You may have seen this headline on Facebook yesterday. It was false. Totally false.
So it provides a lesson in how to produce fake news.
First–write a headline that’s sure to turn heads. In this case, the headline said a court had ruled the DNC did indeed “rig” the primary election against Bernie Sanders.
Second–Find some bit of information that can be misinterpreted to make the fake headline plausible. In this case, a quote from a court decision.
Third–Pretend you don’t know that it’s false.
Four–Use social media to get a lot of visibility from the gullible, who will share it widely. There’s no putting that genie back in the bottle, even after the story is shown to be false. That was clear from reading through the many comments wherever the story appeared.
And that’s what happened here.
The headline was a lie. But readers unfamiliar with the ways of the court system might not recognize that.
The story quoted a federal judge’s decision in dismissing a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee.
“In evaluating Plaintiffs’ claims at this stage, the Court assumes their allegations are true—that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz held a palpable bias in favor Clinton and sought to propel her ahead of her Democratic opponent.”
In its original form, the story asserted that this amounted to a judicial finding that the fraud and bias allegations were true.
And that’s what made this fake news.
A close reading of the story shows the quoted passage appeared in a decision on a motion to dismiss the case. The “facts” alleged in the lawsuit had never been tested, and never shown to be either true or false. But in order to get a case dismissed, the court assumes they are true and then has to ask whether, even if they are assumed to be true, do they form the legal basis to justify moving the lawsuit forward to trial? If the answer is no, then the case should be dismissed.
And that’s what happened here. The case was dismissed.
You can read the court’s decision here.
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This has been rolling along for months, fueling Bernie supporters anger. It could be worse. When stories of the suit first began qppearing they were always from The Observer, prior to that the New York observer. I never saw another source. When I checked The Observer was owned by Jared Kushner.
Democrats have several roads to taking back Congress.
Dealing with reality is the first step. It’s a bigly big step.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html
The Obama-Trump Voters Are Real. Here’s What They Think.
By Nate Cohn
“SOURING ON OBAMA Just 29 percent of white, no-college Obama-Trump voters approved of Mr. Obama’s performance, and 69 percent disapproved. Similarly, 75 percent said they would repeal the Affordable Care Act. Only 15 percent believed the economy had improved over the last year, and just 23 percent said their income had increased over the last four years.
SUPPORT FOR TRUMP’S AGENDA The Obama-Trump voters generally support Mr. Trump’s key campaign pledges on immigration, police, infrastructure spending, trade and the environment. This isn’t too surprising: Surveys conducted long before the 2016 election showed that a large share of white working-class Democratic-leaning voters backed the conservative-populist position on these issues.
FAIRLY STEADY SUPPORT Among those who voted in the 2016 primary (65 percent of the Obama-Trump vote), 54 percent of Obama-Trump voters reported backing Mr. Trump in the Republican presidential primary, according to the C.C.E.S., a sign that many of them are pretty strong and consistent supporters of Mr. Trump. Only 9 percent supported another Republican, less than the share that supported Mrs. Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
Taken together, the data indicates that Mr. Trump had considerable and possibly unique appeal to an important slice of Democratic-leaning voters. Mr. Trump adopted a platform tailored to white working-class Democrats. In doing so, he neutralized many traditional Democratic lines of attack against typical Republicans like Mitt Romney. Many of these voters backed him in the primary and seemed to prefer his brand of populism, suggesting they probably would have backed Mr. Trump no matter which Democrat he faced.”
The lawsuit was based upon bogus “logic” from the beginning. Those who have supported it do not want to be logical. So the latest social media stories about how the court proceedings have “proved” the DNC rigged the nominating process, while disappointing, are not surprising.
But there is another “fake news” story being pumped through social media. But by diehard Clinton supporters. They want to believe that Clinton lost the election because Bernie supporters threw the election to Trump. The data used to support this claim is being willfully misinterpreted. A recent study shows about 12% of voters who cast votes for Bernie in the primaries went on to vote for Trump in the general. And since Clinton lost key states by a smaller margin, that PROVES Bernie supporters delivered the election to Trump.
Er, no.
I don’t expect logical consistency from hotheads in either the Sanders or Clinton camp. During the nomination fight, Clinton supporters consistently accused Sanders of benefiting from open primaries, which allowed non-Democrats, including independents and even Republicans, to “cross over” into our primary and vote for Sanders or, relevant here, against Clinton. So when data later shows a lot of these independent anti-Clinton voters later voted for Trump, that should not be allowed o reflect upon genuine Sanders voters. That is an abuse of the data.
A dispassionate assessment would look at how many “bernie primary voters refused to vote for Clinton in 2016 and compare that rate to previous elections. Ooops! After Clinton lost the nomination to Barack Obama, about 24% of Clinton primary voters went on to vote for John McCain rather than Obama. In other words, TWICE as many Clinton supporters went over to the enemy in 2008 as did Sanders supporters in 2016!
The Clinton diehard refuseniks in 2008 rallied around the slogan “Party Unity, My Ass” and were known as “PUMAs.” As they continue to attack Sanders supporters and seek to block their participation in the Democratic Party today, they seem to have not moved from that slogan one inch.
Whether the “fake news” is being promoted by diehard Sanders supporters or diehard Clinton supporters, both sides are “betraying” the interests of the party. Which is to come together to win enough seats in 2018 to retake control of the US House of Representatives. That is doable.
We need to find a way to “disagree without being disagreeable.”
BTW, while the (New York) Observer should still be seen asa part of the Trump propaganda operation, it is no longer owned by Jared Kushner. He sold it last year. It remains one of the most obvious sources of propaganda aimed at fanning tensions between Sanders supporters and the more mainstream Democrats. As we see with this bogus story about the lawsuit against the DNC.
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545812242/1-in-10-sanders-primary-voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds
By Danielle Kurtzleben
…..
Political science professor Brian Schaffner of University of Massachusetts, Amherst tweeted the data on Wednesday.
Schaffner’s numbers show that after a bitter Democratic primary, more than 1 in 10 of those who voted in the primaries for the very progressive Sanders ended up voting for the Republican in the general election, rather than for the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
What drove those voters to Trump? Schaffner dug into that, as well. What it wasn’t was trade, an issue where Sanders was closer to Trump’s philosophy than Clinton’s. At least, the issue of trade didn’t seem to have that much of an impact.
Party seems to have had something to do with it — Sanders-Trump voters were much less likely than Sanders-Clinton or Sanders-third party voters to have been Democrats. Likewise, approval of President Barack Obama appears to be related — Sanders-Trump voters approved of Obama much less than other Sanders primary voters.
And then there is race. Nearly half of Sanders-Trump voters disagree with the idea that “white people have advantages.”
This tracks with broader observations about election 2016 — for example, as I wrote last week, in general, the larger a state’s general-election Trump vote, the less likely its residents are to perceive a lot of discrimination in the world, according to data from the Public Religion Research Institute. And another postelection study — co-authored by Schaffner — found a “relatively strong indication that racism and sexism were more important in 2016 than they had been in previous elections.”
t.,
Not sure what point you are trying to make.
Your article says 10% of those who voted for Bernie in the primaries went on the vote for Trump in the General election. And that “nearly half” of those held views we might think of as racist.
That seems to be fully consistent with my point that a number of anti-Clinton voters voted for Bernie in the primary and then voted for Trump once Clinton got the nomination. But that such a “defection” does not reflect badly upon Bernie supporters as a group and is a MUCH smaller fall off rate than happened with Clinton supporters in 2008.
Your choice of calling attention to the racist views of that 5% of Sanders voters appears to be an attempt to smear Bernie supporters in general. Feel free to clarify if that is not your intent.
Let me suggest this Washington Post article, which compares the “defection” of Bernie supporters in 2016 to that of Clinton supporters in 2008 as a good source for those willing to dig deeper into what the data actually shows, Here is an excerpt which provides the historical comparison:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/24/did-enough-bernie-sanders-supporters-vote-for-trump-to-cost-clinton-the-election/?utm_term=.560b4a5b79ab
“Another useful comparison is to 2008, when the question was whether Clinton supporters would vote for Barack Obama or John McCain (R-Ariz.) Based on data from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, a YouGov survey that also interviewed respondents multiple times during the campaign, 24 percent of people who supported Clinton in the primary as of March 2008 then reported voting for McCain in the general election.”
‘An analysis of a different 2008 survey by the political scientists Michael Henderson, Sunshine Hillygus and Trevor Thompson produced a similar estimate: 25 percent. (Unsurprisingly, Clinton voters who supported McCain were more likely to have negative views of African Americans, relative to those who supported Obama.)”
Please notice the data which shows how the Clinton supporters who defected to McCain in 2008 also seemed to hold racist views. But I do not conclude that Clinton voters in general were racist in 2008.
I call attention to the 2008 data in the hope Clinton supporters get off their high horse and stop treating Bernie supporters as less than full members of the Democratic Party, entitled to full participation. There remains, in the local party, a core group of former Clinton supporters determined to block Sanders supporters from participation, employing the “death of a thousand cuts.” It becomes hard for me to calm down hotheaded Bernie supporters of the sort that believe the fake news being promoted by the ongoing Trump disinformation campaign, as we see with this story about the lawsuit, when they see firsthand the obstructionism in the local party.