The myth of an ending: why even removing Trump from office won’t save American democracy

[Trausti]

The problem as it stands though with the number of voters that are actually involved in the process is that even with these low numbers of support (in the '40's) Trump could still win reelection in 2020.

How? He did NOT win the election; he won a technicality that hinged entirely on a minuscule voting differential in three “blue” states and that almost exclusively due to uneducated whites who normerly voted Democrat, but this time shifted due primarily to a combination of latent racism (i.e., “no one is paying attention to my white needs”), sexism (i.e., “women can’t be President. Full stop”) and the Comey effect (i.e., the catch-all effect of decades of lies about Hillary; the overwhelming bad press about Hillary; the coordinated Russian and Trump hacks and attacks against Hillary; the Sanders zombie civil war against Hillary also boosted by the Russians and Trump and the GOP) all of which combined to cause unprecedented numbers of late-voting undecideds to be swayed just enough by Comey’s allegedly unintended October surprise.

Iow, all factors that won’t be present in 2020 even if Trump were to survive unindicted until then. The only way he became President is through a massive amount of cheating and then only by the most minuscule of differentials in certain counties that now know what happened to them and what a complete clusterfuck Trump’s administration has been.

It’s not about core supporters. Forget they exist as they will always exist. It’s about the swing that for whatever last minute reason—as it was the late undecideds that caused the biggest problem—swung to Trump will now no longer have any of those reasons in place in 2020. Unless we run Oprah, I guess.

Hillary Clinton won the election. Americans wanted Hillary over Trump by millions of votes (not just a tiny percentage). When you include the other 20-40 million intended votes that—again, for non-partisan reasons—were not cast, but nevertheless still count in measuring the ideological “pulse” you understand that it was Trump that was the blip and is now being corrected, not some sort of fundamental problem inherent to all Americans.

This was the (white’s) right’s last ditch effort and to achieve it they had to collude with Russia; openly appeal to nazis; call Mexicans rapists; Muslims/Immigrants terrorists; grab pussies; suppress millions of minority votes; etc, etc, etc.

Iow, they had to be the absolute worst of the worst and pull out ALL the stops—including treasonous acts, ffs—and they STILL could not beat Hillary. What happened was a miracle (in their eyes; a nightmare in ours) just barely slipping by.

I don’t know what it is about the psychology behind “win” or “lose” being an all or nothing binary, but it’s got to stop. Hillary isn’t President because of a razor thin paper cut that took Herculean efforts to accomplish, not a game-changing machete hack from a dull blade.

Ah, when those "uneducated whites" voted for Obama were they then on the side of good? Or did you have disdain for them in '08 and '12, too. What about the uneducated blacks, are they a concern to you? And, as this seems to be forgotten a lot, this is the United States. Trump won because his campaign understood that.

 

[bilby]

Why do you imagine that it might be in any way necessary or desirable to prevent children from inheriting their parents' genes?

I am genuinely surprised that this is how you interpreted my post. Children are the products of their parents and intelligence and behavior are highly heritable. Any political goal to root out generational meritocracy is thus at war with nature. Most millionaires are self-made. Who is and who is not in the 1% changes all the time. It is an attractive myth that all will be better if we stop parents from passing on material wealth to their children. If parents passed on high intelligence and good behaviors their children will be more likely to accumulate their own wealth, power, position, etc., simply because they are their parents' children.

Nobody is interested in rooting out generational meritocracy - if meritocracy is the objective, then it is completely irrelevant whether merit is inherited or acquired; generational or novel. If the children of the currently wealthy and powerful are genuinely the best people to be in positions of power in the next generation, then that's perfectly OK. If they can become millionaires through their own merit, then they don't need any inheritance though; And given that inherited wealth may well obscure or distort our assessment of the actual relative merit of individuals, it is not something that we have a good reason to continue to do.

So either inherited wealth is damaging, because it puts less qualified people into power, due to the abilities of their forebears; OR inherited wealth is unnecessary, because the sons of the powerful have the ability to become wealthy and powerful without the assistance of their forebears. Either way, why allow anyone to have a stack of wealth that they did absolutely nothing to earn?

Wealth is a measure of how much society owes you - it's a way of keeping tabs on who put more into the economy than they took out. Inheritance allows people to take out more than they put in, simply because some predecessor of theirs put in more than he took out. How does allowing this benefit the economy or the people? It's pure freeloading - and according to you, it's giving a free ride to the very people who need it least. So why do it?

BTW, civilization is, fundamentally, at war with nature. So far, we are winning, and that's a good thing. If you don't want to be at war with nature, then you can eschew the use of tools, clothing, and intelligence, and wait to be eaten by a pack of hyenas.

 

[braces_for_impact]

The problem as it stands though with the number of voters that are actually involved in the process is that even with these low numbers of support (in the '40's) Trump could still win reelection in 2020.

How? He did NOT win the election; he won a technicality that hinged entirely on a minuscule voting differential in three “blue” states and that almost exclusively due to uneducated whites who normerly voted Democrat, but this time shifted due primarily to a combination of latent racism (i.e., “no one is paying attention to my white needs”), sexism (i.e., “women can’t be President. Full stop”) and the Comey effect (i.e., the catch-all effect of decades of lies about Hillary; the overwhelming bad press about Hillary; the coordinated Russian and Trump hacks and attacks against Hillary; the Sanders zombie civil war against Hillary also boosted by the Russians and Trump and the GOP) all of which combined to cause unprecedented numbers of late-voting undecideds to be swayed just enough by Comey’s allegedly unintended October surprise.

Iow, all factors that won’t be present in 2020 even if Trump were to survive unindicted until then. The only way he became President is through a massive amount of cheating and then only by the most minuscule of differentials in certain counties that now know what happened to them and what a complete clusterfuck Trump’s administration has been.

It’s not about core supporters. Forget they exist as they will always exist. It’s about the swing that for whatever last minute reason—as it was the late undecideds that caused the biggest problem—swung to Trump will now no longer have any of those reasons in place in 2020. Unless we run Oprah, I guess.

Hillary Clinton won the election. Americans wanted Hillary over Trump by millions of votes (not just a tiny percentage). When you include the other 20-40 million intended votes that—again, for non-partisan reasons—were not cast, but nevertheless still count in measuring the ideological “pulse” you understand that it was Trump that was the blip and is now being corrected, not some sort of fundamental problem inherent to all Americans.

This was the (white’s) right’s last ditch effort and to achieve it they had to collude with Russia; openly appeal to nazis; call Mexicans rapists; Muslims/Immigrants terrorists; grab pussies; suppress millions of minority votes; etc, etc, etc.

Iow, they had to be the absolute worst of the worst and pull out ALL the stops—including treasonous acts, ffs—and they STILL could not beat Hillary. What happened was a miracle (in their eyes; a nightmare in ours) just barely slipping by.

I don’t know what it is about the psychology behind “win” or “lose” being an all or nothing binary, but it’s got to stop. Hillary isn’t President because of a razor thin paper cut that took Herculean efforts to accomplish, not a game-changing machete hack from a dull blade.

Ah, when those "uneducated whites" voted for Obama were they then on the side of good? Or did you have disdain for them in '08 and '12, too. What about the uneducated blacks, are they a concern to you? And, as this seems to be forgotten a lot, this is the United States. Trump won because his campaign understood that.

Trump's campaign didn't understand anything except to say what you can to be popular. The truth of it is that Trump and everyone else on his team were more surprised than anyone else that he won. His campaign offered no unusual insights and had no grand strategy. It was an underfunded, chaotic mess. It's one strength was in social media and data analysis that allowed precise targeting of manipulative ads that stretched credibility. It also has one other understanding, that to his hardcore supporters, the pursuit of evangelical hegemony and racist policies will allow this core of supporters to forgive him for anything else he does, as long as he continues to telegraph those signals. This core is by and large frightened of losing their place in society and being supplanted by secularists or minorities. That's it.

They may claim to like his economic policies, but that is because they either don't understand how his economic policies only help the rich, or they don't care as long as he continues to make with the white superiority. The people Trump claimed to wish to help during his campaign have been objectively forgotten in favor of policies that continue to benefit the rich almost exclusively. Overall, they are not better off because of Trump and current GOP policy, nor will they be. Also, down the road, we all will be worse off unless we're already wealthy.

The only others that support him are those that make absurd claims about Trump playing 5-dimensional chess against his opponents and the like. Trump's stream of consciousness comes tumbling out of his mouth and without doubt betrays his real and actual thoughts he has on any subject matter you care to name. What you see is what you get. An ignorant piggish buffoon of a man that is boorishly stupid, and obviously so. Anyone that thinks that Trump is smart is passing up all the very obvious details because there are other concerns overriding what's right in front of them.

 

[Trausti]

Trump's campaign didn't understand anything except to say what you can to be popular. The truth of it is that Trump and everyone else on his team were more surprised than anyone else that he won. His campaign offered no unusual insights and had no grand strategy. It was an underfunded, chaotic mess.

 List_of_rallies_for_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

By comparison, Clinton's campaign rally performance was so anemic that no one bothered to make a Wiki page for it. In any case, the map and list of Trump's rallies show that his campaign knew exactly what it was doing. Keep on underestimating Trump and he'll keep on winning.

 

[SimpleDon]

What do you think things in the US will be like in 20 years or even 50 years?

Depends on whether you believe that a change in social perspective, biases, and generational beliefs are likely to have an influence on who gets elected. In 20 years, I expect little to know change. Mostly some continued pendulum effect vacillating between Republican and Democrat partisanship. So pretty much the same kind of bullshit we see now, either in a relatively stable oscillation or in escalation (I don't expect any decrease in a 20 year span).

In 50 years, however, I expect to see a meaningful change in the platforms of both parties. In 50 years time, we will have had a generational shift in the people being elected to office. The people who will be in their 60s and 70s in 50 years are only in their teens and 20s now. They're going to carry their formative experiences with them into office in the future. And I would expect that to drive the evolution of the parties.

I don't know whether I would consider it a good evolution or a bad evolution... but change will be change.

This is a rather comforting, benign view. I hope that you are right, it will give us time for changes in society to push politics to the middle and away from the right. The forces that have pushed us so far to the right are slowly being resolved.

Homosexuality has become widely accepted as has gay marriage. Looking back on it this was inevitable once they came out and refused to hide. It is easy to hate in the abstract, but much harder when they are your children or your neighbors' or the children of your friends.

Hopefully, something similar will happen with race and immigration, I don't know how it is where you live but here in Atlanta, it seems like about one in four marriages of young people are so-called mixed marriages or one native marrying an immigrant. Once again, it will be hard to hate the members of a racial group when your children are married to one making your grandchildren the otherwise object of your hate. Racism will only disappear when the whole idea of race loses meaning. This is how that will happen.

The idea of putting the minorities disproportionately into prison to solve a non-existent problem of runaway crime was starting to ease under Obama. Unfortunately, we have backed off of this with Trump and Sessions but we may yet return to the idea that this is not a good, long-term solution to the non-existent problem. I hope so. It is the ugliest manifestation of the fear-mongering that conservatives have used to gain and to hold political power since lynching went out of favor.

I put a lot of faith in women to make a large difference. They are slowly coming out of their husbands' shadows politically. I give Trump credit for this. He was elected in a large part because of many suburban white women who decided at the last minute to go against their feelings and to vote for Trump as their husbands did. They almost immediately regretted this as the true nature of Trump became obvious. None of my male friends who voted for Trump have given him up but every one of the women who did have.

In my experience, women are more practical and more compassionate than men. It is a good sign therefore that so many women are running for office, as both Democrats and Republicans. It is hard to imagine that many women would fully endorse Trump's racism, misogyny, and embrace of authoritarianism. Perhaps I am overly optimistic. I hope not.

If we don't start to pull back from this far-right conservatism we risk building up counter forces that will try to go too far to the left too fast when the minority Republican party loses its grip on the government. This is the lesson that we should take from Venezuela. Not that socialism is unworkable, which it is, but that the electorate turned to socialism as a reaction to decades of a far right, oligarchical government which only worked for the 1% and inflicted poverty on more than half of the population.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Trump's campaign didn't understand anything except to say what you can to be popular. The truth of it is that Trump and everyone else on his team were more surprised than anyone else that he won. His campaign offered no unusual insights and had no grand strategy. It was an underfunded, chaotic mess.

 List_of_rallies_for_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

By comparison, Clinton's campaign rally performance was so anemic that no one bothered to make a Wiki page for it. In any case, the map and list of Trump's rallies show that his campaign knew exactly what it was doing. Keep on underestimating Trump and he'll keep on winning.

"Keep winning." What has he exactly won since his campaign? Tax cuts? That was Congress. Supreme court nomination? Inevitable. Healthcare reform? Nada. Some executive actions? Weaksauce. The only thing more dysfunctional than the GOP is Trump.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Ah, when those "uneducated whites"

You’ve put that in quotes, indicating you think that was an insult and not a demographic. My mistake. I should have used the phrase “non-college educated” whites.

 

[ZiprHead]

Trump's campaign didn't understand anything except to say what you can to be popular. The truth of it is that Trump and everyone else on his team were more surprised than anyone else that he won. His campaign offered no unusual insights and had no grand strategy. It was an underfunded, chaotic mess.

 List_of_rallies_for_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

By comparison, Clinton's campaign rally performance was so anemic that no one bothered to make a Wiki page for it. In any case, the map and list of Trump's rallies show that his campaign knew exactly what it was doing. Keep on underestimating Trump and he'll keep on winning.

I notice Trump didn't have any rallies in California. Why do you think that is?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Trump's campaign didn't understand anything except to say what you can to be popular. The truth of it is that Trump and everyone else on his team were more surprised than anyone else that he won. His campaign offered no unusual insights and had no grand strategy. It was an underfunded, chaotic mess.

 List_of_rallies_for_the_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016

By comparison, Clinton's campaign rally performance was so anemic that no one bothered to make a Wiki page for it. In any case, the map and list of Trump's rallies show that his campaign knew exactly what it was doing. Keep on underestimating Trump and he'll keep on winning.

Trump went to Vermont, at least once. Might not have been a rally though.

As far as underestimating him, his campaign survived scandals like no other campaign ever had. Howard Dean who was recovering from a cold, yelled into a unidirectional microphone during an ovation. That had a huge hand in killing his candidacy. Gary Hart alleged affair. George Allen didn't even make it to the primaries despite a rising star due to a single comment. His campaign kept on burning up and replacing campaign managers.

Trump's campaign pulled off something that had never been done before. Underestimating him? No, it was the people that were overestimated. No one voted for what Trump stood for (as he didn't stand for anything). They voted for an ugly image of White American Patriotism.

 

[Trausti]

I notice Trump didn't have any rallies in California. Why do you think that is?

His campaign knew it wasn't in play? He didn't go to Kansas, Arkansas, or Louisiana either.

 

[ZiprHead]

I notice Trump didn't have any rallies in California. Why do you think that is?

His campaign knew it wasn't in play? He didn't go to Kansas, Arkansas, or Louisiana either.

Yet Hillary is criticized for using the same tactic.

 

[Trausti]

I notice Trump didn't have any rallies in California. Why do you think that is?

His campaign knew it wasn't in play? He didn't go to Kansas, Arkansas, or Louisiana either.

Yet Hillary is criticized for using the same tactic.

In one of the election postmortems it was reported that Bubba complained to Hillary's campaign managers that she needed to go to Michigan. They didn't listen to him. Trump's campaign obviously had a better sense of which states were in play and which were not.

 

[ZiprHead]

Yet Hillary is criticized for using the same tactic.

In one of the election postmortems it was reported that Bubba complained to Hillary's campaign managers that she needed to go to Michigan. They didn't listen to him. Trump's campaign had a better sense of which states were in play and which were not.

I live in Michigan. I have never attended at campaign rally. They make absolutely no difference to me.

 

[Trausti]

Yet Hillary is criticized for using the same tactic.

In one of the election postmortems it was reported that Bubba complained to Hillary's campaign managers that she needed to go to Michigan. They didn't listen to him. Trump's campaign had a better sense of which states were in play and which were not.

I live in Michigan. I have never attended at campaign rally. They make absolutely no difference to me.

Heh. Trump won Michigan by 11,000 votes. Those rallies were time well spent.

 

[ZiprHead]

I live in Michigan. I have never attended at campaign rally. They make absolutely no difference to me.

Heh. Trump won Michigan by 11,000 votes. Those rallies were time well spent.

So you are saying people go to campaign rallies to help make their decision. I highly doubt that. My feeling is that people go to support the candidate they already support. Do you have any evidence to support this notion of decision making?

 

[Trausti]

I live in Michigan. I have never attended at campaign rally. They make absolutely no difference to me.

Heh. Trump won Michigan by 11,000 votes. Those rallies were time well spent.

So you are saying people go to campaign rallies to help make their decision. I highly doubt that. My feeling is that people go to support the candidate they already support. Do you have any evidence to support this notion of decision making?

If you don't campaign like every vote counts, don't complain when you lose by a small vote count. And in any case, campaign rallies are [free] media events. Trump understood that. Clinton, nah.

 

[Axulus]

I live in Michigan. I have never attended at campaign rally. They make absolutely no difference to me.

Heh. Trump won Michigan by 11,000 votes. Those rallies were time well spent.

So you are saying people go to campaign rallies to help make their decision. I highly doubt that. My feeling is that people go to support the candidate they already support. Do you have any evidence to support this notion of decision making?

Not to help them make a decision. It does help generate excitement and media attention for supporters, which probably makes some people (who support Trump) more likely to actually go to the voting both and maybe convince friends and family to vote as well. Also might generate interest in volunteering to support the campaign in the area.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

So you are saying people go to campaign rallies to help make their decision. I highly doubt that. My feeling is that people go to support the candidate they already support. Do you have any evidence to support this notion of decision making?

If you don't campaign like every vote counts, don't complain when you lose by a small vote count. And in any case, campaign rallies are [free] media events. Trump understood that. Clinton, nah.

That is a woefully ignorant and illogical assessment that contradicts your own previous points. There is, however, a far more logical reason why Trump inexplicably went to two solidly blue states late in the game: Russian-linked Facebook ads targeted Michigan and Wisconsin.

This is not just coincidence:

President Donald Trump has named Brad Parscale to be his 2020 campaign manager.

On Tuesday morning, Trump released a statement calling Parscale a “longtime digital marketing strategist for President Trump” who was “essential in bringing a disciplined technology and data-driven approach to how the 2016 campaign was run.”

Trump is not being hyperbolic here: Parscale, who was in charge of the Trump campaign’s digital operations and worked closely with Facebook, Twitter, and Google to hone the campaign’s social media presence, was a huge part of why Trump won the White House. A 2017 profile on 60 Minutes called Parscale the “secret weapon” of Trump’s social media strategy.

“I understood very early that Facebook was how Trump was going to win,” Parscale said of the campaign’s use of social media during the 2016 presidential campaign. “I think we used it better than anyone ever had in history.”

But the young tech guru who ran the Trump campaign’s digital operations from his office in San Antonio is an extremely controversial choice to run the president’s 2020 campaign — particularly given that Trump’s 2016 campaign is still being investigated for potential collusion with Russia.

That’s because Parscale is intimately tied to a company called Cambridge Analytica, a shady data analytics firm that has become a major focus of both the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the election and special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
...
Jared Kushner hired Cambridge Analytica to take over the Trump campaign’s data operations in 2016. Kushner also hired Parscale to develop the campaign’s online microtargeting strategy.

According to the New York Times’s Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim, Cambridge Analytica convinced Parscale to “try out the firm.” The decision was encouraged by Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Steve Bannon, who was also a former vice president of Cambridge Analytica.

We don’t know how instrumental Cambridge was to Parscale’s online strategy, but it seems reasonable to assume that it was important. Although Parscale denied during his 60 Minutes interview that the firm was useful, we know that the campaign’s digital operation was extraordinarily effective.

The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr reported that Trump’s campaign “was using 40-50,000 variants of ads every day that were continuously measuring responses and then adapting and evolving based on that response.” These ads were spread primarily through bots on social media platforms.

During that same 60 Minutes interview, Parscale insisted that allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia were “a joke.” But there’s a mountain of circumstantial evidence that suggests otherwise, and if it turns out that the Trump campaign did help Russia target voters, we’ll likely hear more about Cambridge Analytica and Parscale’s role.

Here’s a small bit of that mountain. It’s from a little known interview with Parscale on NPR back in December of 2016 (emphasis mine):

MARTIN: You mapped out one way to win, and this was it.

PARSCALE: I think that is the way to win an election. You get 270. I think the argument was, which states were the most likely ones to do that? And at the end, you know, I felt that was Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire. I knew that, out of that, I had three or four different paths to victory. And by the week of, I knew that the Rust Belt was going to be the more easy one to win, so I was moving targeted money around.

How would he have known that? From the October 2016 New Yorker piece also linked to above:

According to the polls, Donald Trump has been trailing Hillary Clinton badly in Michigan and Wisconsin for months. In Michigan, two surveys taken last week showed Clinton leading by seven percentage points. In a third poll, the margin was six points. It's a similar story in Wisconsin, where the past three polls have shown Clinton ahead by four points, six points, and seven points.

Why, then, with just more than a week left before Election Day, is Trump campaigning in these two states? Surely he would be better off camping out in places where the polls are closer, such as Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio—that's what many Republican strategists believe.
...
Earlier this year, the Trump campaign was hoping to incorporate the Upper Midwest into a "Rust Belt strategy," believing that the region, which has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs to foreign competition, would respond well to his protectionist message. Michigan, in particular, seemed like a potentially ripe target: virtually half of the voting-age population there is composed of whites without a college degree, according to the Census Bureau. But things didn't work out.

Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising. At the Presidential level, these are solidly Democratic states. In all ten elections since 1976, Minnesota has voted Democratic. Wisconsin has been a solidly blue state since 1988, Michigan since 1992. Why should this year be different? In the Upper Midwest, at least, the white working class is far from monolithic. Many working-class whites still associate with trade unions and the Democratic Party. In addition, Michigan and Wisconsin are both also home to large numbers of college-educated whites, a group that, on a national basis, appears to be backing Clinton.
...
Even if he won Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina, and carried all the other Republican-leading states—including Arizona and Utah—it wouldn't be enough to bring him to victory unless he also picked up at least one sizable blue state. Until now, he has focussed much of his attention on Pennsylvania and Nevada. But things aren't looking good for him in either of those places. On Monday, Jon Ralston, an acknowledged expert on Nevada politics, said that Clinton is so far ahead in the early voting that it will be extremely difficult for Trump to catch her. Meanwhile, the last time a reputable poll showed Trump leading in Pennsylvania was in July.

Hence the Trump campaign's last-minute effort to expand the electoral map to the Upper Midwest. Asked why Trump scheduled two events in Michigan for Monday, a senior adviser to his campaign told the Detroit News: “Our numbers show this race being a dead heat with Hillary really hitting a ceiling in the state.”

Remember that as we turn back to Parscale’s interview. First, however, his acknowledgement that it was Trump personally who gave the word and note that Parscale includes Pennsylvania in spite of the above bit from the New Yorker:

And this is the advantage of - I didn't have to go get 12 steps of approval. I had to get one from Mr. Trump. And we can move whole budget around from mail, phones, TV, digital - everything - within a couple of hours. And so I think that ended up paying in the end. I mean, I think you see that - how we won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan. If I would have waited one more day, maybe that had the effect of the, you know, 100,000 votes.

Then a little later, this little slip (emphasis mine):

MARTIN: In addition to energizing potential Trump supporters, was any of your work about discouraging Clinton supporters from showing up at the polls?

PARSCALE: Well, I mean, I think all campaigns run negative and positive ads. So we would target those to those people who we felt were in the middle till we could move them over either to an undecided or back into a Trump column. We found data, and we ran hundreds of thousands of brand-lift surveys and other types of tests to see how that content was affecting those people so we could see where we were moving them.

They “found” data? Well, that’s a neat trick. Was it just lying on the ground? And how is it that they abandoned Pennsylvania—because it was concluded to be out of their grasp—in order to focus on Michigan and Wisconsin in October and yet two months later Parscale is including it in his “this was my strategy all along” speech?

And here’s more fun: A long-overlooked player is emerging as a key figure in the Trump-Russia investigation. You guessed it. Brad.

AND even more fun: Trump campaign chief lends name to penny stock tied to felon:

Brad Parscale, who played a key role in Trump's 2016 election victory, signed a $10 million deal in August to sell his digital marketing company to CloudCommerce Inc. As part of the deal, Parscale currently serves as a member of California-based company's management team.

The company touts itself as "a global provider of cloud-driven e-commerce and mobile commerce solutions." But records reviewed by the AP raise questions about its current financial picture and its rocky past.

CloudCommerce's operations have not turned a profit in nearly a decade, the records indicate. The company's most recent quarterly earnings showed it has spent more than $19 million in investor money since its creation nearly two decades ago and has only $107,000 in cash on hand.

Wow. A conveniently timed $10 Million payoff from a ghost company AND a key position in Trump’s 2020 fantasy run? Is there more? Of course there is! For those who don’t know or don’t remember, Parscale is one of the ones who refused to do what three separate Congressional investigations subpoenaed him to do, prompting Rep. Castro to say:

”They still need to fully answer the question of where they got their information, and what they did with it,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), a House Intelligence Committee member. "There is still a big cloud hanging over the digital operation.”

Haven’t you heard, Joaquin? They “found it.”

Could there be more you ask? Of course. Remember how the Russians targeted Wisconsin and Michigan via Facebook. And how Parscale and Trump abandoned Pennsylvania in order to focus on Michigan and Wisconsin via Facebook? Here’s more:

“I understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win,” Parscale said in a CBS “60 Minutes” profile of him last October. “Facebook was the method — it was the highway in which his car drove on.”

The data operation underpinning Parscale’s targeting effort, he has said, also provided the campaign with the kind of surgically precise, real-time information it needed down the stretch to focus precious resources on swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, while Hillary Clinton focused elsewhere.

“I took every nickel and dime I could out of anywhere else. And I moved it to Michigan and Wisconsin. And I started buying advertising, digital, TV,” Parscale told “60 Minutes,“ which described him, and his targeting operation, as the campaign's “secret weapon.”

Then how did they win Pennsylvania?

STILL MORE? Incredible...

His “secret weapon” wasn’t any proprietary software or algorithm, but the way in which Parscale marshaled various resources, including data provided by Cambridge Analytica and Facebook itself, to determine which versions of ads worked best when microtargeting voters. Parscale told “60 Minutes” he embraced an offer by Facebook — declined by the Clinton campaign — to send ideologically like-minded staffers to work in-house at the Trump campaign and teach him “every, single secret button, click, technology” available for microtargeting.

Some have criticized Parscale for using Cambridge Analytica and its controversial technology known as psychographics, in which huge troves of data are collected to microtarget potential voters based on personality traits, as divined from their social media profiles, rather than typical categories like race or age. Mueller has reportedly been examining Cambridge Analytica’s campaign role.

On Friday night, Facebook announced that it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories Group after learning that Cambridge misled the social media giant and improperly kept user data for years in violation of policy. Hours later, reports in the New York Times and Observer suggested the violations were far more serious than what Facebook announced, and that they were tied directly to Cambridge's work for the Trump campaign and its alleged entanglements with Russia.

The Times said Cambridge Analytica — whose board members included former Trump political strategist Steve Bannon and which was funded by the Trump-friendly GOP megadonor Robert Mercer — used the harvested information to turbocharge its microtargeting operation and sway voters on Facebook and other popular digital platforms.

Another Times report said Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, had contact in 2014 and 2015 with executives from Lukoil, the Russian oil giant. Lukoil was interested in how data was used to target American voters, the Times said, adding that SCL and Lukoil denied that the talks were political in nature.

The Times also reported that Cambridge Analytica included extensive questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin in surveys that it was conducting using American focus groups in 2014, though it said it was not clear why, or for which client.

Good times. Good times.

 

[Opoponax]

I live in Michigan. I have never attended at campaign rally. They make absolutely no difference to me.

Heh. Trump won Michigan by 11,000 votes. Those rallies were time well spent.

So you are saying people go to campaign rallies to help make their decision. I highly doubt that. My feeling is that people go to support the candidate they already support. Do you have any evidence to support this notion of decision making?

Going to a state and holding a highly publicized event while your opponent seems unaware of that state's existence is probably enough to garner an extra 20,000 votes or so. Hillary fucked up by not paying attention to them.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

ADDENDUM: It’s worth it to note this little tidbit from a BBC piece on The Tactics of a Russian Troll Farm:

The intent was to create an atmosphere of division and anger online. The Kremlin, the indictment says, wanted instability in America. It wanted to sway some people's vote, and for others, particularly minorities, persuade them not to vote at all.

Sound familiar? From the October 2016 New Yorker piece linked to previously:

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that the campaign believed that its best chance of victory was to eschew the middle ground, seek to create a bigger-than-expected turnout among Trump's core demographic, and bank on Democratic turnout being low.

It’s behind a pay wall, but here’s the October 2016 WSJ piece referenced: Donald Trump’s New Attack Strategy: Curb Clinton Vote

And while I can’t find any specifics, it should also be noted that Pennsylvania was one of the states whose election records the Russians hacked. Pretty much every single piece I’ve ever read on the election records hacks always focuses on the wrong worry; changing a vote after it was cast. The point of hacking state election records was to find out exactly who actually votes in the particular counties and their voting history (and email addresses, etc). You can’t find that information anywhere else.

As Parscale pointed out repeatedly, it’s all about “micro targeting” and you can’t get any more “micro” than actual individual voters and how they voted in previous elections. Facebook can’t get anywhere near that specific. It can only give you a general idea of the more die hard/fanatical posters, but that’s of little use to someone attempting to suppress people on the fence or who otherwise do not post much of anything political.