This seems like yet another a hilariously disastrous misstep on the part of the Democrats, dark money and restricted speech and red tape. Have they considered just, you know, talking to people on the internet? The way normal humans do? The way Trump has done with such wildly incredible success?
The problem is, they don't like normal people. They don't trust them or think their opinions have value, and they've made that clear over the last several years. It took a while, but the normal people have finally started to get it.
It wasn't always that way. Democrats like Bill Clinton used to be able to go out and talk to normal people and make them feel like he liked them and sympathized with them. I remember when Clinton came to my town after the 1993 Mississippi flood, and even Republicans who met him were impressed and felt like he really cared. It may have been fake (as it certainly is with most Republicans), but he could pull it off. They can't anymore; the contempt is too strong. There's not a single prominent Democrat whom normal people look at and feel like he or she cares about them.
The DNC sidelined Bernie like you wouldn't believe as soon as it became clear he had potential to be elected. During one of his April 2016 rallies they livestreamed a "reporter" onsite talking about her drunken adventures the previous night rather than showing his speech, the cheers, and the line around the block to get in, that was going on behind her at the time. AOC made no notable efforts to be genuinely inclusive. Zohran is still trying to reach the caliber to be a contender listed next to the other two names and sounds like the infighting is already coming for him.
I almost mentioned Bernie, but his appeal seems limited to people who are very interested in politics and socialism. I'm not sure I'd classify them as "normal." Openly calling himself a socialist is always going to make that a hard sell with normal Americans outside certain groups. Normal Americans don't mind a fair bit of socialism (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, farm subsidies, etc.), but they don't like calling it that.
AOC? Normal people think she's nuts because she's been propped up as "far-left" to make the rest of the party look moderate, but it's not working as well as it used to.
Mamdani hasn't been prominent long enough to say, but his biggest surge in votes came from high turnout among well-off progressive whites, the group that's most out-of-touch with normal people. He also got the youth vote, which is famously fickle. The working-class and poor vote went to Cuomo, so I'd say Mamdani has some work to do to reach "normal people" outside some NYC enclaves. He also has the same limitation Bernie has of labeling himself a socialist.
Yes what a great strategy to embrace the failed ideas of socialism!
You realize support among hispanics will drop to almost zero with that strategy because they know from experience in Latin and South America that such crazy ideas bring nothing but misery to everyone.
I wonder if it's something in the water. (Or that money=free speech.) The Republicans also stopped listening and going out to meet people and see them. It's all a photo op now, and somehow Obamas fault.
What about her do you find fake or uncaring for the people?
She's a bit too left on some things for my personal taste, but I find her reasonable and still un-jaded/un-corrupted by her time in politics -- so far, time will tell if she caves like so many other who refuse to get out when they stop caring about the people they represent and only care to kiss the ring that stuffs their pockets. I would see her a vote worthy for that alone, compromise is all but forgotten these days. She reached out to Ted Cruz (of all people on the other side of the isle!) to work on banning the use of former congressional member from lobbying or becoming "shadow lobbyists" and reduce the effects of lobbying's influence on politics. Ofc, few others would get behind it. But if that is not an example of some one willing to not only do something for the people (at the cost of a very lucrative future career prospect after her own political career) but also having a willingness to work together with political rivals, I don't know what you are looking for in a representative.
Ted Cruz is one of my direct representatives and too far right for my support, I can respect times like the above where he shows a care for politics by the people. That was before he did a full 180 from vocally calling Trump out to securing his seat in the senate by kissing the ring. If our crazy corrupt AG Ken Paxton wins Cornyn's senate seat -- and it looks like he will -- it will make Cruz look like a political saint.
In his first campaign especially, he talked exactly like a normal Republican voter. They say shit like "why don't they just build a wall?" (or they might suggest planting minefields along the border, super-common suggestion from R voters) and hate trade with China (so does a good chunk of the left... neoliberalism was never popular, "both sides" of politicians just agreed on it, until Trump) and want to lock up all the democrats and simply round up and deport all "the illegals" by any means necessary. His stuff he's doing with the military, sending them in to cities? They love that shit, they've wanted it to happen for years, they don't understand the legality, that they have hilariously wrong understandings of what cities are like due to propaganda and their own lack of experience with them, any of that, they just want "scumbags" beat up and thrown in vans. Truly, talk to them, I'm not exaggerating.
That's how he won, he exploited the gap between Republican voters and Republican politicians. As soon as I heard him sounding exactly like your average R voter chattin' at a diner, I knew he was dangerous and we were in for a wild ride.
Right... that's how influence campaigns work. They take root at low-level inputs and get laundered onto larger and more legitimate platforms.
A brief visit to Twitter will show you the hordes of bots constantly farming outrage bait, which then gets picked up by the micro-influencers, which then gets picked up (with some FSB financial assistance) by Tim Pool, Rubin, and Benny Johnson, which then gets picked up by Rogan and Shapiro, which then gets picked up by the Department of Homeland Security's official press releases and finally encoded into next week's executive order.
This is a description of a successful information op.
(Edit: The other commenter is correct that this is also happening within the BLM and BLM-adjacent movements and the green party -- all the same dynamic, but only one has found a direct route to an especially mercurial president's ear)
I mean it doesn't seem to be a really well designed or effective influence campaign.
If sowing division is the goal of KGB, they don't need to do anything. Americans are way better and have been way longer in that game. Honestly just pretending to give people money would be most cost effective.
If getting to own/buy Trump is the goal, they fucked up in that department. Ukraine is still getting support. China and India are getting tariffs, etc.
Neither of us have any clue how divided we’d be sans FSB information ops. We know for a fact these ops are happening and have infiltrated at least up to the White House’s shortlist of media personalities.
IMO it’s extremely naive to believe that information ops for some reason wouldn’t be effective in our own country. This stuff is based on some pretty basic psychological understanding (some of the most highly replicated) and our information infrastructure is especially fertile ground for it.
The division in American weren't created by a foreign entity. The class war simply never ended.
If you're rich you want to keep less rich off your lawn. So you let the guys with torches fight the guys with pitchforks, by convincing they are each other's enemy.
> IMO it’s extremely naive to believe that information ops for some reason wouldn’t be effective in our own country.
It's another form of naivete to think that average CIA operative is any better at his job than average Joe.
> The division in American weren't created by a foreign entity. The class war simply never ended.
You're stating this as if class tensions preclude the existence or effectiveness of foreign information operations. Do you actually believe that to be true?
Frankly you are not thinking very hard if you're making definitive monocausal statements about something like "divisiveness" in America.
Class tensions hurt us, race tensions hurt us, cultural and historical tensions hurt us, ideological tensions hurt us, and all of these are opportunistically weaponized by people (both foreign and domestic) who benefit from a more fractured America.
We're talking about one such entity, which is Russia.
> It's another form of naivete to think that average CIA operative is any better at his job than average Joe.
This isn't required to be effective at a job, which is why there are hordes of totally average yet gainfully employed people in the world. No one stated anyone is better than the average Joe at anything.
> You're stating this as if class tensions preclude the existence or effectiveness of foreign information operations. Do you actually believe that to be true?
I'm saying, what could Russians possibly do that Americans aren't already doing to themselves? Look at: The War on drugs, The War on terror, and omnipresent surveillance. These weren't instituted by Russian agents.
And if Russia was that omnipotent, then their "special op in Ukraine" would actually be a few days "special OP".
Whatever paltry ops Russia has is like a drop in the ocean compared to what the US (or other actors) are doing on US.
Who said they're doing things Americans aren't already doing to themselves? It wasn't me! In fact I said the precise opposite: they generally exploit pre-existing divisions.
Who said Russia is omnipotent? Also wasn't me!
> Whatever paltry ops Russia has is like a drop in the ocean compared to what the US (or other actors) are doing on US.
This, however, is an actual assertive claim of fact. Can you tell me any other intelligence services that we know has assets invited to the White House on a regular basis in order to do the actions they were hired by Russia to do?
If no, then I don't think you have evidence to substantiate this claim.
