of Trump and his MAGA campaign: Good work guys: the Thought Police are here and growing stronger now covertly but ever more overtly down the road, thanks in large part to you.
2
Trump's going to win again, isn't he? He's got his 40% who are going to vote for him even if he murders somebody on Fifth Avenue, and he's got his people targeting the single issue (abortion, gay rights, guns) votes who will put him over the top in swing states. And meanwhile, the Democrats are still conducting a circular firing squad of a primary, making sure that by the time the actual vote takes place nobody will like any of them.
God help us.
11
@Joe M. - Trump did a hatchet job on his opponents during their primary and it didn't seem to hurt.
Meanwhile, I have yet to hear a Democrat suggest that an opponent's father killed Kennedy or anything even close. They are being quite civil and have done everything except pass a peace pipe.
1
@tom harrison
Really? Because I have seen a different race, with:
Harris calling Biden a collaborator with racists
Catsro suggesting Biden is senile
Warren saying Bernie believes woman can't be elected President
Warren criticizing Buttigieg for his consulting work and "wine caves"
Hillary saying "nobody likes Bernie"
It goes on and on, like cats in a bag. They are doing Trump's work for him
1
Naturally the first line of defense in many of the comments is the call for censorship. The second is the appeal to reject the social media. Neither is going to happen. And this article is not really about technology. Buried in it is an interesting observation: those who are targeted by micro-ads are those already predisposed to accept them because of their prior worldview. Is it surprising that devout Catholics care about abortion? Is it surprising that young people who follow AOC on Instagram are eager for the praise of socialism? People embrace master narratives which guide them in their lives. These are political ideologies, religious beliefs or moral frameworks. Micro-targeting may reinforce these master narratives but it cannot change them. So if you want to convince large numbers of people to change their minds, you better go to the source. Remind Catholics that the Church used to deny the humanity of the fetus until the quickening. Show clueless socialists pictures of the inmates in the gulag or the Cambodian killing fields. But stop this Luddite campaign against high tech and the social media. Nobody is listening.
2
Re “ Once an area is geofenced, commercial data companies can acquire the mobile phone ID numbers of those within the boundary.”
What? Really? The victims didn’t give permission to be geo fenced. This a flagrant privacy violation. Geo fencing should be behind bars.
3
This is all actually very basic and rudimentary digital marketing. I should know - I have been pioneering efforts in this area for 20+ years.
The fact that the DNC is behind is inexcusable. They need to fire whoever they are working with and hire one of the many, many people that are well versed in this stuff in order to compete. This kind of media works very, very, very well. Better than TV in most cases and costs much less.
1
Which probably explains why as we New Hampshire Dems were walking door to door in 2016, using old computer lists of voters we never saw a single Trump foot soldier canvasing in the 3 months we were out.
And yet, we saw plenty of Trump lawn signs and Trump came within a hair of winning New Hampshire having spent less than 2/3 of what Hillary spent.
We were using 20th century horse and buggy techniques and Trump was in the 21st century.
4
@Claudia
not Trump, Russia.
1
The is truth and then there is the perception of the truth. There are many tools to change the perception and Trumps team is a master at it.
The best example is the polls that promised Hillary would get 85% of the vote. This lie worked mightily to Trump's advantage.
And no one bothers to investigate.
Meanwhile I question reports like these.
1
I guess it is the lay Catholics who have to speak out against abortion and other important conservative social issues. The Church does not speak out often about these so Catholics must pick up the slack. It is encouraging to know that there are people who feel these still are important. It restores my faith in humanity.
1
I was on the Obama analytics team in 2012. The counter to digital media is in-person, door-to-door canvassing. Democrats will need to marshal an army of enthusiastic volunteers to win. Bernie appears best positioned from this perspective.
5
The overarching takeaway from this article is bipartisan and that is that our privacy is being invaded in ways never dreamt of at the time of our constitution was ratified. Our constitution's main theme is to recognize rights of the citizen as inalienable. Marketing and advertising are in general terms an invasion of our privacy which over time has become so omniscient as to seem perfectly normal and acceptable. The digital age has raised the anti on proprietary invasion of individuals privacy to the full extent envisaged by Orwell over seventy years ago.
The legislation over this new form of intrusion need not be complex. Collection, data mining and distribution of digital information, on its face is private, and as such should be prohibited without the "express," approval of the first party.
This is not complicated or controversial, this is another form of control and a further abbreviation of liberty.
6
I don't want anyone ahead in this particular way. In fact, I'd like to see a lot of these practices banned outright.
7
This seems like a good time for a reminder that Republicans may be winning some battles, but they are losing the war.
Each generation is more liberal than the last. Gens X, Y & Z now represent over 60% of the electorate. They outvoted Boomers & Silents in both 2016 and 2018. Not all of Gen Z can vote yet, but already they represent 1-in-10 eligible voters. They are also slightly larger as a generation than Millennials.
Look at the surge in Gen X, Y & Z voter turnout in 2018 for a taste of what's to come in 2020: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/29/gen-z-millennials-and-gen-x-outvoted-older-generations-in-2018-midterms/
4
@Zep
All young people grow up... once they have a mortgage, pay taxes, and have to educate their children, they usually cease to be left-leaning.
2
He's getting cyber help from Russia, with an assist from Facebook. Remember nothing is true and everything is possible. Just listen to his impeachment defense team. Elsewhere in the Times, Kate Shaw has nailed it. The damage that will befall America when 44's successor is acquited will be irreparable.
7
Yet another article proclaiming how the guy who lost the popular vote by 3 million in 2016 to a candidate being openly "of interest" to the FBI is unbeatable. This might work on Fox News but in the Times I doubt it.
1
@Chris
One would have hoped that in the 3+ years since Trump beat Hillary, the Dems would have figured out how that whole electoral college thing works, but alas, that appears not be the case. I understand that you don't want to change what is working, but . . . it isn't working.
2
Can we geo-fence every Congressional office, every White House entrance, Trump property, and put all the visitors online. This is, after all, our government, our representatives. Maybe Lev and Igor wouldn’t have been such a mystery, then.
And all those Democrats, unregistered voters attending those rallies....what goodies were they promised? In some of those rally pictures, the attendees hold signs, but look ....disinterested, disconnected. I wondered why.
Couple days ago Sen. Warren mentioned to C. Todd how a couple of Iowa newspapers just endorsed her. Sorry folks -DNC still playing in 1950's & 1960's.
3
I was dismayed to find this article after reading the one about Amy Klobuchar using "hot dish" to bring people together while campaigning in Iowa.
The sad reality is that the online world of "social media" is actually anti-social, taking the place of real human connections that you can only get from being involved in your community. It's this degradation of society that opens the door for Trump to gaslight the naive with a steady diet of lies told by liars, trolls and bots.
Klobuchar -- in the other article -- is bringing together people over food, but the vast majority of NYT commenters ignored the healthy human connections in order to share their imagined (since most have never experienced it) disgust of the food involved.
This is the type of trap that gets people to believe that Trump must be a better choice for POTUS because he can draw thousands of people to his rallies, even though they're nothing more than comic-cons designed to keep Trump separate from the cosplaying fanatics, who just want to revel in the entertaining glow of a self-promoted fraud of a myth feeding them lies to believe in.
Social media is a construct designed to sell us the unreal, and it's past time we reject it for the real world around us.
3
No matter how much money he has to spend, this time around, Trump won't be getting those slim number of votes in key states, that won him the electoral college, from people ike me that took a chance on him and were fed up with Hillary.
Fool me once, yadadadaa...
5
Why on earth can’t the Democrats get decent IT to catch up? The biggest problem would be digitally unreachable Ds such as the lowest income voters who may not vote at all. The rest missed would be the Ds fault. Is Biden going the same route as Hillary? Ignoring potential voters? I recall Obama’s name and face plastered all over kids’ dorm rooms, derived from online targeting. Actually Ron Paul did the same thing. They didn’t even know anything about him, except that he let them know online that he was aware of them. Good grief, Dems, this is pathetic.
3
Maybe bc they don't have a single candidate yet. One of the inherent advantages of incumbency...
@MaryToo - "...digitally unreachable Ds such as the lowest income voters who may not vote at all."
What? I collect SSDI (making me the lowest income out there) and I'm digitally unreachable and may not vote at all? Lol, in the last election, I became precinct chairman because none of the well-to-dos even bothered to show up to the caucus:))) They were home watching a college basketball game.
1
They aren't running for president of Facebook or president of Twitter. They aren't running for president of the mean girls club or president of the one-liner club. Trump is as entertaining as he is criminal. If that equals a win then America deserves what it gets.
2
Are elections now decided by who has the better algorithm?
1
What bagels me here is, where are Edsall's morals? And where are the morals of the respondents in this queue who want the Democrats to be "more ruthless." We've GOT a ruthless President. Trump is what ruthless, amoral men are like.
The data aggregation industry (see: Cambridge Analytica) is based on theft: many, many small acts of data theft and invasions of privacy.And some large thefts. What there should NOT be, though, is a legal market in the products of that theft. The industry that supplies the Brad Parscales with their handy-dandy campaigning-with-fear packages. So easy, so fun.
Look, Democrats, Trump and Pascale are Evil. Why should we be like them?
4
Trump also has the online advantage of being heavily backed by Russia. Don't underestimate the significance of that fact. Putin wants nothing more than another four years for his stooge.
6
add to your post: Russia also wants Bernie to be the Democratic candidate because he is the one Trump can easily beat. I am a die hard liberal (albeit from the electorally unimportant state of CA) and even I would struggle to vote for Bernie. (though I would) Swing voters in every significant state will not vote for Bernie; thus trump wins.
4
@karen
I know Bernie seems like a hard left socialist/ communist/ Marxist to many Americans but he wouldn't be regarded as any such things in most other developed countries. The things for which he advocates, like universal healthcare, are just basic norms in other developed countries.
3
Religious institutions need to pay taxes.
4
Simple solution: Democrats simply drive to and sit in the parking lot of an evangelical or Catholic church and work a crossword puzzle or browse facebook a couple of Sundays every month. They'll render the system useless.
3
Trump is going to win in a landslide.
2
Sure he is...the American eagle screams and the American “president” tweets!
Let's hope this dark money isn't also illegally targeting children in its random collection of cellphone data...
1
The fact is that Republicans (supported by most of the wealthy), Trump (one of the wealthy) and the right (supported by the wealthy) have many, many unfair advantages in today's political landscape. Our politics is rigged. Also republicans, morally inferior to democrats in my opinion, cheat by suppressing minority votes with a well known variety of stratagems. Worse, our obsolete, flawed constitution has a number of well known provisions that disadvantage Democrats. The worst is the very existence of the senate (two senators per state regardless of population) which gives about 50% of senators to 18% of voters. Next the stupidity of giving control of federal congressional elections to states, which cheat by gerrymandering. Next the undemocratic and obsolete electoral college. The unfairness detailed in Edsall's article is just icing on the cake. I concluded long ago that the idea of defeating an incumbent republican president in a good economy (which he takes undeserved credit for) is simply preposterous. It doesn't matter who the democratic candidate is, nor who the republican president is.
@T Smith from Texas (who sees McGovern and 1972 everywhere he looks)
You have to realize this type of comment making a statement without any explanation is really juvenile. Anyone can say anything about any candidate. It is a free country.
You forget that you there are millions (yes many documented millions) sending their lunch money to Bernie. Are these people all crazy like your uncle you love?
1972 and George McGovern have absolutely nothing to do with today’s America. An oligarchy which has gone off the tracks and about to turn fascist if Trump has his way.
The Bernie brothers are not SDS members or 1968 French student revolutionaries wannabes. They are people who have lost their jobs, or working three jobs to bring food to their families, people who lack proper medical insurance, people underemployed, people who dignity is taken away from them, highly educated and well-off people like myself and my family who have a sense of justice and fairness. The intersecting among democratic voting populations over time are inevitable. Therefore, some McGovern and even Eugene Debs voters would have chosen Bernie. But so would voters who gave the presidency to FDR an unprecedented four times!
5
@Blunt Sorry you fell that way but it doesn’t change the fact Americans will will not elect a socialist (he does claim to be a socialist after all) as a President. You examples of McGovern and Debs actually illustrate the point. Both of those elections were held under circumstances where an extreme liberal or outright socialist could have reasonably expected to win. FDR did not run as a socialist and was indeed focused on saving capitalism. Also, just for the record, he didn’t reverse the depression and in fact probably prolonged it. WWII ended the depression.
Also, for the record, I am reasonably well off, my family members and I all hold advanced degrees from well respected universities, and are pretty well informed. I am so sorry you feel my comment was juvenile, but I stand by my position on Bernie and believe the Democratic Party will rue the day they nominated him, if they are foolish enough to do so. I also stand by my crazy uncle comment.
2
@Blunt My working class parents would recognize Sanders ideas in the Roosevelt that they heartily voted for.
Sanders’ ideas are what the Democratic Party used to be about. This is nothing radical. It’s just that the mainstream press opinion has moved far to The Right!
1
This article is a good reason to throw your phone away. Why worry about Russian interference when you have a Big Brother right here in the US.
78
@Steve - For a more practical alternative, google "how to stop apps from collecting data" and follow the instructions on one of the many helpful articles.
Even for the non-tech savvy, it's easy to update your phone settings to stop location tracking - at least by non-state actors.
5
@Alasdair
Sadly, not a realistic solution. Most people I know will read this article, make a comment and go on as before. I think at this point, we need some serious regulation of the tech companies...all of them. They are now just as bad as the industrialists were in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As for the people of this world, half don't even bother to think for themselves and have sold their souls for constant entertainment. I'm 57 and happy that I'm not young. I wouldn't want to be starting my life out in the world we live in today.
18
@Steve - Ain't freaking out. Panic accomplishes nothing.
Am remembering Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas who, a few years ago, come into the Republican Presidential Primary season loaded with cash, people and (what was then) lots of tech. He bombed.
No, Trump ain't gonna bomb. But he's been exposed. Money may help with turnout, may help with ads, may help with buying a few votes, but money ain't gonna be as important as shoe leather, this time around.
Ain't freaking out. Am voting, and going door to door - without pay - instead.
9
"Trump's digital advantage..."
I'm Catholic and I do not support Donald Trump. I do not rely on the Catholic Church for my political opinions and choices! The other sources I DON'T consider would be my phone, Facebook , Twitter or any self interest groups,including the biased Fox.
In fact political advertising, trolling and manipulation are the reasons I don't subscribe to any of the above.The Mueller Report details how the Russians and others practiced election interference and they used all of the sources mentioned above.
I vote based on character, trust, honesty , ethics and integrity. Donald Trumps Republican party currently share none of these attributes. My advice, be informed and vote with your conscience!
5
Never forget that as far as lying, cheating and stealing are concerned, they are the benchmarks of conservatism.
The only maddening part is that liberal-progressives are complicit in the process. Our 401k's went up as well.
Trump has just too many advantages to enumerate. The silent majority of Republicans are behind Trump and not Bolton or Gen. Kelly or Lev Parnas. Catholics are behind Trump for his anti-abortion stance. More African Americans are likely to vote for Trump because the economy has lifted them and given them hope. Working class is working and they support Trump. Farmers will support Trump because he has stuck with them through thick and thin of the trade deal adventure. Only the die hard democrats will support anyone but Trump and I know several of them but they constitute 30% of the voters. Not a small number of 90 million but how many will show up in Red states? The blue states don't matter much considering that they just provide a popular vote. The same number that voted for Dukakis and Walter Mondale. You can figure it out.
3
@Girish Kotwal I am not seeing the economy giving much hope to African Americans. If anything, they are worse off under Trump!
These people are positively scary and zombi-like. And what's with the Nazi salute?
3
Why is this a surprise? Lies spread faster than truth. Easier to digest.
2
It makes me sick that conservative Catholics and other religious individuals are single issue voters. Trump is right: he really can do anything he wants.
2
Well, Trump has his best buddy in the world, Russia's Putin, helping him to attempt to steal yet another presidency.
4
Everyone who cares about what's discussed in this op-ed should read Shoshana Zuboff's book, Surveillance Capitalism, or her short form discussion of it in last Sunday's NYTimes Sunday Review (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/surveillance-capitalism.html?searchResultPosition=1). This is its political application. It's what Orwell anticipated. Scary.
1
This is one way to get the message past the filter of the incredibly biased Democrat Media Complex and I applaud it.
1
The Dems should remember that former president Obama had a huge tech advantage in 2008 and 2012.
Get your act together. If you don't, we'll have 4 more years of Trump and God knows what during then and thereafter.
3
Facebook and Trump share the basic characteristic of truth being optional and mostly observed in the breech.
1
So long as the DNC continues to lead from behind and push a failed candidate, Biden, the Democrats will aurely lose this November.
2
Credit the Russian and Macedonian programmers and Cambridge Analytica for their hard work and commitment to being evil.
1
Turnout, turnout, turnout!
2
Stop using terms like pro-abortion. No one is pro-abortion but anyone who uses any form of birth control or even abstinence is pro-choice. Anyone!
Republicans in power are nasty, cruel, power hungry people. The base is judgmental, and trusting in authority that looks like them. They are prone to cult like thinking, so single messaging works well with them.
Messaging democrats is harder!
2
Bloomberg makes sense now.
1
Ignore Trump ... Go after those who support him (by their voice, silence or cowardice) relentlessly ...
If you come from the point of view that people are stupid and can be gulled into believing anything if you have no moral compass whatsoever- then sure, you can get your message out and who cares if it is lies or otherwise divisive if you win elections? A Take No Prisoners attitude is actually quite effective. Ultimately all that matters is winning. And frankly, who can argue if it works? Handwringing about the aftermath is worse than useless. So the solution is to emulate the opposition or concede defeat.
He may be ahead digitally, but I think the majority of Americans are sick and tired of Trump’s antics and poor decisions. He can spend billions, but I truly believe we have wised up to his shtick and desperately want a change from this toddler squatting in the White House.
Vote blue, no matter who!
6
Personally the campaign slogan of "do you want 4 more years of this game show" woud dissuade me from wanting more Trump.
So People should remind voters that It won't get less heated if he's reelected.
Hones, decent moral people don't take kindly to being fleeced by criminal and thugs at their tax dollars expense. You can be that dumb any pay for Trump and his dirty habits, but I'm not going to let you rest for even a second if you saddle me with more of this travesty. Pick someone else or we will all suffer.
2
It is beyond scary that the most unqualified President in American History is on his way to being reelected. Americans have sold their souls to a fraudulent con man.
5
Religious organizations, including churches, that act as political organizations should pay taxes. Any tax-exempt religious organization that is telling people for whom to vote is no longer a church. Churches teach morals and the Republican Party is not a moral, Christian organization. Abortion is wrong, but so is breaking any of the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ law of compassion. Christians who believe it is more Christian to vote Republican because that party is doing God’s work are being played by the devil. According to the Bible, Satan knows the Laws of God equally well to Jesus and better than mankind. Satan tempts us by wrapping up “doing evil” in a package mixed with “doing things that are good.” Satan is never performing wholly good nor wholly evil acts simultaneously. This is how the best of us are “tricked” into working for Satan. Likewise, this happens to political parties (and people). Both political parties do Satan’s work as well as God’s work. When Christians promote the Republican Party (and candidates) over the Democratic Party, and do it in the name of God or Christianity, they show they have been ensnared by the devil and their allegiance is no longer solely to God. Christians would do well to remain as independent activists for moral causes not doing the devil’s dirty work by selecting one candidate or party over another. Christian’s who endorse Trump are keeping the unsaved from ever coming to Christ, the Church, and Christianity, which is equally a sin.
2
How does Edsall explain that for 3 years since the election the public has been made award of the pervasiveness of fake news and micro targeting? We don't need to know the new IT slang terms to know a fake ad coming at us out of the blue. For that matter how does Edsall explain that for all of the $$$ thrown at the election by Trump and Parscale, Trump LOST by nearly 3 million votes and eked out a bare with in 4 states with a meager 78000 votes?
Anyone think the fake news is going to be picked up again by the NYTimes again? I do not. And without reinforcement by legitimate news sources, fake news looks exactly like what it really is---propaganda.
1
Just break up the union already, and each country gets the prezident it wants. problem solved!
1
We don't even have a nominee yet. And I'm not sure that "freaking out" is the appropriate phrase for what's going on at the DNC. I find your columns to be almost always pessimistic and alarmist. Let's take a step back.
2
A little off topic, but some background might be useful.
Subliminal misinformation (lies) has been used to control people in the past, and today. For those who haven't seen this.........it's worth a watch.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html
This is what it is being done with the internet these days, subliminally affecting how people think. An old Karl Rove joke, but still applicable today, shows Karl Rove talking to Plato and saying: "but surely you agree that truth can be created by the repetition of a lie".
Artificial Intelligence can be beneficial, but it's also being used today to control how people think and behave, not unlike the Chinese "re-education" camps
There should be a law against it, but the people who make the laws don't want it 'cause it'll effect their social status and bottom line.
Vote, Vote, Vote!
3
Liberals can't resist eating their own young and Trump is the end result.
It's funny watching these random questions being submitted by the Senators.
Looks like the Democrat House Managers are all reading from prepared scripts, almost like they spent all night with the 47 Democrat Senators writing out their questions for them and preparing their powerpoints and video clips.
That's the problem. This was supposed to be random questions. Looks like the WH counsel is legit answering the questions without using slideware and using their intellect and knowledge of the case and legal basis only.
That's called authenticity.
The D's even got mixed up sending one older blonde lady up to answer a question and she got called back to the table so the other older blonde lady could go answer.
Got their cue cards mixed up.
Ooops.
5
I recognize that I am not normal. I make my political and voting decisions based on the policies that a candidate has supported or will support, not advertising. What all of this points to is a society and a culture that has become incapable of rational, independent, and critical thinking. This is really sad, but not really surprising. If you want to know what sells, look at a supermarket checkout line. When I hear people complain about politics and politicians, I have one response. If you want to know what is wrong with our political system go home and take a hard look in the mirror. I suspect that you can tell me all about your favorite sports team. Do you know who your state representative is, your state senator, your congressman or US Senator? Most people can't. A democratic republic is only as wise as its voters. I live in Wisconsin where rural voters have been voting against their own interests for years now. Our Universities are in crisis. Our roads are worse than many developing countries. My kids are being encouraged to leave as are many other bright kids. I can't believe that you would be persuaded how to vote by a Facebook post, but I already counted three obviously fake posts this morning in my feed. Meanwhile the world burns and idiots are told how to vote by garbage. The only solution I can think of is to ban the commercial collection and of personal data by any entity.
4
Out on the Hustings
What a fine how-de-do, all the Dems are half baked -
We’re out in the dessert and our thirst can’t be slaked,
Out on the hustings, all the bumblers are seeking
Support from the voters, like sheep they’re all bleating
“My program is better; my good heart is beating” -
(Remember the Bern, with his questionable ticker
Wont last nine innings as his heart goes a twitter);
“Wait up” cry the Dems, “for Sir Lancelot Bloomberg,”
Bright, shiny and fresh but stiff as a Homburg;
Can’t relate like Herr Trumpster to the yahoos on call,
Who’ll will pull the trigger, vote for Trump ion the fall.
Superb classic NYT reporting as it should be.
1
I guess all those tech savvy, oh so woke millennials need to get it in gear or those OK Boomer Rubes are going to kick their skinny tales in the general election.
3
Maddening. Hello Silicon Valley? Democrats need some help here.
1
Oh I thought it was the Russians who elected Trump in 2016. Change your mind about that, did you now?
1
The irony of Catholicism - supporting the biggest liar of all times, not to mention immoral.
Why I gave up Parish Nursing as part of my nurse in retirement gig....Just couldn’t take the hypocrisy of “the church” people anymore.
4
Well, such is life; such is the wealthy, cunning elite's attack dogs. Money, which buys, processes & uses digital information, is a very powerful 'tool' for the richest Americans. Good to know & express, even advertise it. Tell America they're being used by the wealthy & their technological prowess.
The Catholic group that opposes abortion & gay marriage must have other issues of interest. Yes? If they don't they're bad citizens, & if they do, then talk about their top two & what Democrats have done to limit unwanted pregnancies & talk about the % of Americans that do believe in gay marriage. Then, talk about the poor & inequality, the climate & concentrated wealth, homelessness & unaffordable housing. Be real.
Also, let's be sure to ever-mention the trolls, bots, shamers, haters & ne'er-do-wells from America & other countries, like Russia, that foment anger, division, tension, mistrust, fake news & the like. The internet is a breeding ground of lies, from Facebook on down. Repeat the simple, obvious & important 'facts' about today's digital world (including the political world).
Edsall's a good man. That's all he needs to be, all he can be. As most prophets say, 'Just be a good person'. Not just be here now, be your good, pure, honorable self here now.
We are seeing much of this flowering due to the monster-in-chief. He's shown us clearly what can happen when greedy, selfish, bullying, bragging, self-righteous, liars are elected to lead. We're much better than that. Go.
1
What did everyone think was happening in Obama's secret "cave"? They are shocked, shocked...
4
@AACNY
Name one Obama official that was convicted of crimes and sent to prison?
Keep searching.......
3
@Futbolistaviva
They were data mining. Not a crime. And no one raised an eyebrow.
1
It makes me sick to think that the Little Sisters of the Poor would support Trump.
3
@dave d
It might be making them sick too. After all, they are Catholic nuns.
You know, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife,” and all that jazz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Sisters_of_the_Poor
Although some of us thought that Trump's 'base' (one third of U.S. population!!!) was clueless if not credulous about the obstinate lying of their idol ('who has no clothes!'), the dogma 'truth' to them, I must admit that Trump, however ignorant he is (by choice, hence, malevolous), remains a shrewd demagogue and an expert distractor from his own stupidity. This, besides being committed to always self-promoting his mantra of 'fear, resentment and division'...and rein unhinged by the rule of law. Very dangerous indeed, to both our credibility and security.
Don't forget that Pascale has the GRE in Russia at his disposal and various other hackers in that fetid swamp of software disrupters.
1
"The Mass Poisoning of American's Minds"
---that would have been a better title.
2
History is replete with examples of truly horrible and detestable people who were very popular. Why should Trump be any different?
After all, he's the leader of the biggest cult in the world right now. The cult of the uneducated, self-serving, self-absorbed,, morally bankrupt racist. And apparently there is still a very large minority of them in this country right now.
And they fill me with the one feeling that any Trumpster most wants everyone else to feel about them - shear and utter disgust. It's their oxygen isn't it? And it has been from the days of his first "rallies". Events witch have precious little difference from their predecessors in Nuremberg.
"Get Out And Hate - 2020!", should be their slogan for the upcoming campaign. If it isn't already.
Freaking out? Why?
Ignorance is overwhelmingly prevalent. People who get their news of the world from facebook aren't the types who actually bother to vote.
Stop worrying.
1
My feeling is once we know who the Democratic nominee will be trump will experience some of the nastiest attack ads any incumbent has ever endured and he will have earned and deserves every single one of them.
1
I am favoring Mike Bloomberg for the Democratic candidate for President.
It's unconscionable that the Democratic National Committee is allowing this "digital advantage" to continue. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York would not allow this if nominated by the Democrats.
The American Crisis indeed.
1
So what? Most of Trump's fans get their news from either Fox of Facebook. Fox is Americas Pravda, a propaganda machine that won't change. Facebooks algorithm won't send any Democratic ads to them, only Trump positive, and a high percentage of Trump's people don't own computers. They have land lines for crying out loud. I wish the Democratic leadership will grow a spine and pick two or three front runners and get on with it. The GOP is relying on "divide and conquer" and the DNC is helping them.
1
"@American Expat. I know lots of Catholics who will vote for Trump solely because of the abortion issue, which they explicitly relate to their faith." >>> that is the problem with Americans. we want things NOW. instant gratification. there oughta be a law. most times, not laws but better behavior. 1. we do not have a homogeneous society. 2. we have a society where much of what is important is based on a cycle - quarterly profit, 4 year presidential elections, monthly bills. 3. when we do not have the grit to take a stand for a party, but flip between them, we will never get the benefit of the party nor will we maintain the
work the party has initiated. 4. you do not vote for one issue. you vote for many because some will get worked and some will not. 5. until you vote in all elections, not just the presidential, you will not have people in offices that have some similar hopes for the country or state or locality. 6. President Obama had to work with a Congress that had senate majority leader McConnell state from the get go he would undertake any action to stop any project by Obama. 7. until Americans really get a grasp of American politics and the dirt that is thrown, thrown in our faces, we will never make this American experiement work for everyone. 8. and when the party you stand with behaves so relentlessly to undermine this country, when lies are the normal speech and destroying character is a daily exercise, you do have the option to move on.
1) Add in the GOP's lack of shame about lying and this is quite dangerous.
2) Shocker, the photo of the Trump rally is all White people.
3) Our laws and regulations cannot keep pace with all of the technological advances and loopholes.
4) There is too much money in politics.
5) Who cares if you're targeting people at Trump rallies? They are obviously all in.
I hope Michael Bloomberg steps in to shore up the Democratic political effort because our party is utterly incapable of taking effective action. In 2018 I would have bet Trump had no chance of re-election. Now, with our pathetic potential nominees and lousy party leadership, it looks like Trump will have four more years to destroy the country.
1
Trump is perhaps one of the best campaigners with one of the best teams I’ve ever seen. Trump works circles around adversaries and his team is extremely efficient & knows where to go. On the contrary Hillary was one of the worst campaigners in the history of the country. Not only did she think a victory was a sure thing, she thought she was entitled to it, resulting in a very lazy effort. She didn’t even go to states in the blue wall. We all know the result.
3
Social media and its uses is an area that urgently needs regulation. Subliminal advertising, for instance, is not allowed on TV, but on Facebook it appears all the time. We're being manipulated *without knowing it*.
America was founded and the US Constitution was written during the Age of Reason by men who subscribed to Enlightenment thinking. We are now about as far removed from those principles as can be. Now we live in a dystopian age of Orwellian manipulation and inverted totalitarianism.
2
Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. Everyone should read the Selling of the President 1968, by Joe McGinniss. It demonstrated that Nixon, who lost in 1960, could be repackaged and sold to the voters. The medium may have changed from television to internet, but the message is the same. It's all about packaging and marketing. Republicans are unafraid to lie and then amplify those lies to retain power at all costs. Democrats don't play that game. The bitter reality is that it will take a large sum of money to compete. The only person with that amount of money is Michael Bloomberg. So if the Democrats want to win, they have to spend MORE money than the Republicans and spend it smarter. Again, only Bloomberg has the pockets to do this. He is the only one Trump's people really fear. If the Democrats are serious about winning, Bloomberg is the only choice, like it or not. Ultimately, elections are about selling candidates and that takes money, not principles. Sad to say, but true.
Trump's "advantage" is his ability to attract 3 key categories of voters: Evangelicals, everyone opposed to allowing abortion, the wealthy. It will be almost impossible for Democrats to peel away voters in the first 2 categories. As for the 3rd., sadly it seems there are too many people of wealth who support Trump. That being said, Democrats certainly have morality and decency on their side and with a focused and save campaign by the eventual nominee, we can only hope and pray that Donald Trump will be a one term mistake.
@Victor Parker I'm surprised Democrats don't gather information on the people that attend Trump rallies. Bernie and Mayor Pete believe they can peel off a lot of Trump voters. I don't know why they think that.
When The Don Lemon Comedy Hour has a good laugh about Trump voters, it means, they have no clue who Trump voters are, what they want, don't want and what could make them flip.
Do any Democrat voters know what motivates Trump voters? If you do, it's because you know and interact with them. The TV talkers really are clueless. Do Democrat voters get a sense there will be a big rush of Trump voters to a Democrat? I don't.
1
Throughout the Obama presidency, oldster, rural relatives sometimes forwarded very slickly made anti-Obama emails. They weren't a thinking person's political discourse, and they were often offensive, but they were effective with a certain demographic. I marveled then that the Dems didn't even show up for that game, so I shouldn't be surprised now. At some point, it takes a lot of nerve for incompetence to ask for your vote.
This is merely an extension of what happened with "hate talk radio". It is easy to fire people up with "government is hopeless" and various apocalyptic messages, and "fired up" people tend to not think clearly.
Those who do think clearly tend not to pay much attention or put much weight on either online-only messaging or talk radio no matter how ubiquitous they are. With any misused information technology, the cure will always be to promote both hopefulness and critical reasoning.
1
This article begs the question: how does one truly block their data stream / GPS position if using smartphones and social media?
Can personal attestations posted to social media sites stating refusal of all transmission of personal data to non-approved entities be legally binding and bypass any contrary statements in the legalese documents on such sites?
Or will such a concept need to be legislated through Congress?
Can someone use Google Maps, etc., or their GPS locator for directional assistance without transmitting this signal to unseen entities who use this information for their own needs? ( I do not think this is possible, just asking the question).
Moreover, should entities using geofencing, identity resolution technologies, location analytics, etc., be required to broadcast their location and intent so that persons not wanting to "participate" have the ability to block this?
I personally would like to have my GPS signal in my smartphone blocked unless I am actively using an app requiring such a signal....
1
@padgman1
If you want directional assistance without transmitting a signal, use a compass and a map. Way too many people seem to have forgotten geographic literacy, even in places they've lived in for years.
No, you can't block your GPS signal and still have a functioning device. For your cell phone to function as a phone and send/receive calls, it needs to connect to the nearest cell tower. That requires knowing your location in relation to nearby towers.
1
@Viv
I grew up in the age of AAA maps, my geographic literacy is quite adequate...
So much for blocking my location from unwanted scrutiny...
1
It doesn't matter. The momentum has been on the Democrat's side since 2016 and it's only growing. Turnout will be legendary. Trump will go down in flames. As will the GOP controlled Senate. Then we'll have just 2 short years to fix it all - Green New Deal, Citizen's United dark money, the electoral college, partisan gerrymandering, SCOTUS, all the cabinet depts which have been demolished by Trump, education, entitlements (restore and increase) and, most importantly, establish ironclad irreversible rules to prevent anyone like Donald Trump from every becoming president again.
2
The Democrats’ reliance in “consultants” is the problem. Most of them are retreads from the Clinton era and technologically illiterate. This is yet another symptom of their utter refusal to see that times have changed and that corporatist Clintonism is not going to cut it anymore.
3
@Jill C.
The Obama campaign team were very tech-y and that was perceived as groundbreaking, innovative and not at all inappropriate.
You are correct that the DNC is a nightmare to work with for tech people. That's why it's no surprise that Hillary had her maid print out papers and Huma was working on her husband's laptop.
1
As Ted Koppel said last night on channel 13, though the internet is in some ways a blessing, it is otherwise a weapon of mass destruction.
3
@Darchitect That’s what an old person would say.
Let's also keep simple math in mind. The GOP has ONE person in which it's support is concentrated. The multi-candidate Democratic race does not, and likely won't until there is a nominee.
81
@EBD By the time you have a nominee, they're going to be broke unless his name is Bloomberg.
Question is how much of his $2 billion net worth is he willing to sell to buy his way into the White House?
2
@EBD
The Dem problem isn't the lack of one nominee. It's the fact that they can't agree what they stand for, and vilify people who want to go back to the party's FDR values.
9
@Viv An interesting observation.
We went through the same family food fight in the GOP from 2010-2018 before settling on Patriotic Populism as our new mantra.
The only remaining bold move is getting the rest of the Establishment R's who're reluctant to cede power...to agree to a 44% tax rate on any income over $5 million.
Time for the top of the hierarchy to yield a bit of their power and influence to those 300,000,000 Americans beneath them...each seeking their way up the hierarchy (nature dictates this....).
Your party hasn't reconciled your 2016 loss, let alone the complicity of the D Establishment that has marginalized and minimized the working class all over America.
You have to understand though..until you reconcile that issue in your own party..nothing is going to change on our Patriotic Populism side.
Most of the working class who consider themselves red blooded Americans have already made their decision.
Warren and Sanders are fighting over scraps; in essence the Socialist/Marxist Populists..which make up at best 15% of the total electorate and 30-35% of Demcrats.
4
Democrats still don't understand that they are in a propaganda war and that propaganda works.
While Trump has been spending millions on micro-targeted anti-impeachment ads, except for small belated efforts by Bloomberg and Steyer, Democrats have written off half the country as anti-impeachment and nothing to do about those yahoos and sit on their hands.
3
Here is the danger of focusing on a single campaign tactic, it ignores bad policy decisions as well as bad candidates issues and allows, in this case, the Democrats to blame "tech" for their failure. This article also ignores who is the most tech savvy and who has put together a powerful "tech" campaign fast and that is Bloomberg. People in the public sector are tremendously ignorant on technology because our public sector is at least one if not four generations behind on technology systems. Just look at the post office.
This is why if you want to beat Trump you need someone more savvy than him, like Bloomberg.
2
I was all in for Warren but I’m starting to think that Bloomberg might be the only one to beat Trump. Maybe with Kamala Harris as his VP.
I'm a hard-core liberal, and even I've been marketed to online by the Trump campaign for the past 1-2 yrs. Time for the DNC to wake up.and get organized.
Bloomberg is smart and committing $1B to the Democratic ticket. Trained as an engineer, Mike can figure this out even if the DNC cannot.
1
@Kat Perkins This all depends on the Democrats allowing Bloomberg to help.
Democratic Strategist. That's an oxymoron if there ever was one. As a lifelong avowed Democrat, I am embarrassed by the ineptitude of the party and it worries me greatly.
The one thing that the Republicans have over the Democrats is there ability to unify behind a goal or a person, regardless of how despicable and deplorable it or he may be.
The Democrats need to coalesce into a single minded group with the sole intention of beating Donald Trump and retiring the Republican majority. Even of Trump loses and the Republicans hold the majority in the Senate, the country will be at a standstill and with a hamstrung Democratic president.
So here it is Dems. Set aside you high minded principles of free education and healthcare for all and focus on what really matters. If we don't reclaim the White House and the senate, nothing you hope for will matter. And far worse, we will loose the Supreme Court for the rest two to three generations. Can you live with that?
Sanders or Warren will not appeal to the critical Independent and moderate Republicans.
I miss the good ol' days of smoke filled backrooms where party bosses picked the candidates. At least they know what they were doing... sometimes.
Last I knew, there's a long-time federal ban on political campaign activity by charities and churches. Why is the Catholic Church, a tax-exempt organization, allowed to do this? Where is IRS enforcement?
2
What IRS? They have been completely gutted. The remaining few spend their time going after waitresses who didn’t include all their tips on their tax forms.
1
My impression of Trump's online support is that it is limited to the following groups:
1. Trolls, mostly of unknown origin, but also including a surprising number of young men from Third World countries who scold Americans for not accepting "God's gift to their country." Victims of fundamentalist missionaries or unemployed men earning some American cash? Either way, they can't vote.
2. Among my personal acquaintances, people who were mean and dumb in high school.
3. Older people who became addicted to AM talk radio while stuck in suburban traffic and have since added Fox News to the mix.
4. People whose whole existence is centered on their personal wealth and who declare that they are "life-long Democrats" (a sign that they are nothing of the sort) but will vote for Trump if Sanders or Warren are nominated.
5. People caught in the pseudo-Christian megachurch total information environment. They have their own schools, media, and social clubs, and are taught that anything outside that sphere is evil.
Beyond those relatively small groups, there are the "vote blue no matter who" (actual) Democrats and the 50% of Americans who currently don't vote but could be persuaded if the Democrats came up with some hook other than "Trump is awful."
1
@Pdxtran
If only it were that simple
1
"whose organization opposes abortion and gay marriage"
When will these folks figure out that gay people aren't the ones having abortions?
1
What comes through loudest and clearest in this frightening report is the centrality of Facebook in the digital manipulation of American voters. Facebook is the last mile that most of this geotargeted disinformation has to travel—without Facebook, there’d be nowhere else for it to go.
Call me a technophobe, but if I were given godlike powers to use in the public interest for just five seconds, I think I’d use them to make Facebook disappear forever from our national life.
1
After Warren gets through offending hard working people, Bernie will be the only Democratic nominee We already know how that that will go in the election!!
1
"In 2016, Trump spent far more than Hillary Clinton on digital campaigning . . ."
Who was her communications director, and why isn't that name synonymous with incompetence?
1
The entertainment "crowd" started ridiculing Donald Trump from the start, when he came down the escalator with Melania Trump. A sizable "never Trumpers" also organized giving credence to the entertainers.
Meanwhile, he stealthily captured the Evangelical community and ultra-right wingers by providing hard-right judges' names for the Supreme Court & federal courts.
And Trump managed to get the nomination & sneaked into the White House, pushing aside a formidable Hillary Clinton.
However, Donald Trump exhibited his sheer inadequacy to be the POTUS, which gave his detractors hope. He's now feared by Republicans who want to resist him. They forget to distinguish between fear and loyalty.
Meanwhile a whole bunch of Democrats thought they can be president. A record 27 or 28 men and women jumped into the arena in a hurry thinking that they can easily beat this "clown." They all looked silly. Meanwhile, some like Mitch Landrieu who who had a good chance to beat Trump stayed away. One by one folded. Still there are a dozen running. 78-year-old Bernie Sanders is now at the top, displacing 77-year-old Joe Biden. The tussle between "moderates" & "leftists" is not pretty either.
I fear in the end, it may turn out like 1984 & 2004 with Trump winning, which will be disastrous. I am not at all optimistic.
I wish Democrats rallied behind Pete &/or Amy. Both have a fair chance to beat Trump.
1
No worries. Trump may have the ads but not the opportunity to repeat 2016. The answer to this riddle is Trump is one dunce getting all The GOP money while the DEMOCRATS are fragmented in their efforts among several candidates. In addition, the GOP just needs one organization while the Democrats need many, one per candidate. No sweat.
This is the most depressing thing I have read in a long time. The fact that people online are referred to as “influencers” is enough for me to block out all online propaganda. I will not let online ads influence my thinking or vote.
1
The internet is the natural environment of lies and extremist propaganda. While that is not a solution for Democrats it is an explanation as to why Trump's campaign appears to be doing well online.
2
Cannot believe that the Democrats are freaked out about this. You would have thought that given the sophistication and effectiveness of the Trump 2016 campaign, they would have learned by now that online and social media are critical factors in running an election campaign today. This should not be news to anyone, least of all the party that was beaten by an outsider last time round.
If the party does not have someone as good as or preferably better than Brad Parscale on board by now, they need to hire someone today, and pay whatever that costs.
Note to the DEM party: Please don't disappoint the millions of us out there who are counting on you to figure out how to beat this dreadful creature in the White House. Failure in digital is failure in politics 101.
Democratic anti-Trump ads have been pulling their punches.
Trump keeps betraying America to Vladimir Putin, on account of the billions that he owes to Russian oligarchs.
But most Americans are not aware of this, particularly if they just follow Fox News.
What is needed as the election approaches is a saturation campaign in social media and cable tv, accusing Trump of treason, with multiple video clips of him apologizing for Putin and endorsing the Russian narrative on Ukraine, election hacking, etc.
If you want to fight with Trump, there is no way to keep from getting dirty.
2
Trump has brilliantly delegated the trashing of the Democratic candidates to the Democrats. Maybe he is a stable genius after all, as the Democrats don’t seem too be too clever.
3
@LTJ
Sorry, what?
1
This has been the story since 2016. Social media was a stinking web of hate speech utilized by Trump allies. Mobile phones are being used to locate and propagandize voters. Its been stated that most of the political advertising for 2020 will be on Facebook and other similar internet sights. Edsall provides an excellent explanation of how the GOP has an advantage. If the GOP had run a less polarizing abrasive candidate in 2016 they would won the popular vote. The Democrats still control the mainstream corporate news media because they loathe Trump and for good reason. Trump is a mean spirited corrupt racist plutocrat of the worst sort. If Trump wins in 2020, which certainly is still very much in doubt, the noise from the Democrats will be great. Schiff's paranoid bombast in the Senate trial of Trump will be brazenly raised to question the election results.
Trump and Facebook have a huge advantage; They can lie and break the law. Democrats follow the rules
1
He has a LOT of outside help.
1
Yet for all of their advantages, Donald Trump still lost the popular vote count in 2016.
124
@Zelda Bee The popular vote doesn’t elect the President just like the most number of baskets made doesn’t necessarily win a basketball game.
26
@Zelda Bee You're right, and it doesn't matter.
It's like playing checkers against me who's playing chess.
You can jump my pieces all your way to the other side of the board yelling "King Me" but all it means is you're playing an entirely different game.
Too bad Betty McCullom's Congressional disrict is being phased out after 2020 after the Census.
I really liked her.
Omar can pick up most of the district and Tom Emmer can take over the rest.
4
@John
Since when does something other than points decide the winner of a basketball game?
3
Even the most advanced and sophisticated use of social media will not get Trump re-elected.
The key to his second term is the tried and true, low-tech, base that got him elected.
Political prognostication is a lot like predicting the weather. Both often offer predictions that prove inaccurate.
Trump is going to win on lose based almost entirely on what he has accomplished and how he was comported himself as president.
As is true of any cult, the Trumpians will vote for him no matter what.
But there are many 2016 Trump voters who having witnessed the first term will not repeat their mistake.
Then there are the many voters who stayed home in the last election believing there was no need to vote as Trump was sure to lose.
I was one such non-voter.
I won't get fooled again.
1
The problem is not "dark media" or whatever. The problem is that the Republicans are doing a better job at politicking than the Democrats. Why don't the Dems just get going? I am sure that the Dems have thousands of political consultants who are smart and have lots of good ideas to get the Dems message out. There is not asymmetry that somehow biases the whole election process in favor of the GOP. You might notice that the Dems control the House.
1
Oh, please. The Republicans have it easy, because they already have a candidate. All of their money and attention goes to Trump (which is exactly the way he likes it). When Dems finally nominate a candidate, we will all get behind that one person, and it will all be much clearer and easier from there on in. We are lucky to have a plethora of excellent candidates, any one of whom would be a better president than Trump. I am bombarded by email requests from Democratic candidates and groups, which is sometimes tiresome, but on the whole, we are lucky to have so many grassroots groups doing all kinds of work for the many new Democratic candidates for House and Senate. It means that we finally have more choices, and that the old Democratic machine is not as important any more. We are organizing a whole new party from the ground up, and that's a good thing!
3
Just to be a spoilsport, but I find it very difficult to believe that a bunch of completely inept people - right from the very top - is suddenly brilliant, BRILLIANT, I tell you, in digital advertising.
Having said that, I think what Trump's team was effective at was to get, well, the basket of um, his supporters, to come out of the woodwork and vote. The algorithms that drive the ads, finally, feed on reinforcement of beliefs. And those beliefs still appeal to those who already belong to that basket. They don't reach - and therefore convince - anybody else.
Fortunately, that basket still represents a minority. DJT is still a historically unpopular candidate. It was true before the 2016 elections, on the day of his getting elected and thereafter. What we, i.e. those who are not in the basket, have to make sure is that we stay motivated. Just vote. The number of items outside the basket are still comfortably more than those within. The laws of math still work. Greater than 50 is still more than less than 50.
Just vote.
3
@SB There are approximately 250 million adult Americans. Only around 123 million of them voted in 2016. It’s really hard to say what the actual consensus is in a country where so many do not vote.
While the Democrats held an internal contest to see who was the most woke of the lot, and then went all out to defeat the one guy who was organized (that was Sanders), the GOP closed ranks, advanced and solidified gains.
The Democrats are still trying to find their own soul, the GOP is surging forward.
By the time you realize there was a race with the GOP, the election will be over.
Whose fault was that?
3
Neither my wife nor I do social media. We punch MUTE when political ads appear. We carry cell phones for emergency calls. In all this, I know we're not alone. It takes work to steer clear of the political drivel that's engulfing us--and find factual infomation on a candidate's qualifications--but that's an utter necessity. The future of the nation depends on all of trying to do so.
2
I hear in our cemeteries the sound of the founding fathers graves turning over and over. They did the best humanity could to preserve the republic. The question is will Trump and his Republicans destroy it, replaced with the most powerful dictatorship on Earth. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, I hope not.
1
I hope people follow their hearts and vote for a candidate with compassion and values in 2020. It won't be enough to appeal to the head. People act on their emotions in ways we don't fully understand yet. Most psychology is cognitive. Our understanding of economics still largely assumes rational decision-makers. We celebrate technology as if all of it comes from calm, reasoned analysis only, instead of a mix of reason and doses of intuition, hunches and luck. Knowing is half the battle. But people don't remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel.
1
Wishy washy as of habit, this pundit continues to mislead.
Bernie had gathered so much momentum that this paper is covering him everyday at their top level.
Bernie will be the Democratic nominee and will trounce Trump.
He will bring social democracy to the nation and Rawlsian Justice.
4
@Blunt Let me be equally “Blunt.” If the Democrats end up nominating Bernie they will lose the general election in a way not seen since McGovern in 1972. I like Bernie in the same way I loved my crazy uncle, but I would vote for my crazy uncle either.
2
It all comes down to turnout. The Republicans will need to microtarget every voter because the majority is against them. Dems just need to ensure that their voters get to the poll and that Republican voter disenfranchisement (because this is a partisan activity) is unsuccessful.
1
The three most important factors in ensuring Democratic Party success at the polls are voter turnout, voter turnout and voter turnout.
Enough said.
2
As with all things that are polled and tested and data driven - so much sits outside of what can be gathered or interpreted. Perhaps, as seems likely, most of the people who will vote for Trump needn't be convinced. Those who might not be as enthusiastic this time around, well, perhaps there will be bad weather on that day, or they will forget to send in their ballot (etc) - not knowing who the likely Democratic candidate is - those of us who will vote the Democratic ticket regardless don't need convincing, those whose vote is dependent on the candidate, but are more inclined to vote Democrat, well the same weather or lack of passion applies - this type of article - while it fills up space and is an engaging if at time tone deaf. Donald Trump spent more than Hillary in digital ads and lost the popular vote by 3million - yeah I know, it's the Electoral College that mattered. But still and all - with qualifiers like " it is quite possible that Mr. Trump's heavy reliance on digital media allowed for a more efficient and targets ad campaign" just means that we'll be able to know more and read that data & polls once the Democrats make their choice, until then, I'm going to enjoy the carnival of the GOPs suicide mission.
Political campaigns have been identifying their potential voters and targeting them for as long as politics has been a science, and can't be criticized now for simply using the tools available to to make that process better. It's a political arms race, & candidates must enter it, or risk the consequences of failure. Once again, we have confirmation that the Clinton campaign of 2016 was extremely misguided. Was that because her and her staff just assumed they would win?
3
Trump's campaign may be ahead of any one Democrat's campaign. However, there are many Democrats now.
Is he ahead of all of them combined?
Could they, would they, combine their efforts for the general election?
The specialists of those who lose the primary will be either without jobs, or signed up with the winner. Will their data bases come with them?
This is only the first part of a story that could end either way.
The Dems have had the online advantage for years. I suspect that this article is more than a bit hyperbolic.
We know that everything Trump does is the biggest, so proclaiming this big advantage seems like more of the same...hot air and piffle from the extreme right. No surprises there.
1
Rather shallow to suggest that infrequent or unregistered voters will automatically vote for Trump because they're catholic. Also, while perhaps still identifying as "Democrat," not likely that many Trump rally-goers weren't already Trump supporters, so how rich a mine is that really?
1
Our laws are decades behind technology and the people these unregulated election practices are helping to elect undoubtedly won't do anything to fix them - why give your reelection campaign a disadvantage?
1
I have only donated small amounts to primary candidates so far, totaling less than $100. However, because what I care about is removing Trump, I will go all in for the general election. I know others who are like me is this regard, preferring to reserve our money for after the convention.
4
How long will it take for the lethargic Democrats to catch up - 10, 20 years? They could, right now, be going after the same voters that Trump's campaign is targeting and, at least, nullifying the effects of the propaganda and disinformation. I'm not getting my hopes up.
4
If what this article describes to be a sophisticated digital interference campaign to persuade voters to reelect Trump, imagine its power when multiplied by the equally sophisticated apparatus of the Russian efforts on the ready to be deployed, if not already in place. These internet operations are increasingly impossible to contain on all levels. Can we really count on our government to control what seems to be uncontrollable to insure free and fair elections? I think not.
2
While Democrats struggle to define a political identity and yet to discover a candidate, Republicans are busy preparing to win the next election.
6
@blgreenie they may be preparing to win, but that doesn't mean they will win. Look, the president is a crook, the whole world knows it, and even if he is "re-elected" in 2020, even the worst fascists fall eventually, as will Trump and his Koch funded backwards movement.
1
I am pretty certain that political organization over the internet and social media is more established within liberal social groups than conservative ones. They tend to be educated professionals, who are technically saavy and can often do this on the clock (if they have a clock) and are more cosmopolitan and socially engaged, in general.
Claire McCaskill lost Missouri for a number of reasons, like her deep support of Hillary and the DNC, her private jetting and overall corruption. But very low on the list would be from this internet campaign targeting Catholics. This kind of reporting is a misdirection.
10
@Jackson
Zero data, just surmising.... For instance, I don't believe the demographics of Trump support do not match up well with those of broadband use, in contrast to liberal supporters. I could be mistaken, of course.
Guys, I’m worried if we don’t nominate Bernie sanders, whose campaign as by far the most robust online presence in its strategy and its supporters, the democrats will lose again. We need to make sure we unite behind the campaign that has the strongest proven online prowess
4
Perhaps the woke progressive wing of the party believes that having a sophisticated data operation is "politics as usual."
After all, it does take a lot of money, something that the Trump campaign has in abundance.
I have five suggestions for the Democrat party.
1. Accept across all wings of the party, progressive and moderate, that defeating Donald Trump is the primary goal - by any means necessary.
2. Fire Tom Perez. Let's all admit he's been a disaster. He's presided over a dysfunctional primary process. Compared to the RNC, the party is practically bankrupt. I, for one, thought the party did pretty well under Howard Dean's leadership.
3. Either nominate Mike Bloomberg or accept his pledge to help the eventual nominee with his massive campaign war chess and best in class data operations.
4. Stop vilifying billionaires and the tech industry. Tech billionaires, in particular, are data experts and more inclined to support democratic candidates. Candidates and the party can hardly afford to turn down money from anyone, let alone smart money.
5. Fix finance reform after we've elected a new president.
9
Let me get this straight. Trump is bashing China continuously for their law-enforcement based "surveillance state", while at the same time creating the most sophisticated, unregulated, totally politicized surveillance system ever. Nice.
5
Trump’s electronic campaign is meaningless. Fox News is meaningless. These are not the things that will drive conservative and moderate folks to the voting booth.
What’s going to cost the Democrats are their own crazy positions. In various ways the Dems have staked out inflexible and indefensible positions on ...
Charter schools - dead set against them
Health insurance - ban private coverage?!
Higher taxes
Increased social spending without personal responsibility for one’s own improvement
Bail “reform” - revolving door of people now committing felonies!
Oil & gas Pipelines - hate “em
Improved power lines - NIMBY
build more housing - set asides and NIMBY
Renewables - demand them, then block all attempts to actually implement them
“Mass incarceration” - deal drugs, run around with guns, go to jail - not hard to avoid being caught with drugs and guns, don’t do it
Speech police
Thought police
The Democrats are perfectly capable of ruining their chances of winning. I have plenty of faith in them. No need to blame others for their own shortcomings.
18
@Vote For Giant Meteor In 2020
Good points, but the Dems also hurt themselves by condescending to those with different views. e.g. "deplorables" and "clinging to their guns and religion."
If liberals were as smart as they think they are, they would be able to curb their holier-than-thou mentality.
3
@Vote For Giant Meteor In 2020
I think you know you have misrepresented all of these positions. Or maybe Fox is not meaningless after all. For you.
Considering Facebook is going to allow Trump and his campaign to lie and spread disinformation at will - it is little wonder others are worried.
7
First of all I don't understand how any of this is legal. But how does this stuff work?
So they get your phone number and then are able to send ads to your Facebook? How? How do they link you phone number to your Internet activity?
I don't give my phone number out to anybody I don't know. And I would never put it on Facebook.
2
Maybe Trump campaign has a sophisticated digital strategy but that's not my personal experience of it.
Every day I get numerous Trump ads and solicitations on my Facebook feed, no matter how many times I click on the "angry face" icon and place links to Biden's fundraising page in his comments section.
I hope he's paying money for those ads, and perhaps millions of others, because they're wasted. Maybe I'm making his campaign bleed just a little.
3
President Trump publicly announced within a week after taking office that he had started his 2020 re-election campaign.
Has anyone been providing open public oversight of the Executive Branch's management of public resources *in real time*, to ensure that re-election costs have not been supplemented by tax dollars?
The Impeached President's rallies - so obviously focused on Trump's "successes" and demonstrably filled with lies and poorly veiled calls to foment racism and violent behaviour against "the other" - are blatant stump speeches.
For the record, I would ask the same questions of a Democrat President who displayed such words and actions.
4
And it's only going to get worse.
Specifically, the ability, as Edsall writes, "to segment ads based on inferred psychographic traits" is sure to become more and more refined as A.I. becomes better and better able to get thickly into the weeds of exactly what the "psychographic traits" are for each and every targeted voter. Then, for example, rather than running the heavy-handed "Idiot" ad sliming Biden as depicted in Edsall's column and, thus, possibly not reaching and maybe even turning off certain voters, the ad can be tailor-made to appeal to the specific preferences of each voter (though my guess is that for most of the Trump base, the "Idiot" ad is precisely the kind of ad which appeals to them).
Most frightening is, as one researcher is quoted as saying, the expectation that voters "should be able to figure this all out and manage it is absolutely ludicrous." In other words, worse than sheep, we will become little more than robots programmed by ...well, real robots and those who control them.
3
Trump's level of connection with his voters is at the online intellectual level. Dems appeal to people's intellect and decency. That doesn't play as well on line.
4
Hmmm, sounds smart to me.
While the Democrats are fighting how to ruin this economy with their tax plans, the republicans are reaching out and appealing to voters.
I think President Trump will get his second term.
11
Here’s a thought: beginning immediately, the NYT and WaPo should take down the paywall around all their political coverage through November 3. I share so many great pieces on Twitter, but too many people who might be persuadable can’t read them because they don’t have and can’t afford a subscription. By contrast, all the right-wing conspiracy mongering sites are free.
9
Wow, I agree with that! The paywall prevents a lot of factual information from reaching voters ! Your editorial board and business managers might want to consider leveling the playing field of information during this election year. As it is now, I cannot send any articles to interested friends after I talk about what I read in the NYT.
Thanks very much for this piece. Eye opening!
All these people with mobile aps receiving messaging telling them that affordable health care, decent wages & work conditions & a pollution free environment will cause the movers & shakers to pull up stakes & leave the country to serve a populace more appreciative of their largesse can certainly be influenced by 'individual attention' from those warning of the commies & moral degenerates trying to seize control of the nation under the pretense of making improvements.
Demos cannot lose patience & focus. Stay with the critical issues, that is, the economy & environment & make the case strongly for a revamped system long overdue.
2
If one trust tech without question, then guess what, pretty much anything is possible and thus "true".
Imagine the history books: USA crumbled in time because they believed in the God Tech (and Uber-Gott money).
Fools. Kill the internet. Quick.
(and yes, I am aware of the irony. sheesh.)
Democrats are not 'freaked out' by 'trump's digital advantage'; the fact is, our voters are not attracted to hateful messaging or susceptible to conspiracy theories or scaremongering. Trump's base gets vicarious thrills because their leader is a sexist, racist ignoramus that stole an election and goes on diatribes that tweak their hate instincts; his digital game is just more of the same.
The fact is, there are more of 'us' than 'them' as amply demonstrated in the 2018 election cycle. The republicans are going to lose the Senate, more seats in the House and Trump will be humiliated in the presidential race not just because 'swing voters' are abandoning trump but b/c the 'soft' hardcore supporters are hurt by his policies and sick and scared of the divisive nature of his politics.
It's over for trump and the gop.
3
@Juno
What, you don't think your side is going to "win" impeachment? Well, at least you are factually grounded on that question.
2
this may be true but the point is he only cares about his base and he has most of them.Id point out that ninety nine percent out there already know what they're doing.I think he likes to go online and admire himself as a great warrior with a big gun but we all know the truth.he would shoot a hole in his foot.
2
"We created ad campaigns targeted to mobile devices that have been inside of Catholic churches”
Jesus would be proud.
4
"Finally, there’s the question of the size of the value of Trump’s data/digital advantage. Big enough to enable him to win the popular vote? Almost certainly not. Big enough to win Wisconsin? Frighteningly so." The unfair player in the presidential election story, whose shadow campaign has been haunting our democracy since the eighteenth century, is the Electoral College, alluded to as though "below the radar of...government oversight." But there is government oversight--and that is the power of state legislatures to pass the National Popular Vote Bill that could annul the EC's power to annul our votes. The National Popular Vote Bill is two thirds of the way to becoming law, a law stating that all electoral votes will be given to the winner of the national popular vote, with no input needed from the federal government to bring this about. State legislatures with 196 electoral votes have already signed on and states with 74 more electoral votes are needed. The bill has been partially passed by at least one legislative chamber in 8 states possessing 75 electoral votes (AR, AZ, ME, MI, MN, NC, NV, OK) and has been unanimously approved at the committee level in 2 states possessing 27 more electoral votes (GA, MO). We are actually so close to one person, one vote, that, with more publicity, social pressure on these state legislatures, and campaigning (money spent) about this issue, we could be free of the Electoral College.
2
As a Catholic voter, I did not know that CatholicVote.org existed. I do now and will follow it religiously. Thank you.
30
@KMW
Do you really believe that false information designed to manipulate voters is a good or ethical?
12
I love your pun. It uplifted my spirits.
3
@KMW
Amen. I've joined their mobilization campaign to register potentially Trump voting Republican Catholics in the NoVa area. Sign up to help out on their site.
5
We really need regulation here. I should not attend a church with my cell phone and then without my awareness be added to a political database. We need a GDPR-type law in this country.
It also concerns me that technology is increasing the advantages incumbents already have. We saw the Obama team build a superior digital initiative in 2012, and it played a role in their victory. Playing fields are already slanted toward incumbents - let's not make the problem worse than it already is.
1
To paraphrase - character and principles do not matter, only raw power to impose your will. And now that Republicans have tasted power - they will stack the deck to ensure that they get more than their fair share. In return their supporters will have their culture war victories, but they probably won't get a raise or better jobs or educational opportunities. We'll wait with bated breadth for the day when they wonder why they'll all fighting for the oligarchs scrapes....as they rail against raising the minimum wage because it might benefit someone they hate.
3
Catholics are pleased that they are being spied on in church for the purpose of becoming targets for political ads? So much for the seal of the confessional. So much for the separation of church and state.
For those who are only attending mass once a month, how will they feel when they start seeing messages on their phones telling them that they are not attending church frequently enough? Or when the other places they go that are not exactly spiritual, like say a strip club or a marijuana dispensary, are made available to the other members of their congregation and family? This is sinister beyond belief.
6
Democrats keep thinking that people will vote their rational self interests, and all the Party needs to do is point these out to voters. Since Republicans represent the interests of a very small portion of the public, self interest should lead to a Democratic dominance of politics. Unfortunately, everything we know about how people actually vote shows the Democratic approach is wrong. Until Democrats join the fray, Republicans will continue to dominate the government as they have done since 1980.
6
If Trump is not removed by the Senate they are essentially saying foreign meddling,money and help in our elections is a-ok. Democrats better take advantage of this and use it. Many countries want Trump to lose reelection.
6
@terri smith AMEN. Best post I have read in years.
Technological advantage? "Big enough . . . to win the popular vote? Almost certainly not." We're talking here about marginal advantage purchased at high cost and available to both sides if they want to spend the time and money to do it. Not exactly game-changing.
3
@Ronald B. Duke The popular vote is irrelevant.
1
The Republicans need to be freaked out by the recent information that the country is bifurcating into rural, poorer right wingers, and urban, better off left wingers.
You can see that in the electoral maps, which have blue islands (the big cities) in a sea of red (rural areas).
70 percent of the US population will soon live in cities.
My thinking on why that split is true is that people in urban, densely populated areas meet people who are different from themselves, and have to learn how to negotiate that situation, whereas rural areas are pretty homogeneous, so you can keep all of your opinions and not be forced to confront people with divergent opinions and lifestyles.
It turns out that people who are doing better financial, have better education, and have better economic futures are breaking for the Democrats. Republicans are playing a losing game, because demographics is working against them.
The Cult of Trump is going to implode, just as many rural areas are hollowing out and dying.
The Republicans need to worry about those trends, that will not be changed by their microtargeting efforts.
4
This is undoubtedly true but we can’t wait for this to just shake itself out given climate change. Waiting decades for demographics is a losing game.
1
@John
I am not suggesting just sitting around, twiddling one's thumbs.
I just wanted to point out what will be as inexorable as climate change, and it does not bode well for Republicans in the longer term.
2
Two thoughts, First, Democrats (or those leaning away from Trump), just vote and you will be amazed at what you will accomplish. Just ask Gov. Walker from WI if all those voter targeted ads worked in his state in 2018. Second, we need to elect new Representatives and Senators who actually know how the Internet operates as a business and how our right to privacy (Data) is being assaulted every day. Really, Republicans are tracking who goes to church?
6
This is really frustrating to anybody who knows how to run ads on social media. The dems are not taking tech seriously and they should--it would take ONE HIRE to create competition for the GOP media strategy. The democrats must look outside their bubble. ANYBODY IN DEMOCRATIC POLITICS please reach out to the top demand generation experts in Silicon Valley. It's the trojan horse that one side still doesn't know isn't actually a horse.
6
@Rob, excellent point! Please reach out to your local Democrats and also via email to the DNC.
It wasn’t that long ago that the digital advantage lay squarely on the Dem side. I’m perhaps over-simplifying but it seems all it took for the GOP to take the lead was to make their digital media strategy one of shamelessness (especially when it comes to lying - thanks, Facebook!) and 24/7 red meat. Extrapolate what you will about society.
4
Democratic money and effort is being spent on all the different candidates. They all have different strategies and experts. Trump is the only Republican candidate soo all their money, effort, strategy and experts are focused. No repetition. That gives Trump a huge advantage. If he loses the 2020 election it will only be because of Democrats coming out in astronomical numbers to vote. I sure wish the Democrats had their candidate now so they could be consolidating against Trump.
3
Mr. Edsall consistently focuses on reality. The headline is undoubtedly correct and frightening. Still, the Trump minority can only continue brain-washing the already committed or the unlikely to vote against him. The record 2016 voter turnout still left 45% of the voting eligible out of the booth.
More telling, the turnout in the 2018 midterm elections, a rebuke of Trump by any standard, was record level. Anecdotally, most of my acquaintances who voted for Trump will again vote for him, but a few have expressed disgust and avowed to oppose him. I have yet to meet anyone who has become a Trump convert. There is room for (dare I say) hope and change.
7
@SeekingTruth, exactly! Agree! Your point about there not being many “converts” is true, and also, true is that there are ex-Trump supporters who are disgusted by him, especially in the farms of America!
Democrats can focus on methods to persuade, or focus on getting their message right. The latter is more important, at least to me.
I am a voter who tries to think for myself. I will do everything in my power to help other people do the same.
Remember, folks, Trump got 63 million votes in the 2016 election, Clinton got 66 million, and Trump won the electoral college. But there were 100 million eligible voters who didn't vote. So Trump won about 27.5% of the eligible votes.
In order to win the general election Democrats need to garner voters from the center of the political spectrum.
The real danger to the Democrats is going too far to the left.
I can point to several issues that need attention:
1. Voters often chose Trump because they were afraid of illegal immigration. But these fears are partly justified. Open borders would increase poverty in the US and make it harder to afford the safety net that protects America's poor. We need to be humane to illegal immigrants, but we need firm and fair immigration policies.
2. The left needs to soften its push toward "social justice." For example, the Me Too movement has taken away the rights of accused men to due process. The result is a repugnant move away from the Bill of Rights which is the foundation of our democracy.
Another frightening development is the activities of the political correctness movement to stifle freedom of speech.
I will support candidates who seize the center on these issues.
8
I recently went to our Catholic Church for mass on Xmas day. Just FYI, in years gone by, the number of people at mass on any Xmas service used to be so large, that they would have to request a police presence to monitor the traffic and parking so as not to block the neighborhood streets. If you did not come at least 15 minutes ahead, you had no seat in the pews. Not this year. There was plenty of parking and seating and the church was only about half full.
This is just one point of observation, not a statistical data point, but church going Catholics have fallen drastically in my view. I personally only go on special occasions, in other words a CEO (Christmas and Easter Only) :-).
3
@TheniD I am also what you call a CEO and used to go to midnight mass at Notre Dame de Paris on Christmas every year I was in town. You could walk right in easily. About 12 years ago I went and there was a line about 250m long to get in while the church was full and at least 50 police controlling the crowd. It has been that way every year since. Maybe something had changed. But then the Notre Dame burned and there was no mass there on Christmas this year for the first time in more than 1000 years. I broke my heart to have that happen during my life.
3
Another reason to be totally disappointed by the DNC. As we have been, year after year.
1
Democrats should certainly be figuring out how to combat pro-Trump digital activity. But we should remember that the apparatus Edsall describes was not enough to keep pro-Trump House GOP candidates from getting their clocks cleaned in the November midterm elections, or pro-Trump GOP gubernatorial candidates from losing in deep-red Kentucky and Louisiana. So maybe Democrats should be finding the sweet spot between complacency and panic?
4
Couple of things here:
1) Digital ads are rarely seen.1/1000 might be seen by an actual person, 1/10,000 might be clicked. Keep that in mind as you analyze the figures. The impression numbers are irrelevant.
2) The more time one spends online, the less likely they are duly employed and well educated. The perfect Trump voter!
The second point is more on target for why Trump's digital campaigns appear to work better. Because when your target audience is both gullible and easily reached, frequency and volume goals are much easier to hit.
3
@Observer Yet you're reading and responding to this article online. :)
There are a lot of people who have a fixed, extremely negative opinion of certain public figures, and all the advertising in the world is not going to change those opinions, especially ads coming from an unidentified source whose motivation is unknown and unknowable.
Ain't no way on God's green earth that I will ever vote for Donald Trump.
There. I said it.
(Go ahead, Brad Parscale, send me some ads. Break a leg.)
7
In other words, the Democratic party is up against the tRump cult.
No one—not even another Republican—can beat the tRump cult. Not exactly a fair fight.
It'll be interesting to see to whom the tRump cultist give their loyalties once tRump leaves office, either next year or in 2025.
1
Tragically, much of America is uneducated, ignorant and incapable of accurately researching any issue be it political, scientific, economic or historic. Voters prefer small information bites offered by websites that present information catered to their prejudices, often racist, sexist or, as you note, religious. If we adopt a Trump approach to political campaigns we lose even if we win.
2
If they've got this all so figured out, why do I see so many Trump ads?
1
Trumps's campaign is ahead?
So what?
Who cares?
10 months in politic is like ten years...
And the past election have more than demonstrated that nowadays, media predictions and surveys are for... the birds...
The whole world is looking forward to get rid of him. Except Vlad Putin.
8
Geographic ad targeting has been around for years. You mean to tell me the Democrats and DNC haven't invested in this?
Oy vey!
2
All the digital technology in the world will not keep me from voting against the travesty in the WH.
3
The dems don't need to act like DJT, but they need to have his attack dog mentality. Remember "love trumps hate"? That turned out not to be the case. Dems are going to have to decide- do they want to keep the moral high ground or play unfair like DJT and win elections. Losers don't get to pick Supreme Court Justices.
2
Once again it appears that the National Democratic Party has learned nothing from its past mistakes!
1
Very interesting that the pro democratic strategist named at the end of this article is unnamed!
I can't think of anyone better suited to bring microtargeted mass personalization to this panopticon that we inhabit than the supporters of the death penalty, incarceration of migrant children, and the militarization of police forces.
Like and subscribe!
1
More glad than ever that I don't go to church anymore!
2
So what you are really saying is that Democrats are incompetent and Trump knows how to get things done.
5
As if anyone needed another reason to completely reject Catholicism. Of course an institution whose very nature is misogyny and fantasist would want to see Trump win.
1
Once again, an NYT columnist doing what he can to undermine Sanders (while ostensibly writing a neutral piece), in this instance by not all that subtlety falsely equating Sanders and Trump. There is no discussion or acknowledgement of the vast differences on foreign policy, social safety net, healthcare, the control of women over their own bodies, and the environment. This paper has become a classic example of corporate media manufacturing consent - maybe it’s editors believe we will all be saved by eating Amy Klobuchar’s tater tot dish - featured relatively prominently in the digital edition. Has anyone else wondered how, after a year of campaigning, a candidate who is anti-environment, is essentially a Romney Republican and has consistently polled in single digits remains beloved by the MSM and continues to grace the so-called Democratic debate stage? It makes me long for the days when Harris was the “It girl”.
1
A followup article on how not to be tracked? Will turning it off suffice, or must one remove the battery?
Or just leave the device behind?
1
@Lawrence You must change your options in the "settings" network on your cell phone, but even that can be quietly circumvented by service providers etc.
There are some platforms and web browsers that randomly generate passwords offered that provide 2 and 3 levels of security for your electronics, even to your linked devices. Some offer these for free as part of their customer services (e.g., Firefox).
Hilary had this lead and all media behind her and still lost. Makes you wonder if we should care.
3
Set your social media accounts to limit ads, and delete all ads without looking at them. Stop using twitter. Turnoff tracking on your phone. Or even turn off your phone.
And if trump wins again we can watch him be a lame duck, do-anything-he-wants dictator for four years while becoming the first president to be impeached in both terms in office.
3
This reads like people aren’t aware of this, I see these digital ads all the time on pages I visit but who is actually being persuaded by them. They are annoying and repetitive so that you become immune to them, where you just ignore them and move on. The mind shuts off when bombarded with them. Anyone who is getting their info from facebook and the like are low information consumers who, I seriously doubt, decide to vote for Trump based on these snippets of ads designed to be ignored based on repetition. It’s not mind control after all unless you are willing to actively engage with them, something smart people are capable of figuring out. Now the stupid people? Yeah I don’t hold out hope that they will start using critical thinking skills anyway. It is condescending to believe people aren’t aware of the manipulation, those that are members of the Trump cult will believe anything, ads or not.
2
Governance by tweet is an advance?
When I hear trump and the coverage at his rallies it reminds me of a dark past. My opinion of Catholics and devout Christians is falling. So he has a good marketing machine, the product is a rotten one. I do not understand how a Christian can support such a corrupt person.
1
You mean the Russians election campaign is way ahead on line, Trumps people couldn't organize a bake sale.
4
Great article
If you really wanted to learn about smear campaigns, the alt-right and the power of social media, I encourage everyone to read "Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation"
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525522263/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Note: I have no affiliation whatsoever with this book or Amazon.
1
It's that the Republican Senate is finishing the hatchet job on Joe Biden for Their Leader in the WH. The GOP Senate is out to get that "drug deal" done. Place "nasty anything" and "anybody's name" together for even fifteen minutes in our tweet-y world....and you're done. That's what the "maga digital advantage" is hammering away at.... before the truth can get out of bed let alone put its pants on. The Red-Scare-Bernie stuff i bet starts in earnest in March.
Of course, “the president’s re-election campaign is way ahead online”. From Trump’s daily use of anti-social media and soliciting foreign interference and meddling (“Russia, if you’re listening....,” “I’d like [Ukraine] do to us a favor, though.”] to voter “purges” and suppression, how could it not be “way ahead”? In Trump’s world of Kompromat, dirty-double-dealing and “oppo-research,” the term “digital advantage” has simply become a euphemism for all of the technological skullduggery in which the no-low-is-too-low Republicans are willing to engage. Trump is just doing to online campaign data and information what he has been doing with Russian money for decades—laundering them.
3
Yes, the Trump campaign is way ahead of the Democrats in employing digital media in his campaign, and has been for years.
First there's the Russian government's Internet Research Agency. Located outside St Petersburg, which spearheaded the pro-Trump bots and disinformation and hacking and dissemination of the DNC emails.
There's Breitbart, the digital platform for the "Alt-Right," the new name for the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movement. Trump's former White House aide is still using that platform to push far-right propaganda in behalf of Trump. And there's the rest of right-wing corporate online media.
Then there are the digital campaign organizations funded with tens of millions of unregulated dollars from the Koch family and its network of right-wing billionaires.
And of course, one has to mention Moscow Mitch and the Senate Republicans, who have blocked every effort to pass legislation to prevent Russian digital media interference with the 2020 election.
Yep, Trump is far head. And Democracy, not Democrats, is far behind.
3
His digital platform is probably courtesy of Putin.
3
Democratic strategists. The words fill me with horror. These same people, you'll recall, were the masterminds that engineered the campaign of the one politician in America who could manage to lose against the worst presidential candidate in our nation's history.
So these "Democratic strategists" are freaking out at Trump's digital advantage? They SHOULD be freaking out. They're freaking out because all but one of the current field of Democratic candidates are peddling the usual neoliberal, Republican lite talking points that have failed our nation for the last 40 years. If that's what I had to help sell to the American people, I'd be "freaked out," too.
Happily, I'm a Bernie supporter. As such, I'm not reliant on garbage Democratic Strategist digital marketing campaigns. A horse doesn't win a race because of a digital advantage or lack thereof. It wins because it's faster than all the other horses in the field.
Pity the poor Democratic Strategists. Me? I sleep easy at night.
3
No wonder the Dems still cannot get their act together. It must be hard taking the same bribes as the Reeps. Gee I wonder why our country is broken with only two choices.
Talk about asymmetrical warfare! The GOP is using howitzers, while the Democrats fight back with pea shooters. And this article doesn't even take into account all the free help that the GOP gets from its old friends at the Internet Research Agency in beautiful St. Petersburg.
And the comment in the article about the news media was telling. While the GOP has a captive and completely vertically and horizontally integrated news media pushing out a tightly scripted daily message, the Democrats are reliant on the creaky old 1975-era institution of neutral, value-free Both Sides Journalism, where the Democratic candidate is just as likely to get hammered as fairly reported on ("but her emails!", "Wikileaks!").
The ultimate net effect of the asymmetrical information warfare on the Democrat is that of discouragement and apathy. For every Democrat that gets energized and motivated by Trump's antics, another one or two simply get discouraged and give up, dropping out and disengaging from politics altogether.
In my own case, in the face of the GOP disinformation onslaught and the news media both-sidesism, which serves to publicize and legitimize all of Trump's deliberate disinformation, I have all I can do to keep myself motivated and fight the urge just to throw my hands up at it all and drop out.
It is a tragedy to watch our great experiment in liberal democratic self-government implode in a cloud of smoke, disinformation and deception.
2
I am a lapsed Roman Catholic. But I was still active in my parish shortly after the 2016 election, and served on my pastoral advisory council. The subject of Trump's Muslim ban came up during a council meeting. I described the new president as a white nationalist, which was clear to me even then. Another member of the council took great exception to this and refuted it vigorously. (To this day, I think that member held white nationalist sympathies, for all that he was an observant Catholic.) Others chided me for my uncharitable views. I was, of course, correct, if uncharitable, and I have often wondered what my former fellow members of that council would say now?
1
@DLM - Islam is a religion, not a race. Anyone of any race can become a Muslim.
The issue is whether the doctrines of Islam, as interpreted by actual Muslims, are compatible with democracy, freedom, and human rights. Trump has apparently taken the position they are not.
2
Uh, let's not forget the Big Advantage Trump is getting from Foreign Actors who want nothing more than to divide Democrats. We're at the point where almost nothing can be believed.
2
I love the Biden ad made by the Sanders supporter. The only critique should be that it should explicit that he made that remark in front of wealthy New York donors just a few months ago.
Another one could mention "middle-class Joe" started his campaign not in the living room of a middle class family, but in the mansion of a wealthy Comcast executive.
Despite the any rhetoric, all candidates serve their donors first and that reality informs younger voters.
Either way, the counter to Trump's advantage online is Sanders' advantage over his opponents online. No other candidate will motivate those under 40 like he will.
If Sanders doesn't become the nominee, Dem's lose at least 1M popular votes in the GE. I'm not one of them (blue no matter who), but my vote won't be enthusiastic and I won't volunteer my time to help the candidate.
1
Instead of poor mouthing Bernie Sanders, the DNC should be working to develop strong digital capacities for the general election.
1
Sorry, you're missing the point. All the digital advantages in the world still won't make Donald Trump a better president or candidate.
7
Breathe, Thomas. There’s no missile gap. This technology si easily available and used by everyone. But it’s never too late to gather excuses in anticipation of another loss at the polls.
2
This is all very scary and may mean four more years of movement to an authoritarian fascist state. On the other hand what I have learned locally is working to get out voters using multiple contacts such as door to door canvasing, mailings, phone calling, registering voters, arranging social gatherings, and so on enabled us in the always republican town where I live to get a 67% turnout of potential votes for democrats vs. a 48% turnout of republicans and win the local races we targeted. This took a lot of volunteer time, a lot of driving around and knocking on doors multiple times until a contact was made and so on.
I do hope the people with big money on the Democratic side do the kind of stuff the Republicans are doing but I bet the Republicans aren't going to get the people power on the sidewalks and driving around that we are getting.
Time will tell.
5
Trump knows nothing about things like social media, but he knows how to be the center of attention. He’s got people who understand what he does not to help him spread the word. The Democrats need to find their media experts to the same.
What is amazing about Trump is that you have a self absorbed personality who knows just enough about people to feel how he can manipulate them but beyond that is basically ignorant concerning most things for which presidents are responsible is perceived to be what those in his audiences want to see and so do.
Trumps "digital advantage" won't mean squat if Bernie is the candidate. There is an entire online army behind Bernie.
1
What a laugh. This article tells me only Trump and Sanders supporters are using state of the art tech to the advantage of their candidates. Trump using it is recognised as evil; letting readers infer Sanders must be evil too. Hillary and the DNC lost in 2016 partly because they had no competent tech divisions. The world loved their hacked e-mails for a good laugh. For the past 4 years they have been inventing mythical Russians as their enemy opponents, but have not bothered to invest in or pay attention to what tech can do to sell a product, a candidate, and probably a newspaper, like this one, who wants to keep its readers!
3
A neglected point here is that almost half of voters are glued to Fox, alternative facts, paid answers to Google searches, YouTube videos, etc. So the election turns upon a rather small percentage of folks who are confused, indifferent, or asleep. Reaching them is critical.
3
Easy solution for democrats. Support progressives instead of fighting them along side republicans.
It is unfortunate the well funded Democratic Party has not had anything in place to motivate it's base to register and vote- the young, minorities, suburbanites and progressives. This has been an obvious problem for years. HRC's failure to use social media is totally shocking, it may have cost her the election. Yet the Democrats have plenty of money to trash Bernie. Oh, maybe the Democrats don't want the base to vote because they would vote for Bernie? Is social media something Bloomberg can address instead of buying ads on TV since nobody watches TV anymore?
If we look at Trump's absurd Middle East Peace Plan, which he says the Palestinians will accept , a plan which denies them any sovereignty and has them lose some of their West Bank land, we realize that Trump spends little time actually thinking through his decisions. More whim than thought is the way he governs. If you want to know why, the answer is that he too busy running his campaign. He started campaigning soon after being elected, and when not golfing or relaxing at his golf clubs, he is busy tweeting insulting opponents , watching Fox News and some other TV channels, and planning and running his frequent rallies. Not necessary to govern intelligently. Takes too much time. Chaos is better.
The Trump advantage should not in any way be surprising to the DNC which once again appears to be inept and ineffective in modern-day political strategy and tactics.
1
It’s not that difficult to be ahead when you cheat. Not only does he have the resources of the RNC, he’s using the resources of the US and Russia government, plus, god knows, who else.
3
Trump has the help of internet trolls from foreign countries. You see them in action anytime you flip through online screens. They are hard at work making Bernie Sanders a "favorite". If Americans dont vote Trump and the GOP out they will see their future in tatters. Only the rich and corporate will enjoy the future.
1
The only Democratic candidate who is unphased, ready and able to not only catch-up and blast ahead online is Michael Bloomberg.
1
Excellent information. The Society of the Spectacle....
Thanks Mark Zuckerberg for putting profits over your country. Knowing full well the power of social media and, in particular, facebook and its role in the 2016 election, you still actively choose to allow unvetted, false advertising on your platform. Your decision is myopic and, as a parent, I hope you understand what type of a country your decisions are shaping for your daughter.
2
@KR - The advertising is only a small part of it. The bulk of the political content is posts by individuals, talking to friends and acquaintances.
2
No doubt the GOP online campaign will be the best that the Russians can provide, backed with all the money that the Donor Class can supply.
3
None of this is new information and none of it is surprising. The scary part is not the microtargeting of voters, but the alarming ease with which many of them can be manipulated. Everyone possesses a firewall against misinformation — it’s called a brain, and more specifically, common sense. Unfortunately, millions of people have opted to route around that part of their brains into a system that just makes them feel good and bypasses reason and judgment. That system is the conservative propaganda machine, led by Fox News and supported by a rank and file of shadowy organizations that help spread the misinformation.
It’s not that Democrats have all the answers and Republicans are all evil, or that Republicans generally are either gullible or liars. The danger is that millions of people, not a majority but enough to tip the scale, have willingly become the human equivalent of zombie devices, infected with pro-Trump ideological malware and spreading its misinformation payload every day. Take that factor out of the equation and you might have a competition of ideas again, but it’s hard to see a way past it in our current climate.
1
"Trump has two relevant advantages deriving from the asymmetry between the flow of Republican and Democratic information. First, when Trump says something, Fox repeats it. When a Democrat says something, The New York Times and the rest of the MSM knock it down if it’s false or debatable."
Ah, yes, that pesky honesty and reliance on facts. It always bites the Dems. Forty percent of the voting public simply is not smart enough or does not care about Democracy. Unfortunately, the Electoral College rewards lying.
3
One significant advantage the DJT campaign has is that The Base cares about three issues: guns, abortion, and religious "freedom." Those are simple, black-white issues with which to paint your opponent as against all three, and the best example is a DJT rally.
Democrats' diversity on issues makes their sell much harder to an "open tent" of coalition voters.
So let's take a page from Brad Parscale's book with a simple message:
Donald John Trump is the head of a crime family that's taken over the White House, and when he's not lying, he's stealing your hard-earned tax dollars. And the people he's surrounded himself with are determined to start World War III because they believe they'll be raptured up to Heaven as their reward. They cannot be allowed to stay in office.
Edsall does a superb job explaining the unexplainable to most of us, still in the darkest ages, of data theft which is a crime, and causes great harm to institutional development and of course politics and policy. However, the Catholic cell pohne example has been refined for years by Jewish genius who first developed data called "Jewish Names"- which of course now includes Irish, Chinese, Hispanic, African American... well you get the picture. Our older generations are familiar with phone and mail-list sophistication which has almost disappeared as we knew it, yet still remains stronger than we might think because of one new set of weapons that simply jams any server working for the "enemy" and erases the message as if never sent by cell phone, PC, or other wired or wireless methods. Some work has also been done to capture ads and messages and edit them in "MidAir" to change the meaning and message to an advert for soup or beer, or to an attack on the sender's client or worse. Thus the success by such neo data manipulation, especially in elections, can be severe especially if aimed at lower-tier races in local, state, and regional efforts. It seems to stop such impish criminal activity is improbable as it occurs out-of-country as did the Trump success via Russia, Britain, and other faraway places. One might see what's coming next; military attacks on hardened machine silos conducted by unaffiliated rent-a-soldier organizations who perform NerdOps with TNT for cash dollars.
It continues to puzzle me that the Democrats are so lame in on-line smarts, skills, application - seem to be unable to creak out of old communication models and add very robust digital initiatives. Why can't they absorb contemporary communications! Isn't that a really, really, really important tool? no, really? That is how things work nowadays, and you guys and gals have to figure out how to use that tool like RIGHT NOW! SHAPE UP!
There is a gap but the vast majority of people in politics are not smart enough to even ask the correct questions. Look what Dominic Cummings did in two elections in the UK. You have these politics science majors running campaigns and they lack the hard skills and IQ to run an effective campaign. You want to win? Hire a bunch of Wall Street quants or physics PhD students. Politics is not hard. Identify your voters and get them to the polls. Suppress the votes of your enemies. Ignore the unpersuadables. Votes don't change due to opeds or people talking on TV. Find out what issues that will change votes and hit them incessantly.
1
Combine this with the crowds he is drawing, as well as increased minority and young people voting...and Trump will trounce anyone with a “D” after his or her name.
4
All human progress has sprung from people who question and challenge authority (excepting the criminal class). There is little or no progress|enlightenment to be had from evangelicals and other authority worshipers.
1
Yes, Trump is on the way to a second term.
He not only has an online advantage but his base is fervent.
According to Real Clear Politics, his job approval rating is near an all time high.
The majority of Americans do not believe he should be impeached.
He has no realistic opposition in the Dems at present.
The front runner, Biden, is not beloved. His claim to fame is that he is still alive and has name recognition. Bernie, the far left frontrunner, is an unapologetic Socialist who along with his fervent base ( little difference from Trump), will hand Trump his greatest victory if he is the nominee.
Read this insightful piece by Jonathan Chait in NY Magazine:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/bernie-sanders-electable-trump-2020-nomination-popular-socialism.html
The only hope to beat Trump is Mike Bloomberg who just yesterday broke into double digits in the national Morning Consult poll. He is now just behind Biden in the Florida polls.
He has the smarts, the experience and the stability to not only beat Trump but begin to rebuild America.
If he could transform NYC from a toxic waste dump, a crime ridden mess into a beautiful, livable place, he will surely do this for America.
He is paying his own way, accepting no donations, not beholden to anyone.
Mike can get it done and he will.
1
Fight fire with fire in the general election. Democrats have historically been cowardly when it comes to throwing punches against opponents who shamelessly, brazenly, openly, continuously lie. If trump survives impeachment, every digital venue should be saturated with details on trump's criminal offspring, trump's decades of money laundering for the russian mob, etc.
There is more than enough facts on the record to support all the allegations. The campaign-long impression is that the trump's are the swamp itself.
It's no longer excusable to take "the high road" and be collegial. Dems fight according to the Marquess of Queensberry Rules while getting repeatedly stabbed in the eye by Republicans. The high road leads to a cliff.
1
I don't bring my phone to church. Never have, never will.
1
This article makes a good case for the Dems to step up the on-line campaign. Whether this turns the tide against Trump is not clear, but they had better start working. A valid question is whether an on-line campaign is cheaper than buying TV time. If so, this is also a cost saver.
As to the anit-Biden ads by the GOP, I can only say that my version would be "who would vote to re-elect a lying clown. Trump has shown us his true colors in the last 4 years."
The Trump-GOP's major accomplishments since Jan 20 2017 are:
1. A massive tax cut for the rich charged to the middle class
2. Massive national debt increases
3. Attempted assassination of affordable healthcare
4. The collapse of the Environmental Protection Agency
5. The collapse of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau
6. Acceleration and denial of manmade global warming
7. The collapse of the Iran Nuclear Treaty
8. The collapse of Presidential dignity
9. The collapse of civility
10. The collapse of the Republican Party
11. The collapse of the United States Constitution
12. The collapse of facts, truth and reality
The Trump-GOP is a political cult collapsing this country into political fracking sinkhole.
Decent Americans do not vote for Donald Trump and the Republican party.
Register, donate and vote in historic numbers.
D to go forward; R for reverse....over the Trumpian cliffs.
November 3 2020
Save a republic.
109
Where are all those digital bullies supporting Sanders? Many of them obviously have the expertise to perform a larger job for Democrats and the country, but seem focused on bullying Democrats that are not currently Sanders supporters. These putative Democrats are Trump's chumps, perhaps the DNC is as well.
1
Democrats sit on good will and hopes that everyone understands the existential threat that Trump represents to our nation. However, reality on the ground is quite different.
Suffice to surf all kinds of websites and fora to become aware that there are indeed armies of blind, brainwashed Trump's supporters. People who have crossed over from the world of truth and facts, and who cannot seem to be brought back to elementary argued conversation.
While these people are far from the majority of American voters, they make themselves heard and they wield influence. It is a wave that reaches beyond right-wing talk shows and deranged outlets like Infowar. Looks more like a sect. And the Democrats are missing in action.
2
So Trump’s campaign is ahead digitally bur the article fails to mention that Trump’s campaign is way behind with voters. It’s a shame cell phones and computers can’t vote. Don’t tell the Trump campaign that, apparently they don’t know.
Heck, he couldn’t win the popular vote last time.
Talk radio is the dominant GOP vehicle where I live and ignored by Dems. Then there is Fox which is in every cable package tho I would love to block it selectively to send a message. It is a fact free propaganda bubble for guys in trucks.
@poslug - There were numerous attempts at liberal talk radio stations, but they all went broke because nobody tuned out in. And ever cable package includes CNN and MSNBC, but few viewers choose to watch them.
2
Once again the Democrats’ circular firing squad puts them at a disadvantage to the Fox led Republicans. At least we will have Bloomberg and Steyer funding ads in the general election.
2
One of the great ironies of this piece is that, for all of Trump’s whining and complaining about him and his 2016 campaign having been spied upon, here he is spying on the very citizens he’s supposed to be representing—again, with only his self-interest in mind. Just as he and his minions waxed feigned indignation and outrage at Adam Schiff’s “heads on a pike” remark, only the very next day to make Schiff’s point by threatening him with having “yet to pay the price”. Perhaps Trump’s nihilistic narcissistic projection precludes him from helping himself: he forever claims the status of put-upon victim, and then, clueless and unaware, makes the very point about himself he pretends to make about others. To paraphrase Trump’s Roy Cohn, William Barr, this makes it sound like spying is going on.
Gee. One more reason to limit social media. Follow food, beer, sports or other hobbies. Maybe support/selfhelp groups. And never, ever click on ads.
2
Love the picture of the evangelical trump supporters. Are they worshiping god, trump, or their cellphones?
2
Maybe Trumps 2020 online campaign is being boosted by the same guys that made it so effective in 2016... the Russians?
2
Oooh, this bodes well for the future of our politics - the Republican propaganda machine can pump individualized lies directly into the craw of those most susceptible to disinformation! What could possibly go wrong?
3
When Barack Obama's 2008 campaign pioneered the art of digital electioneering, people like Thomas Edsall were not writing dark articles about the Orwellian nature of politics. In fact, the story then, rightfully, was about how Obama was brilliantly ahead of the game. When Trump appears to be the one on the cutting edge of the art, well, this is what happens.
But after reading this very informative account of how Republicans are now dominating digital politics, maybe the real story here is that Donald Trump isn't as dumb as Don Lemon thinks he is.
6
Digital marketing has been here for years, now it has gone to a new level. Data mining. Clicks pay to keep the NYT afloat, its the new normal.
And Parscale, a coder by trade is the guru. When the President said something odd went on in NH, that was data. It’s everywhere, you just have to know where to look. People would be surprised what is public, and then people willingly give up their data for a free AP.
Is TikTok facial recognition? One thing the Trump campaign is good at is personalized broadcast e-mails, every day. Now it is personalized texts. On the other end, Bloomberg has a 30 clip attached to every You Tube video, the shotgun approach, not personalized
1
Combine this effort with another $4,700 of deceptive Russian Facebook ads and it’s all over for the Democrats. And why no mention of the Bosworth memo – that’s a disservice to your readers.
2
Trump and the Republicans have made me ashamed of carrying an American passport. Conservative Catholics have made me ashamed to be Christianed Catholic.
Social media is an effective too, as the anti-Hillary smear campaign shows. Pizza-gate was surprisingly effective. Along with Russia and Comey, of course. They pushed Don over the top.
2
I think it should be noted that the tweet meme in the article by "Creepy uncle joe biden" was posted by an anonymous person with 68 followers. Creepy uncle is rated a "Problematic" troll by BotSentinel.
Claiming that tweets of that sort will influence the few people in America who haven't taken a side is ridiculous.
Rs had all the 2016 digital info, but lost 40 seats in the 2018 House election. I'm pretty sure there are more people in the US with moral compasses than those that are enamored with a tweeting bully.
Yeah, because I always make important decisions based on what some internet meme says.
Geez... I guess some people have truly hit the bottom on the IQ scale.
1
I do not tweet. A tweet seems to have no substance at all is basically a vehicle to stir up a me verses them attitude.
To join the Trump tweet group must feel like joining an exclusive club that gives a sense of belonging as most clubs or cults do. Everyone who doesn't join is an outsider and the enemy and their messages on regular media are branded as messages from the enemy. This ethos becomes so strong that the substance or character of the person writing them no longer matters to those who have joined the club/cult.
In this time of super alienation the pressure to join such a group is powerful, and when the leader is a charlatan and con man dangerous. In the thirties it led to Nazi Germany and in this country to the McCarthy purges. But with Tweet as the media, the threat is magnified a hundred, thousand fold. Can thoughtful people save us from the trumps of the world? Only unless society decides that the good of the country is stronger than self serving egotism.
Big Brother is here and he is not on your side. Republicans (and their Russian hackers) have no qualms about lying and manipulation of others in order to stay in power.
3
This Democrat worried that after the Clinton flameout and the subsequent 3-year freak out of Trump Derangement Syndrome, that we would lose focus of 2020.
And we have.
At Trump's rallies, Trump's team and the RNC are collecting cellphone numbers from the thousands of folks there. This is straight out of the Obama playbook. Yet the Dems lag.
This election will be won by a few hundred thousand votes in specific districts. We Democrats can't hope to get them by laughing at them (like Don Lemon and CNN do), calling them racist (like far too many liberals do to anyone who voted for Trump- even those who voted for Obama), or ignoring their issues.
Those "deplorables" vote. And they talk to friends. Obama had a great digital effort, spoke to everyone without demonizing those who disagreed with him.
We learned nothing from Obama.
3
It is a bit heretical for me to say, but sorry to burst Brian Burch's bubble. Going to "Mass" at least three times in three months does not make these Catholics "religiously observant" when there were at least 12 opportunities to attend Mass and meet our Sunday obligation, and maybe more, depending on Holy Days of obligation.
While the Church is well known for its stance against abortion and the death penalty, many Catholics also vote in favor of helping the poor, supporting education, and backing humanitarian immigration policies; platforms that are decidedly progressive. And the largest growing group of Catholics in the country are Hispanics under 30 (Sayeth American Magazine, a Jesuit publication, in 2018) while Hispanics overall vote overwhelmingly for Democrats (Pew Research in 2019). Pew adds that Catholics “are evenly split between the two major parties and are sharply polarized, much like the broader public.”
Why is the DNC just freaked out? Why isn't it doing the same thing?
199
@Bob If people don't know by now, what will another thousand ads accomplish?
8
@Bob
The Dems are too busy playing defense to worry about an offense.
They're unorganized and don't have the ability to stay on a unified message.
Republicans, on the other hand, keep things short and sweet just like a bumper sticker.
And the electorate won't digest anything that's more than 4 or 5 words.
39
@Bob The Democratic Party is spending all its money and effort right now trying to sabotage Bernie Sanders and the progressive left, ironically the guy in the group with hands-down the best digital strategy and reach (and it's not even close). That should tell you about how short-sighted they are.
An effective Democratic Party would reel in guys like Bloomberg and Steyer, Third Way, CAP, and Obama and his friend$ to save their money and punches for an anti-Trump onslaught in the general, but they are so corrupt, so short-sighted, so desperate, they're putting all that effort into punching left.
Meanwhile, "the left" is signing up new voters at an unprecedented clip, generating unparalleled excitement like Obama did 2008, hybridizing an incredibly effective ground game and online strategy; all those people moderates say "aren't really Democrats" are the ones that will keep this Party on life support. The establishment center just needs to stop trying to so openly sabotage them, and you'll see a swell of support come out to vote Trump out in November like no amount of DNC consulting or focus groups or internal polling could've predicted.
43
I shudder to think what harm all this technology will do in the hands of a monster. Character matters. Peace.
Obama's operation leaped ahead of the GOP when he ran in 2008. More small donations than any candidate in history, huge email list, cutting-edge digital campaigning.
So what happened? How did Trump overcome that advantage? Because as soon as he was inaugurated, Obama threw his activist base to the curb because he didn't want to upset the Blue Dogs in congress. He really wanted that Grand Bargain!
1
50% of Americans don't bother to vote in Presidential elections.
There is no majority taken into account when media uses that word.
Trump does not have the majority of Americans backing him and he never will. In fact he will lose the popular vote again if he is not tossed out of office before the election.
7
They've been ahead of the Democrats for almost forty years, slowly building their own media system which has come to fruition in the most terrible way. I know I always sound like a huge pessimist, but it's true. They've made all the right moves getting into the state legislatures that the Dems ignored all of these years, and that's where the real power takes hold and leads to the federal power they've gotten lately since 2000. I don't see this getting better in my lifetime - best case scenario I'll still be here in twenty years. I hope I'm wrong, of course, but I'd bet everything I have that Trump will be reelected, easily. We are not going to turn this around any time soon, especially when we Democratic voters are willing to turn against any candidate over single issues. This is where they really beat us and will continue to do so. They focus on three main issues and let the rest go, and look at our Supreme Court now. By being focused and united on just those issues, they have succeeded in a spectacular way. We are doomed for as long as we don't grasp that simple concept.
5
I continue to maintain the the 2020 race is the Democrats' to lose - and it often times seems that they are doing their best to do so. One failure, often encountered in such cases, is underestimating the opposition. Call them names if you will, but as articles like this point out, believing your own rhetoric may come with a steep price!
6
It’s the law of competitive advantage. Democrats got cocky. Republicans forged ahead.
43
@Michael Livingston’s Forged ahead with what? Dismantling the democracy to install autocracy? That's certainly the way we are headed if Trump gets reelected. It's amazing the 40% of the population has been duped into not only surrendering their future but bragging about it simultaneously. Just amazing.
43
@Michael Livingston’s
I couldn’t agree more. Democrats were actually ahead of Republicans when it came to technology back in 2008. Howard Dean as party chair had invested heavily in technology and it paid off. The Obama campaign too was very digitally savvy, a marvel in its day. Pioneers in political micro targeting.
Obama sacked Dean and handed the DNC over to the usual suspects who pretty much let that advantage evaporate. At the same time the Republicans got smarter.
Today Democrats are proudly partying like it’s 1999. Even if the least technologically challenged campaign—according to this that would be Sanders oh the irony—were to win the nomination it’s hard to see how they catch up in time for the election.
Oh but at least we get to say we are the good guys.
13
@Brooklyncowgirl Well said! Howard Dean (a dynamic progressive at the time, let's not forget) did a brilliant job leading the strategy. Everything went downhill as soon as he was let go. Like you said with the Obama campaign and Dean's strategies, the common thread seems to be that progressive campaigns are best at generating excitement and utilizing digital strategies to win. The party keeps sabotaging its progressive movement at its own peril.
7
I noticed online that they've gone back to the old tactic of trying to bring up abortion with awkward or no segue and lie about Planned Parenthood, then inject faith or belief into what they say at the end as if that protected their bigotry and deceitfulness.
We'd be fine if the press would focus on the truth instead of trying to make money. The truth is we have seen this technique of promoting lies until they get a critical mass of people who recognize the lies and then shift to diversion, otherizing, and bringing in religion as if they are under attack for their religion and not the lies and manipulation.
3
The Democrats really suck at power plays. sometimes i wish we were a bit more ruthless. We already have the Electoral college disadvantage amplified by gerrymandering.
256
@michael
What does it profit a man....
4
@michael
NYC alone has a population greater than 38 states and yet Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, North and South Dakota (combined half the pop of NYC) have 9 GOP senators.
It a structural disadvantage that will persist even if Dems win in a landslide in 2020 and DC and PR were made states.
A voter in Wyoming has many times the weight of a voter in CA in the electoral college.
I'm not sure this level of disparity is what the founders had in mind when they established checks and balances to keep larger states from overpowering smaller ones.
51
@DJ
Your argument is precisely why the electoral college should be eliminated. It's initial purpose was to be the final authority in an election where most of the population was illiterate. That is not the case now.
In regards to the balance of power between larger more populated states is why there is both a House and Senate. The smaller states have equal representation in the Senate while larger states have more representation in the House based on population. Co-equal branches of government is how it's supposed to work and that is what is clearly at state in this impeachment process.
28
Interesting observations here; but what goes unmentioned is how boring moderate Dems are. How many people pay attention to ads for lackluster shopworn products? Add to that: moderate Dems look for Trump voters by offering a "lite" version of Republicanism. Nobody but old people and rich suburbanites are interested. Mr. Edsall's observations ignore the political and social media of the Cardi Bs.
1
About those huge rallies. Probably the most intelligent and energetic people in Trump's world are those who stage the rallies. There was a great rally in Kentucky and a great rally in Virginia last fall but the 2019 elections that had Trump begging the voters for wins in were both loses. Lots of people go to the circus, very few take a clown home with them.
3
I have not seen a single ad for Mr T. But I have seen lots of Bloomberg ads. I guess since I don't watch or read anything out of the Murdoch empire, and quit facebook almost as soon as I joined, I'm safe.
2
Another reason not to have a cell phone. I survived without one for 70 years; I can survive without one today.
1
@MikeH Another reason not to go to church.
Geofencing and robocall calling and spam and hacking is why I am looking for communication alternatives. However I do not think there are that many undecided voters in this election. Once the democrats settle on a candidate, I think the field will be set. All those who sat out the last election I hope have learned their lesson. Vote the party that best represents your values and the best hope for dealing with and saving the planet from climate devastation. Just because you don’t like sanders or warren or whoever is no reason to give trump another 4
3
Spying by governments is bad enough, but a necessary evil. It is a difficult question of where to draw that line, that has yet to be answered faithfully.
Spy by private entities is absolutely unacceptable. That are laws for this are weak to nonexistent is a criminal scandal. Apps, websites and other technologies must be forbidden from selling the data they collect and restricted to collecting only the data required to serve their users. The business of data brokers must be outlawed.
Otherwise we will never be Free.
5
This is the critical point, and day to day I see this effecting folks who, prior to 2016, seemed to know better: "To sum up, their content is advantaged because it reaches their target audiences, without friction, from the media that audience trusts, and is quickly and reliably repeated by other voices they trust in their world."
It gets repeated on Facebook, not from a media source or an advertiser, but from their neighbor who they hang with, or their boss, or the hockey mom with the great goalie who they admire. It becomes legit.
This is dire. This is one of those fight-fire-with moments in history.
5
@mcomfort - How exactly is this different from political talk in bars and barbershops? This has been going on for hundreds of years.
2
The most disturbing implication of this essay is the extent to which gossip and shiny objects of faux fact delivered by social media influence political discourse and decisions. It's like AIDS, it kills the very mechanism that's supposed to protect.
These tools and manipulations are not the republican's property alone. Democrats could play this game. Michael Che made the suggestion in jest just 2 weeks ago on Saturday Night Live. Maybe he wasn't kidding. If neither party kept to the high road, it would accelerate the race to the bottom where all the political actors would be the lowest life forms in society. Who would have thought in 2000 that American democracy would be dealing with this in less than 20 years because of the internet? It was supposed to save us.
4
And yet, the only effective and hard hitting ads I have heard on radio, seen on TV and online, come from Michael Bloomberg.
Dems really have to decide quick... Utopian dreams, or the most pressing and immediate need for the sake of this country: Get rid of Trump.
Realize that even if one of the more left leaning candidates gets elected, their big dreams and promises will not be passed in the current environment (Congress, courts,etc.)
One step at a time, people. One step at a time.
15
@Warcraft I agree about Bloomberg - I don't spend that much time online, but I've already seen his adds several times. His message (I will get it done) is powerful.
As much as I would like to have a female president as soon as possible, Trump is a political animal, he's a once in a lifetime phenomenon. He will eat anyone alive in November, except for Bloomberg, who has a force, aura or charisma, I don't know how to name it, to beat Trump.
This is more evidence that the 2020 presidential election will not be close. A quick look at the over 100,000 people who showed up for DJT’s rally in NJ (deep blue NJ!) tells the story of his popularity. There is nothing hidden or clandestine about citizens waiting for hours, outside in the middle of winter, to listen to the president speak. We don’t need iPhone tracking software to glean where the enthusiasm lies, it is obvious to all who are willing to open their eyes and see it.
11
@Pat5mac
First of all. You don't know how many people traveled from another state to attend this rally and it would be a mistake to take blogs and polls seriously since they tend to be less than objective.
And I daresay most Americans see Donald Trump for what he really is.
7
@N. Smith Mr. Smith, I see you are in NYC so I expect your exposure to "most Americans" is to your fellow NYC citizens. To win another Electoral College victory Trump needs to win the same group of battleground states he won before. What the people attending his rallies are listening to are friends on FB, Instagram, Fox and whatever other websites and news feed apps they consume. An echo chamber. Trump rally attendees are not reading multiple news sources to get a balanced picture, they're looking for sources that confirm their world view. Many of the political adds on FB and Instagram are of a humorous nature (maybe not humorous to you but funny to the target audience.) They deliver a message (like the Joe Biden ad in the article,) that reinforce a message (or a world view.) The challenge the Dem's face is that for whatever reason, resources or knowledge or ?, they're not mining the same phone location data of Trump rally attendees from Pennsylvania (or another swing state,) who went to church and also shopped at Cabela's in the last 3 months to feed them an alternative vision.
2
@Steve
No offense. But your assumptions are incorrect as I happen to travel outside of NYC regularly, and I am also well versed in the ways of the Electoral College and the impact of digital media on our elections, even though I don't subscribe to outlets like FOX, Facebook and Instagram -- especially not for news!
That said. I have no doubts that some entertainment and celebrity-mad Americans will find a reason (or excuse) to vote for Donald Trump.
But make no mistake about it, they do NOT represent the MAJORITY of the U.S. electorate, not in 2016 and not now.
And by the way, it's MS. Smith
2
While in Scandinavian countries and Switzerland democracy is successful and increasingly trusted to the point where technology is used to shift to direct democracy by voting on issues without the interference of representatives, in US technology is used to bamboozle and rob democracy of its purpose, to address the needs of the nation; on the contrary, it is used for lucre by exploiting the ignorance of the electorate.
The moral of this is that America lags far behind in educating its citizenry in becoming sufficiently educated voters. The jungle capitalism is at the jugular of democracy.
In the end everybody loses. How can Trump spell a healthy future for democracy in America?!
15
Wow. Imagine that. Nobody has yet cast a vote for the eventual Democratic nominee and the guy running for re-election has a better on-line campaign.
I'm gobsmacked!
9
@David F
Russians helping out again?
@David F It's deafeningly superior. :(
I think a big part of the problem with the Democrats is their leadership simultaneously believes "demographics is destiny" and that they are on the "right side of history." This breeds a sense of complacency in the DNC. It's telling that Bernie's relative insurgent campaign is ahead of the party - their disadvantages force them to innovate. Meanwhile, the Republicans have literally fewer voters, so they must run a guerrilla campaign to capture critical swing states that can win the Electoral College. The Republicans disadvantage has become their source of strength by giving them focus.
28
@Michael G. I read political news on digital NY Times,
Washington Post, CNN, Guardian, Politico, New Yorker,
never view political ads and am extremely disappointed
in DNC. What to do? Vote for all Dems on all my mail-in
ballots.
@Michael G. The Republican's source of strength is they cheat to win elections and seats in Congress. Democrats still take the high road.
3
@Michael G. - The Trump campaign is running ads targeting black blue collar workers. They know they need to expand their base, and that’s what they’re trying to do.
Over to you, DNC.
1
Mr. Edsall should remember that the Clinton campaign funding once it became clear she would be the nominee, outraised Trump in 2016.
Once there is a clear front,-runner I think Democrats will catch up fast.
At this point, though there is no clear favorite and, in spite of some questions about Michael Bloomberg's electability, he may be the only candidate who is well-funded enough and more appealing to a broad sector of voters who are motivated enough to oust the self-anointed Chosen One.
Even Trump's media darling Fox News are souring on the fractious, combustible "stable genius."
7
Thanks, Tom, but do you remember the "Simon says" game?
What about:
"Simon says, follow Trump?
----------------------------------
I was just thinking that Democrats need more persuasion to win.
They might try slogans like this one, to wake up voters, right now.
Yes, Trump and the Right are using tricks to fool people.
But there is time, to let people know how they are being fooled.
"Simon says, follow Trump?"
3
Its my opinion that a strong digital ground game made the AOC's narrow win possible ( over Crowley in NY). The DNC better shape up. All Trump needs to pull off 2020 is strategically placed wins on the EC map. AOC got help from Bernie's digital infrastructure and databases for her run. If Bernie is not the nominee he should share his digital resources with whoever is the ultimate nominee if needed. For the good of the country and this earth.
6
This is an important column by Thomas B. Edsall, and Democrats should be infuriated by the failure of our party leaders to take advantage of existing technology. It is not enough to say that Republicans have more money to pay the digital technology consultants, and it makes no sense to claim that Democrats are guided by some pristine sense of privacy.
We Democrats are behaving as though there is no such thing as the Electoral College. We learned nothing from the 2016 presidential election. We waste money piling up big victories in California. It is high time that Tom Perez be booted out of the horse-and-buggy driver’s seat.
27
For all the bluster about how great Trump's campaign was in 2016, those folks believed that Trump was going to lose prior to the election and they were as surprised as the rest of us when he won. This is post hoc analysis.
Additionally, if Trump's digital organizing is so awesome then why has his approval rating remained below 50 percent since the start of his administration? Even Rasmussen, which cooks data for Republicans, has struggled to keep Trump at 50 percent or higher.
5
@Duncan Osborne The opinion piece doesn’t say that Trump is ahead in the polls. It says his team is doing a better job with digital advertising.
7
@Duncan Osborne
According to Gallup, Obama was in the 40's all during 2012, and he got re-elected.
4
@Raz
I recommend you use realclearpolitics.com instead of just one poll. Obama's averages were consistently much higher than Trump's averages. And going in to 2012, Obama had much higher approval ratings than Trump has now. They are not comparable.
And John, there is no metric that will allow us to know if one campaign or another is better at digital advertising. Campaigns don't disclose that; they just lie to reporters about it. What we can know is approval ratings. We know that this miraculous digital advertising hasn't moved approval ratings, but it's going to convince more people to vote for him? Why would that be the case?
I find it weird that Democrats flag so badly in this area. I work in technology and generally find the people in technology to be younger and more liberal, and the Trump supporters I’ve known older and less technologically sophisticated.
Plus Google and other technology giants have faced large internal backlashes over military friendly business deals.
I wonder if there’s something to the idea that the portion of the technology world that could be aiding the Democrats isn’t for fear of being labeled partisan, while Republican leaning technologists don’t have this problem.
5
@Mobocracy
And people on top don’t want to be excluded from power.
We hear of the Herculean struggles for the DOJ to get data off of a terrorists Iphone because Apple hiding under the guise of data privacy refuses to unlock said phone. Use that very same phone in a church and all of a sudden everyone knows your business. I guess this is one more example of polarization.
3
My guess is trump's* digital tech operators are skewing the numbers as to not upset their king and get fired.
I would say that since most Americans have their cell phones glued to their faces, any online message by any candidate would eventually sift into their brains.
This is a good thing I suppose if you were running for office.
1
Meanwhile the Democrats are killing each other over ideological rifts that will not be easily healed leading up to and perhaps beyond the convention. It is not difficult to envision a split convention, or, perhaps voters from Bernie's ranks vowing to sit it out if Biden wins the nomination and vice versa if it's Sanders who gets the nod.
What makes this even more troubling than in 2016 is the fact that the two main factions - the progressive left and the moderate left - are much more deeply entrenched in their views and in particular view the candidate from the other side as inherently weak against Trump. The conventional thinking that all Democrats will unite against Trump proved false in 2016 and it may yet prove false again in 2020.
8
@John I HOPE you are wrong. We learned last time that bad things can happen. I like Liz or Bernie...but would hold my nose and vote for Old Joe if I had to, like I did for Hillary. No sane Dem can prefer the mess we have now to the slightly wrong for them ... Democrat.
2
What is also possible is that their data is flawed. Just like when Facebook asks, "did you visit... recently?" Most of the time, the answer is No. I may have been near there or at the store next to whatever they think I visited, but I wasn't.
Likewise, the software may have tracked these "Catholics who’ve been to church at least 3 times in the last 90 days,” but they may be tracking a wedding party doing a rehearsal.
Not to say that geofencing isn't a privacy threat or a useful tool for campaigns but the assumptions that those who go to church 3 times a month are necessarily Trump supporters is a leap of faith. The assumption is that these people are necessarily single-issue and that issue is abortion. They may also be disgusted by the philandering liar. in the White House and that would make them less likely to vote his way.
What's interesting is that they identified non-voter registered church goers. Those with strong political views are more likely to be registered to vote. I think it isn't really clear who they are targeting. I think their assumptions may be less than divine.
2
The face book is asking citizens questions now? Can you ask it about getting your data back?
What is also possible is that their data is flawed. Just like when Facebook asks, "did you visit... recently?" Most of the time, the answer is No. I may have been near there or at the store next to whatever they think I visited, but I wasn't.
Likewise, the software may have tracked these "Catholics who’ve been to church at least 3 times in the last 90 days,” but they may be tracking a wedding party doing a rehearsal.
Not to say that geofencing isn't a privacy threat or a useful tool for campaigns but the assumptions that those who go to church 3 times a month are necessarily Trump supporters is a leap of faith. The assumption is that these people are necessarily single-issue and that issue is abortion. They may also be disgusted by the philandering liar. in the White House and that would make them less likely to vote his way.
What's interesting is that they identified non-voter registered church goers. Those with strong political views are more likely to be registered to vote. I think it isn't really clear who they are targeting. I think their assumptions may be less than divine.
So what's on the "other" side?
A majority of the population.
All the computer and social media savvy people on the East and West coasts.
Giant, informal networks of these people.
Formal networks controlled by Silicon Valley types.
An enormous hatred of Trump and the dedicated mobilization to stop him.
By the way, we also control the economy. I'm just not sure we're willing to exercise that power. Americans have not used that "muscle" in a long, long time and we've grown flabby.
3
@Thomas Unless you know a way for the the blue states on the Digital Coasts to refuse to pay the red states with federal block grants ... how do you propose to leverage that power?
3
@Thomas and the red states thanked the blue states for their hard work, by cutting SALT deductions
1
@JCTeller
If this continues we organize and leave the union.
1
The President's on-line strategy has had the effect of removing the Mainstream Media's prior monopoly on controlling the messaging in American politics.
The Mainstream Media - which theoretically (and only theoretically) should welcome diversity of opinion (and diversity of delivery of those opinions) is actually appalled.
No single Media entity has been more indignant than the NY Times - which daily sets a negative agenda toward President Trump and the Republicans.
The Democrats are not the only ones to "freak out" about the President's ability to reach the public, over their heads.
12
So how come this data did not help Republicans keep the house majority in 2018?
4
If it is indeed "unaccountable spending," then we have no idea whether these campaigns are financed by Americans, or by Russians, Chinese, Saudis, whomever. Receiving campaign contributions from foreigners is a crime. Where is the Justice Department?
6
Today's insidious equivalent to door to door canvassing are lies that sneak into your phone. If Republicans have mastered if, Democrats need to find an ethical equivalent, fast.
When Marshall McLuhan wrote "The Medium is the Message" he presaged this change in how alleged truth is delivered. Democrats need to do their own messaging that puts Trumps's lies in front of people's faces, along the exit remedy (get rid of him!)
1
The bottom line from this article is, it's beyond time to start taxing churches. Any church that pushes a political message from it's pulpit is not a house of worship, it's a giant huckster scheme.
9
The Democratic answer is simple. Michael Bloomberg. He and his organization, whether he is the nominee or not, will match and beat the Trump machine. Just look at what they are doing with only a few months in and only $250 M spent. Wait till those billions kick in.
3
Wow, if only there were a candidate with a vast, extremely active, and digitally literate base that could meet this challenge.
Oh wait, there is...and like it or not, the numbers are in, and...it’s actually Bernie Sanders.
2
@A
And we'll actually see what good that does him once he leaves the nearly all-white states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
4
Trump's digital advantage is not as potent as the brainwashing advantage of Fox News. The Dems would do well to winnow out those presidential wannabes who don't have a hope of winning and settle on one strong contender who will get both the women's vote and the African-American vote. Millenials be warned; it ain't Bernie and it ain't Mayor Pete.
4
@Christy
Be honest. There is no doubt Bernie can win. The issue you are talking about is the handicap of the electoral college forcing liberals to vote republican.
You are also dead wrong. Bernie is more likely to attract disenfranchised voters on both sides of the isle. After all he is an “independent” as so many corporate Dems point out.
What is also possible is that their data is flawed. Just like when Facebook asks, "did you visit... recently?" Most of the time, the answer is No. I may have been near there or at the store next to whatever they think I visited, but I wasn't.
Likewise, the software may have tracked these "Catholics who’ve been to church at least 3 times in the last 90 days,” but they may be tracking a wedding party doing a rehearsal.
Not to say that geofencing isn't a privacy threat or a useful tool for campaigns but the assumptions that those who go to church 3 times a month are necessarily Trump supporters is a leap of faith. The assumption is that these people are necessarily single-issue and that issue is abortion. They may also be disgusted by the philandering liar. in the White House and that would make them less likely to vote his way.
What's interesting is that they identified non-voter registered church goers. Those with strong political views are more likely to be registered to vote. I think it isn't really clear who they are targeting. I think their assumptions may be less than divine.
Most Democrats are Trump junkies now and unconsciously want him to win again. All of their inventive energy goes into refining and repeating the myriad of ways in which he confounds, offends, and infuriates. There seems to be no awareness of this, for the most part; there is, I believe, a near-certainty that Big T will win again, and America will lose.
And it will be because of our domestic Trump addiction.
4
@Allen
Brilliant observation.
Compared to the current, invigorating, inspiring, infuriating situation, which drives those on the left to check their phones all day and night, and constantly post, repost, and comment, the boring day-to-day slog of actually being in a position where your own side is trying to govern, to compromise, to learn what's needed and pass laws and rules, would be a depressing letdown.
Without the Trump heroin-hit every few hours, the left would just shuffle off in random directions and go back to looking at cat videos.
4
I was raised a Christian. I know what it means to be a Christian. Trump is no Christian. And these evangelicals who think he is need to get a grip on reality.
10
When significant percentages of those at Trump rallies are Democrats, Independents, non-whites, and people who haven't voted in the last 4 elections, what's driving them there?
Targeted messaging? Fox? Neighbors? Trump himself?
5
@Talbot
White male dominated society. His attack is against liberalism and the corporate democrats are weak against him. They are corrupt in the eyes of the population so appear fake. They say one thing and do another.
Preaching to the converted. If Democrats come out to vote. it's over for Trump.
1
The submerged, invidious organization of rightest forces—from the Federalist Society's Yale meeting and its aftermath, to the manipulation of the census, the supermarket tabloid placements, the extortion of foreign governments for political lies, the relentless echo-chamber catapulting of the propaganda, the manifold bureaucratic subversions of voting rolls through purges, demands for ID, demands for Native American addresses, the running for office while one is secretary of some state, controlling placement of polling areas—they never sleep.
We need all the four-hundred-pound guys sitting on beds in Jersey. Which—by the way—I don't think Individual 1 is creative enough to have made that one up.
Something's happening here that makes paranoia strike deep.
4
Precisely why I do not own a cellphone.
3
Which is one more feather in Bernie's cap because no one will be able to top his voter enthusiasm online or anywhere else for that matter.
Biden doesn't have a shot. Klobuchar doesn't have a shot. Warren doesn't have a shot.
2
The Democratic nomination process is both boring, confusing, angering and hopeless. The power of small states like Iowa angers those on both coasts, and is acting to make voters in large states feel unimportant. This will suppress votes, be certain of that. It seems hopeless already. Dems need to stop this circus and consider who is the strongest and most viable candidate now, not later (even Bloomberg, who is more than capable). Instead, they appear as fools, allowing Trump to attack every and any viable opponent with bogus HRC type email stories. It is amazing how Dems continue to allow the Burisma story to persist. Blame Facebook for that. Blame individual Democrats for failing to use Facebook to attack Trump using digital targeting. Obviously, Democratic strategists have not learned how to fight back with like FB ads because they live in the past and hope to win with 1960's rules. Given the pathetic actions of Republicans in Congress, and Trumpian hand picked Supreme Court Justices, we have much to fear from Democratic inaction.
Frank,
Thanks for this and pointing out that my church will overlook putting kids in cages(predominantly Catholic), gutting of food aide like SNAP, Food stamps and are down for a man who has 22 women who have claims of sexual abuse.
I know that’s not the thrust of your timely column, but it confirms one of the many reasons my church is in so much trouble. They can justify supporting a 3X married adulterer who I would bet has paid for numerous abortions.
In their own minds they rationalize this as a means to an end. I’m not willing to go there. He is destroying our image worldwide, thinks climate change is a hoax, destroys the reputations of career diplomats for his own gain. How very Christian, NOT!
2
Oh well, this house of cards is bound to collapse during the next administration no matter who is president, and most of Trump's followers will only blame Trump if he is in office at the time of the collapse. Smarter narcissistic leaders leave the party during the sugar high phase so they don't get blamed for the inevitable hangover.
2
Edsall claims:
"Geofencing.....in which voters have little or no idea of how they are being manipulated,"
" geofencing, a technology that creates a virtual geographic boundary"
Geofencing is simply a way of determining if and when someone is in a particular area by surreptitiously using software to identify when a cellphone is in that area.
I consider that an invasion of privacy unless the tracked person specifically makes an informed consent to being so tracked.
However, I resent and reject Edsall's positively insulting claim that such tracking is manipulating the votes of voters. It is an outrageous and demeaning claim that, if true, would be a powerful argument against having a government that is a democracy.
The information which geofencing provides is merely to identify a desired audience. With regard to elections, the user of that information could then direct political messages to that specific audience alone. That is NOT manipulation. The only way it could be manipulation is if the audience has no intelligence and no will of its own. If members of the audience have intelligence and will, then they will evaluate all messages they receive and make choices according to their own judgement.
Apparently Edsall thinks American voters are too dumb to evaluate messages they receive properly. He therefore does not really object to manipulating them.....rather, he wants to determine what messages they receive so he or his allies can manipulate them.
3
What happened to Cambridge Analytica or similar companies?
2
@Me Cambridge fell apart.
1
Keep those ads, going, Bloomberg, and thanks!
2
This is why Bernie is best positioned to take on Trump. He has an incredible online army and base.
3
As somebody that went to 12 years of Catholic school, I have no idea of what you are talking about. If I had voted for Trump, the priests and nuns would have risen from the dead (I’m 62 so I am pretty sure that they aren’t in this world anymore) to ask me what they had done wrong. Trump stands for virtually everything that they told me I shouldn’t be.
When Republicans went after the Affordable Care Act, it was like firing a nuclear missile at the values that the nuns and priests taught me. That’s because helping the less fortunate is a staple of Catholic belief. Thankfully, the Catholic church stood up to the assault on the Affordable Care like they should have.
To summarize, if there are Catholics that are voting for Trump, they must have flunked out of Catholic school.
636
@American Expat
You make perfect sense but there are a lot of Catholics that don't believe the news anymore. They only believe what they are told to believe. They are in denial whenever told that Trump has done something wrong.
48
@American Expat I went to Catholic school too and I think most of my educators / bothers / nuns were probably liberal for the reasons you described. However, there is a huge contingent of conservative Catholics out there and I think many of them are one-issue voters. They will support whomever is the most pro-life.
87
@American Expat My wife was a Catholic in your age group. Although not now a Catholic she adheres to the Catholic social responsibility model she was taught as a child. But, living in central Missouri being around Church-going Catholics is no fun. When canvassing for Claire McCaskill in heavily Catholic neighborhoods they were mostly hardcore Trump supporters. Some called me and Claire baby killers.
77
The real tragedy is that so many Americans are so malleable and open to such manipulation. Lack of education, lack of awareness, and general gullibility have led us to the point where dishonest Facebook ads can easily swing an election. Americans are more concerned with who wins DWTS than in how their democracy is being destroyed.
3
@Brandon J
The media is also to blame. Making back room deals with politicians to only ask certain questions for access is a problem.
The desire to not anger those in power and both sides things with one side out right lying is the other.
And the last is a media apparatus of right wing that shows daily how biased and propagandist they are.
See how they turned on Bolton crying loyalty is more important than anything else. That is not a news agency.
If the Dems want to be successful, it'w necessary for them to do the same digital technologies that Trump is doing NOW!
1
The biggest advantage Republicans have is their complete abandonment of norms and even a 'fig-leaf' approach to the truth. Once so liberated, you don't need dirt on your opponent - you just dream it up.
Democrats are not saints, but they are still tethered to notions of truth and decency. It is an asymmetric war... in the long run, truth always prevails, but in the short run, it's anyone's game.
3
Male hierarchies have been the dominating force in the entire history of civilization. The problem is that the best leaders in warfare are often not the best in governance.
At some point in a system with some democratic influence, such as ours, organized and disciplined warriors lose credibility if they fail their citizens consistently on matters of policy, no matter how much their leaders stick together to a plan for holding onto power.
Unfortunately, we may not be there yet, and this time, our very existence is threatened. Catholics, obsessed with protecting fetuses and a vision of the universe that has human beings in the immortal center certainly have a right to vote their conscience.
However, the weaponization of single issue voters by he GOP may kill us all.
For the rest of us, our single issue needs to be defeating Trump and every politician that supports him.
4
It's hard to imagine my liberal Catholic 79-year-old mother coming out of mass and being tracked by Brad Parscale. But those ads will just motivate her to campaign for Democrats even more. The Trump campaign is so tasteless and crass, that you have to wonder if their ads inspire more Democrats than Republicans to go vote?
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@Joshua
I think the answer is, it depends. Not necessarily on the Trump campaign, but on the Democratic nominee. The further left the Democrats go, the closer moderates will be pushed toward the conservatives. There are obviously always exceptions, but the left has always lagged the right in building strong religious-based support precisely because conservatism aligns more closely with maintaining religious standards that the left is too quick to dismiss as obsolete.
6
@John
Only 35% of self-identified moderates hold centrist positions on both fiscal and social policy. Many self-identified moderates are in fact people who hold some left-wing and some right-wing views. The "middle" is not what it seems. For those interested in learning more: https://medium.com/@brettclt/bernie-sanders-is-the-most-electable-candidate-f9edfed715cf
4
How to manipulate the masses - 101. This is just another cancer grown out of consumerism. The desire to sell widgets or ideas has come together, the commercialization of politics. The story is old. Politicians go to Washington with high ideals and then become compromised with the battle to survive. We're asking those Republican senators to do what they have seen fail time and again. Creating short term desires is what consumerism is all about, what man is about. As I write this comment I look out my back window at my swimming pool and glance at an original piece of art on my wall. Does Trump understand me better than I understand myself? Am I the dupe?
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@DHR
US elections are big business, a heavily promoted circus to bring in big bucks, giving the US the best democracy money can buy.
Citizens have been trained that their reason for being is to consume and grow the economy.
I support Sanders for his bold ideas and vision, but mostly for his integrity and courage, and desperately needed moral leadership.
A Sanders presidency has a chance to promote different values, and with money spent on Quality, free/affordable childcare for All, Quality early childhood education for All, Quality k-12 education for All, and tuition free continuing public education...
in a generation, after children have better education, the US will have a more thriving society, and hopefully, citizens who can think and make better choices.
A Future To Believe In!
8
@DHR
"Does Trump understand me better than I understand myself? Am I the dupe?"
I guess that depends on whether or not you vote for Trump....
1
I guess we're going to find out whether we can be fooled twice.
Shame on us.
4
The DNC is the problem. They sap energy out of everything. What we need is energy focused on the entire middle class - NOT ONLY the union workers. Also, no one will say it but the democrats need a clear picture of where they stand on immigration. That includes programs like H1B Visas (which are taking middle-class jobs by the hundreds of thousands). BREXIT happened for many reasons but too much immigration was a major factor.
Yes, talk about global warming and healthcare but include your limits on immigration. If you don't have limits YOU will lose.
Also, I would slow down on paying student loans. I'm all about fairness - what about those without kids and who have their own loans? Why aren't they forgiven? Healthcare for all is great because it's for everyone (inclusive). If you're going to forgive loans then forgive for everyone's. If you can't forgive everyone's loans then provide students REALLY low rates.
People have a basic sense of fairness and when they are constantly cheated when they play by the rules they will leave your party.
So have a few very clear messages about how you will help ALL of the middle-class, including limitations/guardrails on immigration. We will come out in bigger numbers than Trump.
7
@How Much Is Enough?
"Middle class" means management. It's the clock-punching and gig workers that have been abandoned by DNC democrats since the Clinton administration which is why we have Trump and why Sanders is significantly ahead of all other candidates challenging him.
1
@Al M Clock punching is union and that is covered by the DNC (because of the money given by unions). Gig workers are professional workers and yes, completely abandoned by both parties. Agree completely on the Trump/Sanders connection. But don't miss the immigration link and H1B affects gig workers directly.
3
people are lazy, and they do not have the attention span to actually check the facts, it is too easy to just accept what you see as true. truly, it makes me fear for the future of our country.
4
What I don't understand is, who is behind this? Everything in the Trump Administration borders on incompetence. How is it that he has such an advantage here? Who is leading this effort? It's somewhere else in the GOP (RNC perhaps?). Dems had a digital advantage under Obama but the GOP has not only caught up but pulled ahead. Forget about Trump himself, the Dems need to figure this out ASAP!
@Mbakerz
The best way to deal with republicans is fight back. They only respect strength. Shaking hands and making deals makes them laugh.
They want wrestle mania sports team absolute loyalty to the point of buying all the referees so the goal post floats to them.
You want to take them on donate and support progressives who are engaged against them which cite credible sources.
@Mbakerz It's all Parscale. Do you actually think Trump himself is tweeting 140+ messages in an hour? These guys know how to use digital marketing extremely well, and they reinforce their "brand" every minute of the day.
How is the American political system of mass surveillance and targeted political advertising any different from the Chinese system of mass surveillance, propaganda and active suppression of dissent?
Each country's political system may have different origins, but the desired goal appears to be the same: permanent rule by self-selected and self-serving elites.
1
Politicians who use technologies to connect with voters most likely to support them or persuade voter likely to vote against them are not cheating. Digital technology helps level the field for campaigns with smaller budgets. Since they can’t afford to campaign everywhere, digital technology allows the to campaign in the most-cost effective way.
3
Of course the president's evil campaign is ahead in digital. Putin and Company are on Trump's reelection campaign payroll. Meanwhile, American-based tech giants seem unwilling to end the flow of false information. Oh, and then there's hacking from any number of countries led by Trump-like despots.
1
This is a brilliant article. How much time and energy has been wasted on the utterly useless impeachment reality show -- "Will there be witnesses..." "What did this this lawyer or that lawyer say today..." blah, blah, blah -- while the Trump campaign wins the war? We liberals think we're so smart because we speak well and have elite educations, but to paraphrase a well-worn aphorism: we're playing checkers, they're playing chess.
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@J
Actually it is more - Democrats are playing by the rules, Republicans have no rules - ie - they have no problem with lying, disinformation etc, even when directed towards their own voters.
124
@J: No, we're playing chess, and Trump's base only knows how to play checkers. How otherwise would they favor a crass dolt without a speck of decency?
The Republicans "defending" Russia's puppet have nothing "real" to say; that is what's obvious at the impeachment "trial."
Even liberals' intelligence won't help us if we have to merely exist during another four years of autocracy.
40
@J
I think you have the aphorism backwards. They're playing checkers because the audience they are trying to reach prefers fewer rules, less complexity, and has a shorter attention span.
Hence a possible tendency on their part to dismiss what you call the "useless impeachment reality show."
The election will tell whether the nation (as reflected in the skewed Electoral Collage totals) prefers, as you put it, checkers or chess.
Or a political party that habitually cheats at every game it plays.
60
I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat, and all I can say is that in this case, the Republicans, whom I have loathed all my life, are way ahead of my side in recognizing and using this technology. In the matter of media, it was the same. While the Democrats were counting on the ever-less-effective "mainstream media", which occasionally reported news between infotainment stories, the Republicans built a media infrastructure dedicated entirely to spreading right-wing lies and demonizing the left.
My side better stop trying to figure out how to keep Sanders from becoming the nominee and start figuring out how to beat Trump.
As for me, when the CA primary comes, I'm voting for Bloomberg.
@Vesuviano
It isn't just the technology. As an article I wrote examined, it is the foul genius of Roger Ailes in understanding and tribalizing culture that is the foundation of our present dilemma --
https://almarkowitz.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2019-07-05T06:25:00-07:00&max-results=7
Unless we come to understand the importance of culture in shaping how we see the world and ourselves in it, the right may yet prevail. My own meager efforts as a poet and writer have emphasized reviving and strengthening a traditional working class culture of solidarity which emphasized common ground and social connectedness via the Blue Collar Review.
http://www.partisanpress.org/
1
When will Silicon Valley take responsibility for itself and stop its experiment in social conditioning? Our democratic institutions, our communities, our private lives, our children are not guinea pigs. Our values and beliefs are not commodities for sale.
5
Geofencing? So there's a company out there that's tracking where people go by following their cellphones? And gathering personal information, including party affiliation and whether they voted in 2016? And selling the information to parties, some of whom are interested in transmitting disinformation? And this is legal?
I get that the Constitution protects our privacy from the government and not from privately-held organizations, but our laws and regulations really have to catch up with tech. My cynical side says legislation might be slow in coming given that many legislators are likely using these tools, but this is truly awful.
Thank you Apple for apparently making an effort to limit the damage.
10
@PDXBruce Apple didn't invent geofencing. It arose out of needs for IoT devices like Hue, Ring, etc.
1
Trump has just too many advantages to enumerate. The silent majority of Republicans are behind Trump and not Bolton or Gen. Kelly or Lev Parnas. Catholics are behind Trump for his anti-abortion stance. More African Americans are likely to vote for Trump because the economy has lifted them and given them hope. Working class is working and they support Trump. Farmers will support Trump because he has stuck with them through thick and thin of the trade deal adventure. Only the die hard democrats will support anyone but Trump and I know several of them but they constitute 30% of the voters. Not a small number of 90 million but how many will show up in Red states? The blue states don't matter much considering that they just provide a popular vote. The same number that voted for Dukakis and Walter Mondale. You can figure it out.
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@Girish Kotwal -- Best to remember that 70+ million voted against tRump, and they will again. Voters should not make the mistake of voting for a 3rd party candidate. THOSE people elected tRump in 2016.
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Bernie supporters are more likely to vote for Trump than they are for someone like Biden. They’re getting a taste of what a biased media does to their candidate of choice and if they feel like he’s not getting a fair shake I’d prepare for retaliation at the polls.
4
Trump’s strongest demographic is the least educated. And of course, white supremacists remain strongly in his corner, particularly the ones empowered by his rhetoric to commit the scores of acts of right-wing political violence that have surged under Donald Trump’s white nationalist “presidency.”
1
Looks like republicans dusted off the Chicago machine, changed the oil, greased it up, and upgraded it for automation with the latest Silicon Valley based instrumentation and control (I&C) technology.
Regardless, the old machine adage, "we don't want nobody that nobody sent" still seems to apply in the information age. It's the ghost not the machine.
1
Social media has devolved. It's gone from being a tool people can use to freely share thoughts and ideas, into a platform where fanatics freely spew hatred, government agencies and non-state actors spread disinformation, and totalitarian dictatorships control populations. If Trump is elected again in 2020, I plan to delete my Facebook account, which is the only form of social media I I currently use. My reasons are twofold.
1) I blame Mark Zuckerberg for running Trump ads that spew blatant lies to deliberately mislead the populace, while raking in enormous mountains of cash.
2) With Trump, Barr, and Pompeo in power, I'm afraid the current autocratic regime will start using social media as a way of going after their political enemies.
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@wildwest Why not delete it now? There have been plenty of reasons to already.
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@wildwest Knowing what you know, why do you still have a Facebook account ?
The editorial only mentioned Facebook...and mentioned it repeatedly. I didn't see any mention of Instagram or Snapchat. I'm discounting Tik Tok since most users are not 18 and Twitter since it banned political advertisements.
What this tells me is that for all the digital advantage the Trump campaign seems to have, their digital campaign is most likely targeting the same people that Fox and TV advertising is. They may be hammering home the "Trump good, Biden/Bernine bad" message online, but it's to the same 30-40% of hardcore Trumpers who would vote for him anyway.
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Democrats have invested all their fortunes in impeachment. Most Americans view that as a waste of political capital. Trump could be sending out messages by carrier pigeon and it wouldn't matter. Most voters will not vote for Trump this year, they will vote against the national nightmare that Democrats have become.
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@John Medina
Completely agree.
Same goes for CNN. Their fanatical reporting has transformed them into FOX 2.
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@John Medina
"Most" Americans voted the Dems in to impeach Trump. I guarantee "Most" (as in actual numbers, the popular vote) will choose Dem in November.
"National nightmare" L - O - L
1
I would love to hear any democratic candidate discuss what they are going to day from day one to protect us from this kind of cyber spying. I think Yang has the best handle on all of it, but he won't be the nominee. Clearly, Bernie isn't opposed - he's literally embracing it. I'm increasingly losing hope that anyone in Washington can or is willing to protect us from Silicon Valley.
5
You can follow us, track us, get in front of our eyeballs - but this season’s Apprentice, Jerry Springer Edition is exhausting. The majority of Americans do not want to live in a state of political histrionics.
14
Agree that Trump's team is as efficient as the Democrats is a blunder. However I find it interesting that none of the ads from either party has ever reached my cell phone and I see barely a handful on social media. Perhaps posting repeatedly that one should assume all political ads on social media from any party are lies and fake news is working on my behalf.
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Still, they may have you in a special category of “thinks social media ads are fake news”, to compare and contrast with the true believers, or to target in some other sneaky way.
Technology has made everyone a potential influencer, if they chose to take on the role. At no cost to yourself, you can reach out and influence thousands of people over the internet. Many political activists have met up online, and joined together to make their views known.
These activities are both protected by the First Amendment, and impossible to regulate anyway. You cannot regulate individuals who are may be acting in concert, but are not members of any formal organization. If no money is spent, but you just spend all your time posting to the internet with your online buddies, it doesn't fall under the purview of the FEC, any more than political discussions in bars and barbershops.
Right here in the NY Times comment section, numerous subscribers argue about the merits of various candidates. If your post is good, you may persuade someone to think twice about his political position. That's how free speech and democracy were designed to work.
2
An important article. Thanks. Everyone needs to know about this phenomenon.
5
This article about political digital technology is interesting but it really won't change the minds of voters. Those that want Trump will stay loyal and those that oppose Trump will never go to the other side. There is literally two worlds that see Trump in vastly different ways.
There recently was a trump rally in Wildwood NJ and it was an eye opener to me in read what some of the attendees had to say. In their minds Trump is their savior and has done no wrong. Other can't stand Trump's demeanor, but are so anti abortion that they will vote for him again. Some that didn't vote for him in 2016 have said they've switched to be a supporter. To me that is the scariest part.
This country is as divided as it was during the Vietnam War and possibly as divided as the pre Civil War days. These followers are not watching the impeachment trial so none of the facts are reaching them and I'm not so sure they would be dissuaded anyway.
I'm very concerned about the November election. The Democrats must get together with a strong message. A ray of home that I saw about this rally is that there were very little black voters in attendance. The black vote will be very important if the Democrats want to win the WH and the Senate and they cannot take them for granted this time if they expect to win.
16
So they think all of those catholic unregistered voters are untapped conservative voters? Aren't the most ardent supporters of either side of the abortion issue already highly politically active?
Having heard a lot of sermons in a Catholic Church over the last 3 years, nothing I have heard even between the lines would be even a remote endorsement of any of the behavior exhibited by our current president.
If I were to take the last 10 presidents and rank them as to the likelihood that they have paid for an abortion in their lifetime, Trump is a strong number 1 or at worst number 2- and even most Catholics realize this.
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@Hugh G
Number 1 though not among the last 10 would be JFK.
@Reader In Wash, DC A good Catholic like JFK-never!
Maybe Trump could be number 3, then- Slick Willie was quite the charmer as well. Birth control availability is much higher then than the 50s and 60s.
In reading this column, my thinking is that this will only further deepen the divide between red and blue states. Red states (rural areas especially) tend to be less educated and more religious compared with blue states and urban areas. So the effect of such a digital campaign realistically is that the vote in red states may be more reliably conservative than ever before, possibly.
It's surprising that the party of old, white men seems to have a tech advantage with the 'get out the vote' ground game. But then again, those who have the most to lose are the ones who will do everything they can to protect the status quo.
8
@Adam It should be noted, Maryland is now approaching 40% African-American and Hispanic. Baltimore City is 64% African-American. Perhaps this is the new emerging blue state identity?
@Adam
RE: It's surprising that the party of old, white men seems to have a tech advantage
Why is this a suprise. White men have created most science and tech. White men have created civilization.
Trump is facing an uphill battle IMO. Yes he can mobilize his base but his base was mobilized in 2016. Republicans vote at like 80-90% like they always do you really can't tweek a 90% voter turnout. Democrats will only voted at a around 60% in 2016 turnout will be much higher then 60% in 2020 I hope.
9
@GladF7 I hope so too. But then so many are prevented from voting by putting polling places out of reach for many working as well as poor, fragile and elderly voters. And what about those how have served their time and are never allowed to vote? Sometimes I think the jailing of young poor adults (especially of color) are deliberately incarcerated. That keeps them forever having their blight and voices heard at the ballot box. The republican party are afraid of these possible voters so they put in place barriers that makes it difficult for above mentioned voters to vote.
3
@Idabney
think Obama in 2008. these voters stayed home in 2012 and event more so in 1026
In 1968, as those of a certain age will remember, voters were startled to read a bestseller about the promoting and stage managing of Richard Nixon as if he was consumer product. Madison Avenue to microtargeting and geofencing is not such a great leap. What's different now is that candidates only have to compete in defined areas of maybe six states.
3
@Frunobulax I am of a certain age and am sure the comparison is bogus. We had NO Facebook, twitter or even cable news. Edsall's points are well taken. We by which I mean I have no idea how those ads turn up on my Android for such things as the vitamins that I looked up yesterday. Technology has changed the equation totally. Images are everything these days.
Whew! Not being a user of social media is a relief. Not receiving email on my cell phone is a relief. Not wasting time on Facebook, Twitter, instagram, etc. etc. et., is a relief. Gives one time and energy to actually read newspapers, journals, and simply listen and think.
21
@Rachel your “relief” should be tempered by understanding how other voters are reached and influenced — and the fact that many voters do not make decisiones based on “listening and thinking” but on emotional responses to highly targeted echo-chamber advertising.
3
If young people come out to vote, it won’t matter if Trump owned Facebook, Instagram and all the best of social media sites. He will lose. Moreover with all the press Trump gets already, does a strong social media and web presence really matter? I’d argue the more people see him the more they want him to go away. He’s overexposed at this point and it’s detrimental to him.
13
@Jack Smith much of the targeted advertising appears to be negative ads creating negative images of other candidates, rather than promoting Trump himself.
5
I hope that Mr. Edsall will give us an article next week about the progress the Democratic Party is making to reduce the digital and media and social media advance gained by the Republican Party. I hope he will tell us that Democratic strategist have been aware of this problem since 2016 and have taken steps to meet the challenge, that they are coordinating their efforts rather than using resources to snipe at competing candidates, that they have plans to reach parity with the other party on their echo chambers in the media and on social media. We want to hear more from Democrats than, "We know they are far ahead of us in the realms of digital, media coverage and social media messaging." Democrats, if you're listening, get to work.
9
Thank you for quoting Tara McGowan. This is not dark magic. At best, digital ads can inform, persuade and confuse issues (see Russia). An informed citizen is the best defense.
6
This article neglects to mention the "surprise factor", which will also work to Trump's advantage.
Simply put, there is very little likelihood that any new information can come out that will seriously change voters minds about Trump in a negative way. He has been bashed so badly and for so long by so many media outlets that his popularity numbers are not likely to go down: what is worse for a president than being impeached ? And yet, he still commands very strong backing from 40%of the country, and over 60% when it comes to handling of the economy, often the most important thing in voters' minds.
On the other hand, we have seen that the more voters learn about Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sanders' plans, the more Democratic voters are uncomfortable with them. The media so far has avoided focusing on these negatives, but you can be sure Trump and the Republicans will hammer at those points come September.
13
@G Except 40% is hardly "commanding". His approval vacillates from the high 30's to low 40 all the time. Those are the "5th Ave" crowd. He's the only POTUS in history to NEVER hold a positive job approval and the only one to have over 50% of the electorate calling for his removal.
12
I find it interesting to see polls constantly used as a measure of success. If true, Trump will be spanked in 2020, yet people are talking about Trump having the advantage - why is that?
Polls are as good as they were in 2016 and no one really believes them.
1
@Paul Mollan
Lots of people won't admit that they will vote for Trump. The surprise of November 2020 will be how many Blacks and Hispanics will vote for Trump, rather than taking a chance that the economy will crumble under a Democrat.
Don't believe that 40% rating is the ceiling; its the floor.
3
This paper starts out strongly with an introduction to the digital marketing problem. Alas, it soon slows down with a long string of quotes drawing from Edsall's own micro-targeting of sources. All are properly footnoted for sure, but it's a mishmash that ends with a bit of a whimper. Students take a risk following this approach and cannot expect more than a C on the result.
7
I despise Trump, but watched the PBS Frontline interviews with Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon and found them refreshingly critical of Trump and pro for the people being left behind.
They both think Trump hasn't been "populist" enough and Bannon even said he would support a progressive populist if the conservatives can't get it done.
Don't be fooled with things like returning prayer to school and restricting food stamps when the "winners" could easily rework the system to share more of the wealth and security if they really wanted.
6
The prolonged and fractious nominating process, and impeachment (even though the "right thing to do"), are disadvantaging Democrats in preparing to defeat Trump. I fear that talk about building the progressive base may be more talk than reality. To win in November, progressives, moderates, centrists and independents who don't like Trump, and even the 10 to 15% of Republicans who find him appalling, will need to coalesce around a single candidate. Whether that is one of the progressives or one of the moderates, people are already saying they won't vote for a candidate that doesn't fit their preferences--some real people and perhaps some not. There is an enthusiasm gap plaguing the leading moderate candidate. Both progressives and moderates are expending lot's of energy advocating for their preferred policies, all of which will be moot if Trump wins. Then there is hobby politics, in which people go online and express opinions without talking to people face to face. Churches are better organizing venues than newspaper comment columns. Meantime, the hard work of getting out the vote, which includes smart use of state-of-the-art technology, is getting neglected. If people do not coalesce around a candidate as soon as the primaries are decided, with enthusiasm & energy, there will be 4 more years of Trump. Getting 3 million extra votes in CA won't matter. It will be decided in WI, PA, OH, NC, FL, AR, VA, MI, NH and CO.
9
@MVonKorff That is why it is even more important to get rid of the electoral college. It has favored the Republicans over the democrats. It has favored the rural areas with few voters over millions of voters who live in the cities. The millions of voters living in the cities seem to have no rights when it comes to the electoral college, decided by a few hundred mostly business people. This is not democracy.
1
There are still 6 months until Democrats even name their nominee.
Of course Trump’s re-election campaign is already ahead. There’s no competition, and no primary challengers. You’re comparing a durian to an orange and trying to draw conclusions, which doesn’t work.
Trump’s campaign is the durian.
7
The elephant in the room is again the extreme-right disinformation machine which is little more than constantly fed tribalized thought disorder -, brainwashing. This, lik the present incarnation of the GOP is inseparable from the Evangelical movement. The digitization of this effort is inevitable but it is dangerous cancer we as nation must face. Such cultural manipulation and propaganda is an abuse of free speech and the public airwaves with a long and terrible history which includes genocide.
I can offer a few suggestions. We can return to the Fairness Doctrine, requiring opposing views to be fairly heard and fact-checked. We can return actual news to a non-partisan, ratings-free category. We can again ban outright libel and hate speech based on race, religion, gender or national culture from the public airwaves. I think it is vital that we break up the media giants which control the slants of what is reported and the narratives that pass for news. Words have power. Democracy does not benefit from corporate media consolidation. Even public radio needs a degree of regional independence. Of course this presupposes leadership not tied to corporate interests which we do not presently have.
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@Al M
Brainwashing - translation: Someone is exercising free speech. I disagree with it and want to shut it down. If colleges can elminate free speech let's expand the band.
@Al M
Funny that you fail to even mention the disinformation machinations that are powering the extreme left of the Democratic party right now - specifically that there is some vast conspiracy against the 99% perpetrated by corporations, billionaires and the "punditry class". Oh wait, you seem to actually believe that this group of "nasties" is in fact in league with one another to keep the common man down.
Ask yourself this:
Is tribalized thought not cultivated by singling out the "other" and blaming that person or group for all of your perceived ills?
If you answer yes to this, then you likely see this in Trump's platform via the demonization of immigrants.
But if you believe that to be true, then how is Bernie Sanders demonization of the wealthy any different? He uses the same tactics and the results are exactly the same. People who like Bernie simply regurgitate his talking points on how billionaires are to blame for their lot in life.
Put more simply....
Trump: Immigrants are to blame for everything....
Sanders: Billionaires are to blame for everything....
There's no difference.
@Reader In Wash, DC Yes, dictators the world over engage in free speech all the time. What's the problem there?
This is unbelievable that an observant religious person can be tracked coming and going to a house of worship so they can be targeted with ads. I knew our privacy was at risk, but not to this extent. Politicians are exploiting this technology instead of respecting our right to privacy.
28
Every Catholic I know is supportive of the LGBTQ community, attend their weddings and support gay friends who choose a lifetime commitment to each other. I know a lot of Catholics in many places... The GOPs efforts to divide our United States are failing in 2020. Register to vote, think carefully about the candidates and vote in the Primary & General Elections this year. It’s our nation, participate in it!
78
@TH Williams But we’re in the liberal blue areas; Catholics in non-blue areas agree with the Repubs.
3
"The explosion of digital technology has created the opportunity for political operatives to run what amount to dark campaigns, conducted below the radar of both voter awareness and government oversight."
No oversight, no regulation, dark campaigns, what could go wrong with democracy?
President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget proposal includes $25 billion in cuts to Social Security over the next 10 years. I wonder what his rabid followers will think if he gets that passed?
21
@Jacquie I am a senior and dislike this Trump. He wants to cut SS because more and more elderly voters are seeing what he is all about. HE will spend the 25 billion on his ow, and his family enrichment. He has never been successful in his own business so now he wants to take if from the mouth of the poor, the elderly, the students etc.
His tax breaks for the super rich benefitted him and his chronies.
1
@Idabney You are absolutely correct. He will use the money he slashes from Social Security to provide another round of huge tax cuts for the wealthy if he wins a 2nd term.
2
Has anyone independently confirmed Parscale's statements? These are people known more for hyperbole and outright lies than truthfulness.
And possibly the best predictor of whether a person will vote in a future election is whether they voted in the past, not their attendance at a rally.
11
Well, it seems the real Deep State is being used by the Republicans, the Trumpists and the Authoritarians. While the Democrats believe in privacy and freedom to associate without being tracked, without being fenced in.
7
This is only a problem for Democrats, as Democratic voters are easily manipulated and don't coaless or compromise their principles even if it means losing, which they are happy to do. Trump supporters on the other hand are not amenable to any kind of misinformation campaign, or even to reality. Trump voters will not be disuaded from doing what they are going to do, which is vote for Trump.
5
@Bananahead
Democratic voters don't compromise their principles?
Hillary won the #MeToo and popular vote after ruthlessly destroying the reputations of her husband's sexual assault victims.
Bloomberg is a billionaire capitalist who got himself an extra term.
They are now championing nation building for the Kurds and demanding that we not pull out of the Middle East.
The CIA is their hero.
Let's not pretend that principles fly out the window when it comes to winning.
4
What worries me is that the first instinct of people and institutions who consider this a problem will be suppression of these tools and political speech. I understand why this paper opposes new methods of influencing people. I don't understand why it's readers do. At a fundamental level you're interfering with the comunication between the citizens of this country and the people who want to govern it. It appears you perfer old fashioned top down control and fear the voice of the people ie Populism from either Sanders or Trump. Get used to it and adapt or make peace with your instincts and emulate China's system.
8
“Where they shop; What they do for fun; What other apps they use, for how long, and what they do in those apps; Where they live; Where they work; With whom they associate.”
How quaint that people used to be paranoid, fearing that the government might stamp them with a barcode, all in order to track their activities.
Who would have thought that we’d all voluntarily opt-in to a far more invasive technology, and pay for the chance to give away our basic legal rights? Aside from AT&T, obviously.
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@ubique, Yes, surveillance capitalism is very scary indeed. We have a system where capitalists compete to collect and sell our private data to the highest bidder (and governments are only one of the types of customers the surveillance capitalists have). I don't know about you, but I find that very, very disturbing.
2
I don't think people are necessessarily so easily manipulated by advertizing campaigns. We have been awash in ubiquitousn pervasive advertizing all our lives. Some of it fails in its goals of changing behavior. Most is simply ignored; a few images on a phone are not game-changers.
6
One word: Bloomberg. He made billions in the "data" business. Often, the solution is right in front of you. Dems need only pull the right lever in the primaries.
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@USNA73
IF there is any "Democratic candidate" I will not vote for it is Bloomberg. He is a Republican in Democratic clothing using his unearned billions to try to buy the election in a traditional McKinley era "front porch" campaign.
At least in the Republican debates Trump was right about his criticism of the trade deals and of the invasion of Iraq (Sunday afternoon quarterbacking). A Bloomberg - Trump election would do the same for the American "democracy" that Julius Caesar and Augustus did for the Roman Republic.
There is a also a conflict of interest for a media mogul to run for president. He should be required to sell off his media empire first.
16
@Robert Scull there is simply no comparison between what Bloomberg would do (and wouldn't do) as president and the damage Trump has done and will continue to do if he gets a second term (and then not need to worry about reelection).
If you don't want more conservative SCOTUS and lower court judges and you care about maintaining our rights (reproductive, minority, voting, lgbtq, etc); if you believe in climate change and science in general; if you don't want someone who lies more easily than he breathes; and if don't want the country to suffer irreparable damage...then Trump needs to go. That has to be the primary goal of this election.
So please, in November...Vote Blue No Matter Who.
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@USNA73
It's always interesting to watch politics and principles collide. Bloomberg is not only a billionaire and capitalist, he actually had the laws changed so he could give himself a 3rd term.
These are the very things that make democrats shudder. Or so they say. Until it comes down to winning. Then principles get jettisoned (but not before some last minute lecturing on how evil republican capitalists, billlionaires, etc. are).
6
Thanks for another terrific Edsall column, I doubt I'll work my way the information presented here anytime soon. When I followed the geofencing link, I found this near the end of the link.
"Just this past year, Massachusetts was one of the first states to enact a consumer protection law that objected to the use of location-based advertising. The Attorney General blocked an ad campaign from Copley Advertising, which was hired by a Christian organization to set up a geofence around women’s health clinics that would target women in the waiting room or nearby with anti-abortion ads."
Geofencing does not depend on the consent of the property owners in the designated area or the informed consent of cell phone users. "Ads" can be directed to any cell phone if the location feature has been activated.
There is no better argument for turning off your cell phone's location features. You can always turn location on when you really need to use the location features. Just don't forget to turn it off when you no longer have a specific need for location services.
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@OldBoatMan - Even if you turn off 'location services' for all you apps, I think that location data may still be available through your phone company via cell tower triangulation.
5
@Chris Costello That is a good point, but the cell phone location services are far too arcane a topic for most people, and especially me, to understand. It seems to me that even if location is available from the cell phone companies via triangulation, there must be good reason why apps want location data directly from your phone.
One reason may be that regulators can stop cell phone companies from selling or sharing location data. Another is that cell phone companies my charge much more than the apps.
It seems to me that if the consumer can deny information to those who are selling her information, she is in a much better position than if she gives the information away freely.
5
@Chris Costello You can turn on Airplane Mode when not using your phone. That should stop cell tower triangulation. After all, do you REALLY want all that Notifications ? ( I usually deny all notifications from apps. )
6
An unstated but blaring conclusion from Mr. Edsall's offering today:
A major argument among Dems has been whether the winning strategy would involve turning out big numbers of new / young / progressive voters or whether the better strategy is turn swing state swing voters who fell for Trump back to the D column.
The answer to the question is between Mr. Edsall's lines.
The answer is not one or the other strategy, but both, are required to win in November.
Biden and Klobuchar are going to have to work hard in the swing states, whether or not either are the nominee or on the ticket. Bloomberg is going to have to spend like there's no tomorrow, because in a too real sense that could be true.
And younger, progressive, idealistic voters are going to have to get real and show up to vote for the D candidate no matter who he or she turns out to be.
19
As long as we don’t provide a real, regulated, voter information system, and continue to run elections more like auctions, this will be our reality.
It will only get worse. When you realize political attack ads every 2 years are propping up broadcast media and even newspapers, with absurd ad buys. Facebook and Alphabet are rolling in the mud and smelling like billionaires thanks to this insane method of selecting “leaders” in our country.
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@David Esrati
I like many people my age and younger (under 40) have not seen an ad in years. We also don't use facebook. Or listen to the radio.
6
This article clearly explains why Trump against all odds continues to prevail. Did anyone see the Trump rally in New Jersey? People were lining up before sunrise in the freezing cold 14 hours before Trump was scheduled to appear! It was the kind of drama & excitement you only see at a major sporting event. Fox News predictably had wall to wall coverage. CNN focused on the impeachment hearings. My conclusion the Democrats can rage & shout about Ukraine until there's ice on the equator. It won't change the mind of one person who voted for Trump. Trump is at his best (in his mind) when he's fighting back. Impeachment hearings are being spun by Trump as a witch hunt to fair-minded voters. When impeachment fails in the Senate, he will again claim victory! Trump actually believes this debacle will facilitate his winning a 2nd term. The excessive amount of attention to this appears to be backfiring, increasing the odds that Trump will be reelected & it not being the result of Russian interference. Paradoxically what this impeachment inquiry will do is drive Biden out of the race which is what Trump wanted all along. Fair or not Biden has been wounded. This benefits Sanders who is rising in the polls. But he will be the easier candidate to beat in 2020! The MSM has barely laid a hand on him. But when they do Sanders flounders. Progressives are going to need more than one lesson & they're going to get more than one lesson All signs right now point to Trump winning in November.
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@Bill Brown
I highly doubt if and when Trump wins, progressives are going to take away that lesson. They will, as is their custom, blame everyone and everything, including the usual suspects (ex., Electoral College, Russia, etc.).
They still believe they lost the last presidential election because Hillary was too moderate and the democrats received that bloodbath in the midterm following passage of Obamacare because Obama didn't promote Obamacare enough.
They are also most likely to believe this economy isn't strong and middle income Americans never actually received a tax break.
33
@Bill Brown
I have said all along Dems will do 90% of the work of reelecting Trump. All my Trump hating Dems friends concede.
6
@Bill Brown Trump surely enjoys Big Macs, but he loves Whoppers. Just ask and Trump will tell you. No Whopper is more delicious than the claim of yet another Trump victory.
We have had forty years of neoliberal Democrats leading our party. It's time to turn the reins over to a progressive who will try to roll back forty years of neoliberal economic, tax, trade, antitrust and labor policies. History shows us that neoliberal Democrats are no match for Republicans.
26
The digital advantage could be more lethal than we think, the possibility of pollsters not reaching the small pockets of like individuals could skewer the poll takers. The mathematics of numbers to represent a questions answer may not count the same way as before, resulting in off balance poll taking. Example polls and everyone was thinking Hillary Clinton would win, she didn't. The polls left out digital groups that were not represented in the polling. We need too rethink how we take polls and rank groups.
7
Hillary got more votes than Trump but lost due a structural problem - the electoral college.
39
@Alan Wright
Digital research in the electoral college states she lost, may have revealed that Clinton would not win in those important states. Clinton with Digital information would put more effort in Pa and Wi. And win as the polls suggested. They didn't do that, they thought they were safe.
12
@Alan Wright
The electoral college is not a structual problem.
It's a safeguard the very wise founders provided. And Hillary did not get more votes.
The election was not even close: Trump received 304 electoral votes and Clinton 227.
2
What a great article. It should be read and taught in high schools. A course in “How Digital Media Can Influence YOU” should be mandatory.
255
@Legal Eagle - For all you know, the high school may include a YouTube teenager with millions of subscribers, who influences more voters than MSNBC.
5
You said it! Facebook‘s head of global elections used to work for Rudy with ties to Koch. Maybe NYT can expose; see Source watch Lincoln Network. We can better understand people’s support for a mad man if they only watch Fox and are fed from manipulative sources via the Facebook.
2
The POTUS' biggest advantage NOW is the circular firing squad underway among the Democrats, a phenomenon that will come to an end once a candidate emerges from the gun smoke. When that day comes, the anti-Trump animus will unite the Democrats in a way that did not happen in 2016 when the "conventional wisdom" saw HRC's election as a foregone conclusion... and when the Democratic Party's nominee emerges, rest assured that some of the DNC strategists know how to use digital technology to good effect and they will do so. There are miles to go before this election is over....
311
@WFGERSEN
That's my hope too but as was pointed out in the column, the GOP has been targeting people they want to persuade for months (years?) and the Dems are still working on finding a candidate. We are way behind. Too bad we don't have a couple of Democratic billionaires that might make it their vanity project to elect someone who can govern and lead. Oh wait.....
14
@WFGERSEN If a moderate is nominated, how will the enthusiasm of the base be stoked? If a progressive is nominated, how will the concerns of moderates, independents and non-Trump Republicans about policies that they may not support be addressed? To defeat Trump, people will need to find comon ground on policies, and generate enthusiasm and energy for whoever the ticket is. I fear some Democrats prefer losing to giving up their policy preferences.
26
@MVonKorff A Compromise? Moderate Presidential candidate (for the now) / Progressive VP candidate (for the future).
14
Concerning, even frightening but there's a couple of other asymmetries that we may hope ameliorate Trump's supposed digital advantage. Firstly, politically active and aware Americans have come to view any information received on-line with deep skepticism. Mr. Edsall worries that this skepticism may be offset by personal mediation - information received face to face from your neighbor. So when your Trump supporting neighbor leans over the fence to warn you of the latest crime Biden's supposedly committed you're just going to trust him on that, right? The most important asymmetry though is intellectual. I can concede that in 2016, an intelligent informed American with traditional, conservative views and values or an economically unjustly mistreated worker could have logically voted for Trump. In 2020 we all know who and what Trump is. Smart people are far less likely to be taken in by digital tricks - no matter how much money is wasted on said tricks.
110
Yes, but we are not a country of "smart people" which is a conceit indulged by Democrats far more than by Republicans, who know that the opposite is true and act accordingly, as the article documents. "Smart people" are not influenced by obviously dishonest and venal attempts to manipulate them in phone ads. Look st the faces in the background of the next Trump tribal orgy of virulence. "Smart people"?
18
@KenC “Smart people are far less likely to be taken in by digital tricks - no matter how much money is wasted on said tricks.”
I’m mostly with you but what about the people that aren’t that smart?
14
@KenC
I worry that peer pressure is far more important than anything else.
Everyone should know that Trump is a con man. Some people voted for him because he is a con man and other people of like mind, friends and family were convinced that he would work in the national interest.
The Republicans are spotting trends. Just because someone is religious does not mean individuals can't be rational. In this population, the Democrats job is to find a way to give them an option.
I think that the key is personal integrity. Fake Trump University. Fake Trump charity. Fake Trump impeachment defense. No absolution for Trump.
9
Candidate age doesn't appear to have anything to do with embracing these techniques. Trump and Bernie are arguably among the least tech-savvy popular public figures, if you believe reports that Trump doesn't use a computer and Bernie has his phone apps handled by "Melissa" (per the NYT endorsement interview).
I'd believe that Steve Bannon was behind the Trump campaign's initial digital strategy, given his professional history, but who's doing it for Bernie? How aware is Senator Sanders, of his campaign's digital symmetry with Trump's? And how does he feel about it?
Digital privacy is shaping up to be an issue of major concern in the near future, and it's possible that Bernie's digital campaigning could become akin to Clinton's Wall Street speeches or big donor bundling - a technique that falls out of favor and becomes an albatross for its erstwhile practitioners.
5
Remember when Obama and the Democrats were touted in 2007-08 for his campaign's forward thinking in how it used to internet to reach voters? Today that seems as quaint as still having an "@aol" email address.
Ironic how Republicans, who are often accused of ignoring the science of, for example, climate change and the environment, have enthusiastically embraced scientific advances in electronic surveillance when it comes to tracking and targeting voters to gain and retain power.
No less ironic is that the the Religious Right, the very people who often oppose scientific research into the use of stem cells in medicine, are the ones who have become the unwitting subjects of scientific experimentation in creating an advanced electronic Republican Party surveillance apparatus. Perhaps they don't yet realize that when they are at church they are being watched over by yet another god.
114
@Jack Sonville Completely agree. Conservatives have a funny relationship with science and technology. They hate it until they realize that it will allow them to gain power. After that, they still profess to hate it, but continue to use it because, well, power. Makes me wonder if they feel the same way about religion. (I.e., they only use it to gain power.)
71
I don’t think the general public realizes how much the Trump campaign is spying on the metadata and lifestyle.
This knowledge explained would turn people off.
13
@Jack Sonville
Evangelicals are the savviest voters around. Their critics always underestimate them, which is just fine with the GOP.
6
Elections as advertising campaigns. Citizens with tiny attention spans who are easily manipulated by an image. People who are uninformed about civics, the basic of economics, and principles in the constitution. Critical thinking abandoned in the name of convenience and emotion. The Founders and those who gave their lives for the nation would be appalled.
597
@HPower
The founders would neither be surprised or appalled. Human nature is the same today as 200 or 2000 years ago and will be the same in future. The constitution was designed to make up for the flaws of human nature. Advertising / slogans are nothing new in politics.
31
@HPower The founder were acutely aware of "People who are uninformed about civics, the basic of economics, and principles in the constitution. Critical thinking abandoned in the name of convenience and emotion." In fact, that is exactly why they advocated for a limited democracy that had strong protections for the political minority. Granted, this included a strong exclusionary aspect.
13
@Reader In Wash, DC
The founders would be astonished and outraged. Human nature hasn't changed; technology and laws have. Advertising was a relatively insignificant part of campaigns before the invention of broadcast media, especially television. And the current technology to tailor manipulation on an individual basis would have astonished Orwell, let alone the founders. Finally, the takeover of all aspects of politics, information & government by financial interests is even more recent.
23
All the technology in the world isn't going to change Trump's irrational and corrupt daily behavior. Nor will it convince stubborn, dug-in liberal voters who already decided that if their democratic candidate doesn't win, they're not voting. People have to decide what they can tolerate, vote accordingly, and live with the consequences.
6