7 ms·

Because the Democrats don’t want to hear that they lost because they chose Hillary to run instead of almost anyone else. That “it’s her turn now” was complete B

Because the Democrats don’t want to hear that they lost because they chose Hillary to run instead of almost anyone else. That “it’s her turn now” was complete BS that messed up things even for us people who have never set foot in the States. I can see the Democrats making the same mistake again with Michelle Obama in 4 years’ time if they don’t win this round, I only hope she’ll be smart enough to stay out of it. On the other side of the aisle the Republican base was smart enough to send Jeb Bush swinging early on during the primaries, that’s why they now hold the Presidency.

keiferski 7y ago
I often wonder if any of this “age of post-truth” stuff would have become popular had the election gone the other way. It’s nothing new - philosophers and media theorists have been writing about media manipulation for the past century or more. But the media got the last election so completely wrong that they have to find a grand theory to explain what happened.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  Probably not. In fact Obama did more or less exactly what Cambridge Analytica did: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-... > "Consciously or otherwise, the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page – home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends – directly into the central Obama database. The only difference is that at the time it was heralded as being technologically savvy because it produced results that the media and tech companies desired.
  - dfxm12 7y ago
    I'm not sure if you're arguing in bad faith or you misunderstand how either the Obama app or how Cambridge Analytical got their data. Obama's app was advertised as an app for the Obama campaign. People who used the app consented that the Obama campaign would get access to data about them and their friends. For better or worse (better for marketers, worse for the friends of these app users), this was all within how Facebook was expected to work. Cambridge Analytica obtained similar data, but in a different way by breaking Facebook's TOS. A developer made an app, advertised as some kind of quiz, never saying that the data would be handed over to CA. Not only was the app developer not being up front about what the data would be used for, but they also broke FB's TOS [0] with its usage. Plainly, there are key differences here beyond how it was heralded at the time (and it should be noted that even the article your provided shows Obama's data collection in both a positive and negative light). 0 - https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-explained-user-data https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-an...
    - malvosenior 7y ago
      > People who used the app consented that the Obama campaign would get access to data about them and their friends. For better or worse (better for marketers, worse for the friends of these app users), this was all within how Facebook was expected to work. I see no material difference here. People shared their data and it was used accordingly. This is how Facebook is expected to work. It's not like the Obama app had a big button that said "upload your friends list to Obama's database!". That was covertly done behind the scenes. Irregardless, all Facebook users should assume all of their data is being sold and sliced and diced a million different ways. The main point here is that the media has tried to turn CA in to a scandal while they very much did not do that for very similar actions Obama was taking.
      - shadowgovt 7y ago
        Perhaps other observers disagree with your assertion that the Obama campaign was taking very similar actions. I, for one, don't see the similarity.
    - bart_spoon 7y ago
      You are misunderstanding, in that the person you are commenting on isn't referring to their data collection techniques. The point is that, once the data was obtained, both of the campaigns used it for microtargeting. The only difference, as you pointed out, is that CA obtained their data in a way that broke the TOS. But whenever the "scandal" is discussed, it almost entirely focuses on the fact that CA/the Trump campaign was targeting voters with propoganda and manipulating their opinions. Yet, in that aspect, the Obama campaign was no different, but it receives a pass.
      - artificial 7y ago
        The Obama Campaign scrape was also against the TOS (to spider the social graph) and when noticed by FB they enabled it since they're "on the same side." [1] Also look at how it's covered in The Guardian in 2012, completely on board. [2] [1] https://nypost.com/2018/03/20/obamas-former-media-director-said-facebook-was-once-on-our-side/ https://nypost.com/2018/03/20/obamas-former-media-director-s... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
  - senectus1 7y ago
    not the same thing at all. Obama's app was only ever installed on peoples devices that wanted it. it was in effect preaching to the converted. CA deliberately harvested people that were not politically involved and dissafected and whipped them into a fuhrer, and thats just how they got started and doesn't cover the outright lies they pushed and farmed.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > I often wonder if any of this “age of post-truth” stuff would have become popular had the election gone the other way. That probably depends how and why it went the other way, just like it probably wouldn't have the same degree of currency if Trump had won but there hadn't been a widely-reported on pro-Trump propaganda campaign apparently separate from the official campaign that was being compared to the Russian military propaganda technique referred to in a RAND analysis as the “firehose of falsehoods” even before any actual suggestion of Russian support for Trump or collusion between the campaign and Russia was publicly made. > But the media got the last election so completely wrong that they have to find a grand theory to explain what happened. Like many politically convenient narratives, yours only works of you ignore the facts, in this case specifically that the media narrative you suggest was constructed as a necessary explanation for the media’s missed prediction of the election results was prominent in the media in relation to the election as far back as the primary campaign (and actually had been a factor in US political coverage, though prior to the evidence of the propaganda campaign referred to earlier, one whose prominence had faded significantly since the end of the second Bush Administration, since Rove's derisive “reality-based community” comment in 2004.)
  - keiferski 7y ago
    As far as I know, the consequences of any “propaganda campaign” were minor. Assuming they did happen and considering that the election was very close, then sure, an argument could be made that they ultimately determined the election. But that isn’t your argument, or at least what I’m interpreting to be your argument (your last paragraph is a single run-on sentence and it’s quite hard to understand.) If the media weren’t completely wrong, they would have predicted a close race. Instead, they overwhelmingly showed Trump losing by a significant margin. Hence my point: the mainstream media messed up, big time, and instead of acknowledging it, they’ve embarked on a campaign to find a nefarious reason for the entirety of the events, when in reality the cause of election results are far more mundane and have more to do with economics.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > As far as I know, the consequences of any “propaganda campaign” were minor Tracing causality in a single election is basically impossible for phenomena which aren't very similar to those in previous elections for which there is a solid base across many examples with many variations in alternative factors that themselves are well understood to provide controls. But the effects of the campaign aren't what drove the narrative of the post-truth era, it's existence which was a major media story starting fairly early in the campaign, and the absence of any disavowal of it was. > If the media weren’t completely wrong, they would have predicted a close race They predicted a race about as close as it was. They also (in many but not all cases) predicted a near certainty of a Clinton victory, because, as 538 pointed out before the election in explaining why their predictions were different and showed a much lower probability of Clinton winning than other media models, many models assumed that any poll-vs-vote differences would be independent between the states, while historically polling error is strongly correlated between the states. > Hence my point: the mainstream media messed up, big time, and instead of acknowledging it, they’ve embarked on a campaign to find a nefarious reason for the entirety of the events But, again, this claim doesn't work because (1) the media found the “explanation” before the events, and (2) no one except those trying to discredit the story describes it as explaining “the entirety of events”. > in reality the cause of election results are far more mundane and have more to do with economics. This is just as much of a self-serving and fact-ignoring explanation of the “entirety of events” as the propaganda as the narrative you are complaining about would be if anyone offered it for that purpose, the difference between yours and the other one is that no one—not even the center-right Democratic establishment, who has the most to gain from getting people to believe that story—offers the other narrative for that purpose.
war1025 7y ago
I thought it was interesting how many of the people who opposed the "dynastic politics" of the Bush era were more than happy to back the same sort of thing when it came to the Clintons. And further that they thought the fact that Hillary was a woman should override any misgivings someone would have about her. 2008 was the first election where I was eligible to vote (I didn't). But the number of people I talked to who backed Obama solely because "how great would it be to have a black president" really dimmed my view of how seriously people take elections. People treat the president like a mascot as much as anything.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Being a mascot is a major aspect of the president’s job. For example, all presidential candidates have new laws from Congress as part of their campaign platform, even though presidents have no formal power to make Congress do anything. What they mean is that they’ll be a good mascot for the legislation and get Congress to do it that way. It doesn’t seem unserious to me if someone wants a mascot for broader issues too.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Because the Democrats don’t want to hear that they lost because they chose Hillary to run instead of almost anyone else. If by “the Democrats” you mean “the center-right neoliberal Democratic establishment”, sure. The rest of the Democratic Party has been saying that was a deciding factor (though not the sole deciding factor; there are a number of things you could take away and flip the result) since the day after the 2016 general election (and predicting it even earlier.) > I can see the Democrats making the same mistake again with Michelle Obama in 4 years’ time if they don’t win this round, I only hope she’ll be smart enough to stay out of it. Michelle Obama has neither the general negatives that hurt Clinton nor (and there is no plausible way to change this in 4 years) the institutional establishment experience and position that positioned Clinton to win the primary in 2016 (or even the kind that enabled her to get close in 2008.) So, she's got neither what made Clinton powerful in the primary or what made her weak in the general. Once she's spent two and half decades out of the White House, half of them in the Senate and a few more in the cabinet she might acheive the former, but even then it would take something special to acheive the degree of antipathy Clinton has gotten from everywhere except the Democratic establishment, whether it's outside of the party or the non-establishment left within the party. Plus, the rules that interacted with establishment support to facilitate Clinton's win in 2016 were abolishes almost immediately due largely to the influence the Sanders factions gained in the DNC despite not winning the nomination, so even a Clinton clone with an electorate with no hindsight to 2016 failures would have a harder time. > On the other side of the aisle the Republican base was smart enough to send Jeb Bush swinging early on during the primaries, that’s why they now hold the Presidency The Republican base wasn't smarter, the Republican Party just has different nominating rules. Like those in the Democratic nomination system that was operational in 2016, they generally tended (and this is by design) reinforce establishment candidates, but the two systems have different failure modes. The Republican system is designed to work by magnifying the perceptual impact of early victories, even narrow ones, epsecially if they are common across the early primary/caucus states; which usually, when the rules were set, were a matter of name recognition and establishment support. The Democratic ones in 2016 provided a more direct link to establishment support by way of superdelegates (which media tends to count in delegate counts from primaries though they are separate, which gives the establishment candidate an air of inevitability, momentum, and popular support beyond what is factually present.) The Republicans went into 2016 without a clear consensus establishment candidate, which combined with Trump's celebrity status allows Trump to reap the benefit of early victories.

keiferski 7y ago

I often wonder if any of this “age of post-truth” stuff would have become popular had the election gone the other way. It’s nothing new - philosophers and media theorists have been writing about media manipulation for the past century or more. But the media got the last election so completely wrong that they have to find a grand theory to explain what happened.

malvosenior 7y ago
Probably not. In fact Obama did more or less exactly what Cambridge Analytica did: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-... > "Consciously or otherwise, the individual volunteer will be injecting all the information they store publicly on their Facebook page – home location, date of birth, interests and, crucially, network of friends – directly into the central Obama database. The only difference is that at the time it was heralded as being technologically savvy because it produced results that the media and tech companies desired.
- dfxm12 7y ago
  I'm not sure if you're arguing in bad faith or you misunderstand how either the Obama app or how Cambridge Analytical got their data. Obama's app was advertised as an app for the Obama campaign. People who used the app consented that the Obama campaign would get access to data about them and their friends. For better or worse (better for marketers, worse for the friends of these app users), this was all within how Facebook was expected to work. Cambridge Analytica obtained similar data, but in a different way by breaking Facebook's TOS. A developer made an app, advertised as some kind of quiz, never saying that the data would be handed over to CA. Not only was the app developer not being up front about what the data would be used for, but they also broke FB's TOS [0] with its usage. Plainly, there are key differences here beyond how it was heralded at the time (and it should be noted that even the article your provided shows Obama's data collection in both a positive and negative light). 0 - https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-analytica-trump-explained-user-data https://www.vox.com/2018/3/17/17134072/facebook-cambridge-an...
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    > People who used the app consented that the Obama campaign would get access to data about them and their friends. For better or worse (better for marketers, worse for the friends of these app users), this was all within how Facebook was expected to work. I see no material difference here. People shared their data and it was used accordingly. This is how Facebook is expected to work. It's not like the Obama app had a big button that said "upload your friends list to Obama's database!". That was covertly done behind the scenes. Irregardless, all Facebook users should assume all of their data is being sold and sliced and diced a million different ways. The main point here is that the media has tried to turn CA in to a scandal while they very much did not do that for very similar actions Obama was taking.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      Perhaps other observers disagree with your assertion that the Obama campaign was taking very similar actions. I, for one, don't see the similarity.
  - bart_spoon 7y ago
    You are misunderstanding, in that the person you are commenting on isn't referring to their data collection techniques. The point is that, once the data was obtained, both of the campaigns used it for microtargeting. The only difference, as you pointed out, is that CA obtained their data in a way that broke the TOS. But whenever the "scandal" is discussed, it almost entirely focuses on the fact that CA/the Trump campaign was targeting voters with propoganda and manipulating their opinions. Yet, in that aspect, the Obama campaign was no different, but it receives a pass.
    - artificial 7y ago
      The Obama Campaign scrape was also against the TOS (to spider the social graph) and when noticed by FB they enabled it since they're "on the same side." [1] Also look at how it's covered in The Guardian in 2012, completely on board. [2] [1] https://nypost.com/2018/03/20/obamas-former-media-director-said-facebook-was-once-on-our-side/ https://nypost.com/2018/03/20/obamas-former-media-director-s... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-data-machine-facebook-election https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
- senectus1 7y ago
  not the same thing at all. Obama's app was only ever installed on peoples devices that wanted it. it was in effect preaching to the converted. CA deliberately harvested people that were not politically involved and dissafected and whipped them into a fuhrer, and thats just how they got started and doesn't cover the outright lies they pushed and farmed.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> I often wonder if any of this “age of post-truth” stuff would have become popular had the election gone the other way. That probably depends how and why it went the other way, just like it probably wouldn't have the same degree of currency if Trump had won but there hadn't been a widely-reported on pro-Trump propaganda campaign apparently separate from the official campaign that was being compared to the Russian military propaganda technique referred to in a RAND analysis as the “firehose of falsehoods” even before any actual suggestion of Russian support for Trump or collusion between the campaign and Russia was publicly made. > But the media got the last election so completely wrong that they have to find a grand theory to explain what happened. Like many politically convenient narratives, yours only works of you ignore the facts, in this case specifically that the media narrative you suggest was constructed as a necessary explanation for the media’s missed prediction of the election results was prominent in the media in relation to the election as far back as the primary campaign (and actually had been a factor in US political coverage, though prior to the evidence of the propaganda campaign referred to earlier, one whose prominence had faded significantly since the end of the second Bush Administration, since Rove's derisive “reality-based community” comment in 2004.)
- keiferski 7y ago
  As far as I know, the consequences of any “propaganda campaign” were minor. Assuming they did happen and considering that the election was very close, then sure, an argument could be made that they ultimately determined the election. But that isn’t your argument, or at least what I’m interpreting to be your argument (your last paragraph is a single run-on sentence and it’s quite hard to understand.) If the media weren’t completely wrong, they would have predicted a close race. Instead, they overwhelmingly showed Trump losing by a significant margin. Hence my point: the mainstream media messed up, big time, and instead of acknowledging it, they’ve embarked on a campaign to find a nefarious reason for the entirety of the events, when in reality the cause of election results are far more mundane and have more to do with economics.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > As far as I know, the consequences of any “propaganda campaign” were minor Tracing causality in a single election is basically impossible for phenomena which aren't very similar to those in previous elections for which there is a solid base across many examples with many variations in alternative factors that themselves are well understood to provide controls. But the effects of the campaign aren't what drove the narrative of the post-truth era, it's existence which was a major media story starting fairly early in the campaign, and the absence of any disavowal of it was. > If the media weren’t completely wrong, they would have predicted a close race They predicted a race about as close as it was. They also (in many but not all cases) predicted a near certainty of a Clinton victory, because, as 538 pointed out before the election in explaining why their predictions were different and showed a much lower probability of Clinton winning than other media models, many models assumed that any poll-vs-vote differences would be independent between the states, while historically polling error is strongly correlated between the states. > Hence my point: the mainstream media messed up, big time, and instead of acknowledging it, they’ve embarked on a campaign to find a nefarious reason for the entirety of the events But, again, this claim doesn't work because (1) the media found the “explanation” before the events, and (2) no one except those trying to discredit the story describes it as explaining “the entirety of events”. > in reality the cause of election results are far more mundane and have more to do with economics. This is just as much of a self-serving and fact-ignoring explanation of the “entirety of events” as the propaganda as the narrative you are complaining about would be if anyone offered it for that purpose, the difference between yours and the other one is that no one—not even the center-right Democratic establishment, who has the most to gain from getting people to believe that story—offers the other narrative for that purpose.

war1025 7y ago

I thought it was interesting how many of the people who opposed the "dynastic politics" of the Bush era were more than happy to back the same sort of thing when it came to the Clintons. And further that they thought the fact that Hillary was a woman should override any misgivings someone would have about her. 2008 was the first election where I was eligible to vote (I didn't). But the number of people I talked to who backed Obama solely because "how great would it be to have a black president" really dimmed my view of how seriously people take elections. People treat the president like a mascot as much as anything.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Being a mascot is a major aspect of the president’s job. For example, all presidential candidates have new laws from Congress as part of their campaign platform, even though presidents have no formal power to make Congress do anything. What they mean is that they’ll be a good mascot for the legislation and get Congress to do it that way. It doesn’t seem unserious to me if someone wants a mascot for broader issues too.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Because the Democrats don’t want to hear that they lost because they chose Hillary to run instead of almost anyone else. If by “the Democrats” you mean “the center-right neoliberal Democratic establishment”, sure. The rest of the Democratic Party has been saying that was a deciding factor (though not the sole deciding factor; there are a number of things you could take away and flip the result) since the day after the 2016 general election (and predicting it even earlier.) > I can see the Democrats making the same mistake again with Michelle Obama in 4 years’ time if they don’t win this round, I only hope she’ll be smart enough to stay out of it. Michelle Obama has neither the general negatives that hurt Clinton nor (and there is no plausible way to change this in 4 years) the institutional establishment experience and position that positioned Clinton to win the primary in 2016 (or even the kind that enabled her to get close in 2008.) So, she's got neither what made Clinton powerful in the primary or what made her weak in the general. Once she's spent two and half decades out of the White House, half of them in the Senate and a few more in the cabinet she might acheive the former, but even then it would take something special to acheive the degree of antipathy Clinton has gotten from everywhere except the Democratic establishment, whether it's outside of the party or the non-establishment left within the party. Plus, the rules that interacted with establishment support to facilitate Clinton's win in 2016 were abolishes almost immediately due largely to the influence the Sanders factions gained in the DNC despite not winning the nomination, so even a Clinton clone with an electorate with no hindsight to 2016 failures would have a harder time. > On the other side of the aisle the Republican base was smart enough to send Jeb Bush swinging early on during the primaries, that’s why they now hold the Presidency The Republican base wasn't smarter, the Republican Party just has different nominating rules. Like those in the Democratic nomination system that was operational in 2016, they generally tended (and this is by design) reinforce establishment candidates, but the two systems have different failure modes. The Republican system is designed to work by magnifying the perceptual impact of early victories, even narrow ones, epsecially if they are common across the early primary/caucus states; which usually, when the rules were set, were a matter of name recognition and establishment support. The Democratic ones in 2016 provided a more direct link to establishment support by way of superdelegates (which media tends to count in delegate counts from primaries though they are separate, which gives the establishment candidate an air of inevitability, momentum, and popular support beyond what is factually present.) The Republicans went into 2016 without a clear consensus establishment candidate, which combined with Trump's celebrity status allows Trump to reap the benefit of early victories.