I don’t care if you’re a Tea Partying supporter of Ted Cruz or Democratic Socialist supporter of Bernie Sanders or someone in-between, the term ‘Super PAC’ probably has very negative connotations for you that conjure up images of fat-cat millionaires trying to buy our elections. You probably think about misleading attack ads that contribute to the toxic political environment.
I came across an unusual Super PAC that’s a little different from what you’d expect. The Correct the Record PAC supports Hillary Clinton, but they don’t run political advertisements at all, and they have no interest in doing negative campaigning. They seem to be an entirely focused on combatting online negativity about Clinton and her campaign.
I thought it was interesting to see a Super PAC used this way, and I’m not sure any other candidates are doing this or that there is any precedent for it.
I assume that the Clinton campaign (proper) has an aggressive blog and social media team, so this must be at least somewhat redundant, but it was created to combat something I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about, and I’ve even experienced it firsthand in my own blogging community.
A lot of online Clinton supporters (and not only the young ones) have felt a bit outnumbered, overwhelmed, and even occasionally bullied in online spaces.
Back in February, former President Bill Clinton kind of lost his cool on the topic of Sanders supporters’ online behavior:
Clinton didn’t stop there. He launched into a discussion of the ugly “Bernie Bro” phenomenon that the Sanders campaign has denounced — backers who harass female Clinton supporters online and accuse them of “voting with their vagina” and call them “bitches.”
Clinton called them “vicious trolling and attacks that are literally too profane … not to mention sexist.”
Fortunately, I haven’t seen that extreme kind of behavior from Sanders supporters at my own sites, but I’ve definitely gotten feedback that it’s hard to come out in favor of Clinton in online forums because you get a lot of hostility and disrespect.
The Super PAC is a response to this. They aren’t just looking to push back at negative stories about Clinton. They’re trying to keep it positive and push narratives that put Clinton in a good light. They’re focused on giving Clinton supporters safe spaces to express their excitement about her candidacy, and they like to point out that a March Gallup poll showed that Clinton supporters are more enthusiastic about her campaign than Bernie supporters are about his campaign.
Here’s what the Super PAC says about their mission:
Lessons learned from online engagement with “Bernie Bros” during the Democratic Primary will be applied to the rest of the primary season and general election-responding quickly and forcefully to negative attacks and false narratives. Additionally, as the general election approaches, the task force will begin to push out information to Sanders supporters online, encouraging them to support Hillary Clinton.
The task force currently combats online political harassment, having already addressed more than 5,000 individuals who have personally attacked Secretary Clinton on Twitter. The task force will provide a presence and space online where Clinton supporters can organize and engage with one another and are able to obtain graphics, videos, gifs, and messaging to use in their own social spaces. Additionally, the Barrier Breakers 2016 task force hopes to embrace the creativity of Hillary Clinton’s supporters by sharing their efforts and content with other groups.
I try not to be too cynical about this stuff. I obviously don’t support the whole Super PAC construct, and sometimes I think too much is made of the whole Bernie Bro phenomenon. It’s not like a lot of Hillary supporters can’t give as good as they get. But I do think it’s interesting to see a Super PAC utilized in this way. It will probably be an asset in the general election campaign, and I’d guess it’ll be a more productive use of big donor money than the typical attack ads that don’t seem to be very effective anymore.
And if they dedicate themselves to being positive and pushing back against misogynistic and bullying attacks against Clinton and her supporters, that’s a good thing.
Right?
No chance of HRC supporters ending up in a sealed media environment a la Fox News?
I note that the PAC isn’t concerned with inaccurate or misleading stories — just negative ones. Doesn’t bode well.
Turd polishing is tough business…maybe this’ll help. Only real solution is to get the election over with, and return to 1993’s political discourse for 4-8 years….Sigh.
Ive known about them for a while. I unimpressed, All my main political places are decidedly pro HRC.
But also because some of their actions toward Bernie supporters havent been limited to ‘correcting the record’ or positivity.
Spending time on Balloon Juice and Kevin Drum’s blog, the reality is the exact opposite. You can’t promote Sanders, let alone criticize Clinton, without immediately being attacked by a gang of rude, insulting commentators calling you a racist/misogynist/crypto-republican.
The idea that all criticism of Clinton is inherently illegitimate and the product of right-wing propaganda is relentlessly policed. The idea that Sanders is preferable on policy grounds is immediately attacked as disdain for women or an attack on minority voters.
Frankly if this PAC is the source of these tactics it’s a pretty ugly thing.
This is all true.
However, I was a super-regular at Daily Kos in 2008 and I personally joined in several of the regular gang-stompings administered to the occasional foolhardy Hillary supporter. (It explains though not excuses it that I liked Obama a lot better back then.)
So it’s karma, I guess.
HT Ballon juice,
http://youtu.be/NHS-K7OuLAc
.
No. You have this one completely backwards. Important to note that CoR is a dark money super-PAC and it has coordinated with HFA.
The original report on Trolls for HER: Mother Jones September/October 2014, Patrick Caldwell, David Brock’s Army of “Nerd Virgins” Has Hillary’s Back —Inside the former Clinton antagonist’s operation to destroy the anti-Hillary memes he once unleashed.
In Brock’s world, citing Hillary’s words or record that doesn’t cast her in a favorable light is an “anti-Hillary meme” and they relentlessly attack those they find that make such comments. (While he has only recently said that he will hire a troll patrol, they’ve been out there for a year now.) They have also had trolls out there using lies and smears about Bernie, his record, and his supporters. Entirely possible that the Rev. Wright, birther, Bill Ayres, and “whitey tape” in 2008 came out of Brock’s shop.
Brock is an amoral operative that will do anything for the one he favors. Entirely possible that the Rev. Wright, birther, Bill Ayres, and “whitey tape” in 2008 came out of Brock’s shop. He makes Rove look like a piker by comparison. Find it amazing that any liberal/progressive would be praising one of the sleaziest aspects of the 2016 election cycle.
Entirely possible that the Rev. Wright, birther, Bill Ayres, and “whitey tape” in 2008 came out of Brock’s shop.
It’s entirely possible that they came from you, from me, or from Booman, too. Good Gawd. I thought this was the “reality based community”.
“PARTLY reality based community”
.
Now with 10 % more fresh-squeezed Reconstitituted RealityTM*
*Reconstituted Reality is a registered trademark of BernieBros LLC, and is only tangentially related to Actual Reality.
take 10% fresh squeezed Reconstituted Reality, mix it with 100% projection of personal flaws on others, blend throughly, add a large dash of republican meme, spice it with an insult…..
We have a winner!
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The print in your comment is too small for me to read.
It reads “*Reconstituted Reality is a registered trademark of BernieBros LLC, and is only tangentially related to Actual Reality.”
Thanks.
Speak for yourself. To come up with crap like that, one needs a devious mind, has to relish manipulating others for one’s own benefit, and has no regard for truth. I score zero on all three of those necessary qualities and Brock scores close to a perfect 100 based on his record.
Your ad hominem sneering is getting really old and also suggests that you’re not very honest.
If Booman possibly wrote these awful birther memes, I need more than a reality based community; I need reality therapy immediately because I’ve been reading Boo for 8 years.
I swear, I didn’t do the Birther thing, but I did create the Whitey Tape.
Good ol’ Larry. I’d forgotten about that whole bit of hilarity.
How much does he really know about manipulating elections, though? I was under the impression he was one of those analyst paper-pushers rather than a proper operative.
He was the CIA’s Senior Regional Analyst for Central America during the Reagan years. I think he’s familiar with how to ratfuck an election, even if he didn’t get his hands dirty.
I’ve been reading too much Michael Connelly and John Grisham. Time to upgrade to the real pros.
(or not! ymmv) the distinction between (emph. added)
and
Can you recognize the difference?
The former claim demands some supporting evidence.
Martin, if you had been around in the Cointelpro days it’s likely that not only would you have failed to spot the FBI operatives but you would have been praising their commitment to the cause.
Steven D is also following some of this in a new post piece at caucus99percent How Low will Clinton Trolls Go? They Hacked Bernie Facebook Accounts & Post Child Porn. From the US Uncut source
I don’t know a thing directly about Cointelpro, but I do remember being rather actively involved in a campus-based anti-intervention group in the mid-1980s and how that group met its demise: We had the usual loose, more or less anarchic structure, such that the group comprised whoever happened to show up at a meeting on any given day. Several regular members, not including yours truly, belong to some sort of pseudo-Marxist-Leninist party. We achieved some success and visibility on campus by raising the issue of CIA recruitment at job fairs. One day not long afterwards, “whoever happened to show up” included several members of another of those pseudo-Marxist-Leninist parties who rather bluntly worked to use our group for their ends. It took just a couple of months to destroy our group.
(Used the example of Cointelpro because Boo has a special interest in that.)
Ordinary (not government covert operatives) disrupters do exist. It would be odd that Marxist-Leninist party members would want to destroy a group that was actively objecting to on-campus CIA recruiting, but envy is a confounding variable if your group was having success and their group wasn’t. Maintaining small pond groups is very challenging and most whither and die because most people can only put up with so much ego driven conflict.
Professional operatives aren’t without tells, but others need a nose to detect them along with being immune to flattery.
I don’t consider USUncut to be anything different from what you’re describing. I think you’ve identified the wrong unwitting BT blogger.
That’s rich from someone that a few hours ago praised Correct the Record.
US Uncut merely reported that an attack on Sanders’s supporters had happened and at least has the decency to acknowledge that the identity and funding sources of the Bernie facebook attackers is unknown. That’s quite different from whatever comes out of Brock’s mouth and camp. But you’d have to listen and read more widely to recognize that.
Oh, you really are on the moon.
Salon felt it merited reporting and was okay citing US Uncut — Mystery over booted Bernie Sanders Facebook groups — which have more than 50,000 members .
Would you prefer that we wait for a NYTimes report with Judith Miller’s byline?
Imagine an online world without anonymity and pseudonyms. A lot of the vicious attacks would stop. For example, Blue Oregon, a Democratic Party oriented blog, got rid of anonymity several years ago. People who want to comment register with their real identities. Of course, Blue Oregon is oriented towards party activists, so this approach is sensible. All I can say is that with the demise of anonymity, rude, uncivil comments pretty much vanished.
Wouldn’t like to miss the death threats….
And in this controversy, we see the real Achilles heel of the political operatives in the Democratic Party.
The Clinton image folks even came up with the alliterative “Bernie Bros” catchphrase to capture media attention.
Cui bono. The apparent self-designated task of the Clinton operation is to clear the field of opposition so that they can roll out a standard general election campaign before the convention. They don’t need Bernie’s left wing for that. But if Bernie wins the nomination, he does need a portion of the progressive part of Clinton’s constituency to win the general election (yes, a moot issue now). The fact that Bernie is not taking the hint to exit has frustrated Clinton operatives so much that they have allocated $1 million to a social media campaign to try to convince Sanders supporters that it’s all over.
Dude, it’s been over for more than a month.
“Over for more than a month?” Don’t you mean over for more than a year? A selection not an election this time around. And it didn’t freaking matter that those that had no interest in HRC in 2008 or ever didn’t like it. It’s just like the Iraq War — gonna happen because it’s what the elites want.
Some of us at least continue to be vocal in stating that it’s not want we want don’t accept it. Unlike others that don’t want it either, but prefer to tell like minded people to STFU. Don’t want to make the elites feel uncomfortable.
The other day, a Hillary supporter told me that it was “now her turn.” I thought for a moment I was living in the United Kingdom because it is Prince Charles’ turn when the Queen passes. Wasn’t that what the American Revolution was all about?
“Her turn” isn’t new. Probably dates back to ’99 when she “moved to NY.” Of course the antecedent to that was in 1992 with “Eight years for Bill and then eight for Hill.” “Her turn” was prevalent in the ’08 primary, but her team has tamped down its use this time.
Agree, it smacks of dynasty speak. Those that are vulnerable to putting people on pedestals to rule or lord over them in some way may not be less prevalent than they are in the UK. The difference is they have concentrated that public approval onto a single individual and royal family. Ours gets divvied up among Democrats and Republicans and celebrities from different venues. Democrats would have been satisfied to have sixteen uninterrupted years of Clinton rule. Republicans were spared those sixteen years with Reagan because he was gaga by the fifth year and no family successor that wanted the job.
Dude, it isn’t over until the supporters tell him to withdraw. Unlike the GOP side, there are a lot more supporters who have to think that than just Sheldon Adelson.
Sanders should not collaborate in making the convention a boring made-for-TV whoopfest that is the pattern since Richard Nixon’s “Selling of the President.” Remember Joe McGinnis’s book? Seems pretty quaint now. When it was published, it was an accusation of the Nixon campaign of major scandal. That was before Michael Deaver invented spin.
Sanders has supporters. Those supporters have a price. Clinton has not met that price and obvious sees a downside in not getting rid of Sanders. Interesting how those with just a little but not overwhelming power keep being asked to capitulate.
There is no law of the universe that requires a political convention to be a charade. If Clinton is already the candidate and its over including platform, and all the other things that go on at the convention, the Democratic National Convention could save a bundle and Philadelphia could save a bunch of hassles by just canning the convention and moving now to the general election campaign against Trump, Cruz, and Kasich.
If its over, Sanders supporters just might as well go home now and not turn out because they will be getting nothing. But not matter how much the political class and party operatives and the Clinton campaign want it to be over, it is not until the votes are counted at the convention. That’s the major difference between political wonks and citizens. Wonks think it’s the numbers that create legitimacy; citizens know it’s the national religious rituals that create legitimacy. “Mr. Chairman, the great and sovereign state of [whichever one you want], home of the the [state bird], proudly casts its x votes as follows: m for Secretary Clinton; n for Martin O’Malley; r for Senator Sanders; and s for our native son, Deward Farquhar.”
And without legitimacy, power is, as they say, naked. The consequences of shoving Sanders voters around is not helping the argument that they need to support Clinton. Only the Republican field makes possible the argument that Clinton doesn’t need Sanders voters. And the paternalistic attitudes toward a generation that was abandoned by politicians and face poor prospects and high debts is going to shut that generation down for some time with regard to electoral politics. The Republicans are not going to get them either. The march of folly continues.
I came across Brock back in the mid-1990’s, when I found his disgusting hit piece on Anita Hill in the bargain book bin for $1.00. (I actually read the book, although it was difficult.) Simultaneously, my right wing uncle left copies of the American Spectator when he visited. The guy is an opportunist, who basically functions behind the scenes.
These seems to be borne more out of desperation…it’s her way of dealing with high negative numbers, unforced campaign errors, and as a way to bash Sanders and his supporters.
Any mission statement that includes “Bernie Bros” is suspect from the start.
Essentially this is a PR Super PAC; nothing more.
What should we think of Correct the Record? In two words I say David Brock.
This is pure Clinton to have a super PAC consisting of paid trolls and you ask if that is a good thing?
This says a lot about how far things have deteriorated or maybe this is just another level of the great unmasking.
“and sometimes I think too much is made of the whole Bernie Bro phenomenon.”
Have you lost your mind? The entire Bernie Bro thing is as made up as the Obama boys in 2008.
In fact, whenever I have posted anything suggesting that Berners support the nominee in the fall, whoever it is, the pushback I get is mostly from AA women that support Bernie. Not exactly the bullshit stereotype that HRC trys to push about “Bernie Bros.”
One that Booman falls for. Sad how deep the propaganda penetrates.
The entire HRC campaign is being run like the Rove/Bush campaigns. Lies and distortions, followed by false outrage when Sanders tries to point out the inconsistencies and lies.
And now we hear that by fighting for the grass roots, populist soul of the Democratic Party, “and implying that the system is rigged,” as I heard one pundit say today, Sanders is accused of hurting the chosen one in the fall.
The DNC has fucked themselves beyond belief, having become a top-down party with no accountability and no principles.
They have put the left of this country in a box, and it cannot hold.
Bye, Bye Dem party. It’s funny how the BS owned media has been telling us and themselves all year how it’s the GOP that’s imploding. HAHA
This is bad. If you were wondering.
It’s interesting how some people are in denial about the problems within the Democratic party. First, Sociology 101 would tell you if there’s a big problem in one political party, look for trouble in the other one, as well. Who thinks these social components function in a vacuum?
psyops 101.
as marshall mcluhan said many years ago: the medium is the message.
control the medium…aggressively interfere with it…and you influence perception.