I know you’re voting for Hillary Clinton in the general election in November. Hillary may be supported by the banks, the Iraq War hawks, the Koch Brothers, Henry Kissinger – all those problematic elements that you’d regularly stand against – but it’s way too dangerous for you to risk letting Donald Trump appoint the next three Supreme Court Justices, I know. What you’re doing is, to an extent, honorable: voting against your own principles and letting in the Lesser Evil to prevent the coming to power of a sexist, racist demagogue.
I get it. We all get it, maybe even the #BernieOrBust-ers. You don’t have to keep explaining it. In fact, you need to stop explaining it. Every time you explain it, you help Goldman-Sachs, George Bush, Henry Kissinger and the rest (yes, even when Noam Chomsky says it). What you’re doing when you say “of course I’ll vote for Hillary against Donald Trump, no matter what!” is removing your own power to influence the debate. You’re writing yourself out of the conversation.
The advice I’m about to give will help destabilize the right-wing elements among Hillary’s policy team
10 years ago Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Robbie Mook was my boss. He was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. Robbie was always kind, honest and transparent with his staff. I worked two steps under Robbie as Deputy Field Director reporting directly to, among others, Marlon Marshall, who currently serves the Clinton campaign as Director of Political Engagement, and who was formerly the Obama administration’s Principal Deputy Director of Public Engagement. Marlon was every bit as inspiring and inspired as Robbie. They both made us believe in what we were doing through and through, even when it wasn’t fully moral or ethical.
A lot of Clinton establishment insiders hate Mook, the young upstart who unseated them in her power circles. And they should: instead of being basic establishment hacks, Robbie and Marlon are solid progressives who want the best for the American public. I don’t want to blow up their spot, I have endless respect and appreciation for them, and in the end I don’t think the advice I’m about to give you is going to step on their game. More than anything, I think it will help them by destabilizing the right-wing elements among Hillary’s policy team.
They know if you said something nasty to a campaign volunteer who called your house at dinner
Working for the “Mook Mafia”, I learned everything one could hope to know about voter data, political targeting and public opinion manipulation. A lot of lower-level members of the team envisioned themselves the “Democrat Karl Rove”, hoping to mix advanced voter contact technologies developed by Democrat firms with Rove’s ruthless data-mining “microtargeting” and turn the tables against the Republicans. In short, it is this microtargeting strategy that has me begging you to lie to the campaign, lie to your friends, lie about your vote.
Your name is in the voter file. If you’ve answered a poll on the subject of Hillary’s candidacy for any Democrat campaign at any point in the last decade and a half, your answer is likely in there, too. They know how often you vote or don’t vote, they know if you’ve changed your voter registration at some time. They know if you’ve ever donated to or volunteered for Democrat or Republican causes. They know if one time you said something nasty to a campaign volunteer who called your house at dinner. In all likelihood they know your religion, race, ethnic identification, and even if you haven’t given that information freely, they’ve got algorithms to guess it. If you’ve been loudly espousing a pro- or anti-Hillary position on social media (especially with hashtags), I promise you it’s in there.
A strong NO or a strong YES have zero power over the debate
This is total Big Brother stuff[1]. I know because it used to be my job to organize which voters to contact with which message, using all that data to figure out which script to have our volunteers use when they called you. And it has only gotten more advanced in the intervening years. So let’s talk classifications. It’s a really simple system, just a 1 through 5 categorization:
A “5” is a strong “NO”. This is a person who will under no circumstances be voting for Hillary. Either they’ve told a campaign volunteer over the phone or at the door that they’ll be voting for Trump or they’ve used a hashtag like #Benghazi or #Lewinski on social media. This person will be left alone or perhaps targeted with a weak, inexpensive communication reminding them to vote but telling them the wrong date for the election (yes, that happens).
On the other end we have a “1”, a strong “YES” supporter. The opposite of the 5, the campaign feels no need to lobby this voter since they’re already a sure thing. This includes those who have tweeted #ImWithHer or any pro-Hillary propaganda. If you hold either of these classifications, you have zero power over the debate, you’re already categorized and now you’re stored away until the last week of the campaign when they decide how to energize or disenfranchise you.
If you want to control the debate, you can’t back down
2s, 3s and 4s are where the magic happens. A “2” is leaning towards voting for Hillary but still not fully committed. Those are the people who will be getting compromises for their commitment. A “3” is a total undecided, and this person will be pandered to hard. A “4” is likely to vote against Hillary but again not fully convinced. The hope here is that a “4” becomes a “3” and is then susceptible to the pandering strategy.
This middle section is where the power lies. “I’ll think of voting for her if she endorses and embraces the #BlackLivesMatter platform throughout the general campaign” or “There’s no way I can vote for Clinton unless she promises an end to our perpetual global surveillance and military presence”. Say this to a campaign staffer or volunteer and they’ll be trained to respond by saying “Well, you know she can’t say it in the general election because she’s trying to win the swing voters in [X State], but I know she truly believes in [your cause] and as President will work to [do whatever you just said]”. Reasonable argument, right? But if you want to control the debate, you can’t back down. “I’m sorry,” you’ll say, “but if she can’t come out and publicly say it, I can’t vote for her, even if it means President Trump.”
Swing voters have six months to decide what Hillary’s mandate looks like
If enough of her volunteers come back and say they’ve had this conversation over and over again with voters and that people won’t back her until she stands for real progressive values, the campaign will make sure to address it and Hillary Clinton will be elected on a mandate to address progressive issues. Lie to Facebook, lie to Twitter, lie to all her campaign volunteers and staffers, skew that data and you skew the debate.
Even if in your heart you’ve already accepted a little compromise – for instance, you’ve seen Trump’s list of Supreme Court picks – stop announcing it. You have six months to establish yourself as a swing voter. That’s where your power to control the national debate lies: in lying about how committed you are against her ideals (whatever those may be today), just like Secretary Clinton will lie to you about how committed she is to yours.
In half a year, President-elect Clinton will be thanking her policy advisers either for moving her toward #BlackLivesMatter and Occupy and universal health care and Vice President choices like Jill Stein, Elizabeth Warren or Elijah Cummings, or for moving her even further toward Wall Street and fracking and repealing the Affordable Care Act and Vice Presidents Colin Powell or Jim Webb. Swing voters have six months to decide what her mandate looks like.
If you’re not a swing voter, no one is pandering to you and you’re already written out of the debate. Threaten to vote Green or go #BernieOrBust, even if you’re planning to vote Clinton, and keep your power.
[1] A sidenote for our European readers: this data collection and storage is illegal in the EU under the “Right To Be Forgotten”. However, there are many US election firms who have gotten footholds in Europe (all major UK parties employ them, as did Nicolas Sarkozy in France and the Conservatives in Germany, just to name a few, and many of these firms employ or are run by my old “Democrat Karl Rove” colleagues) and these firms are lobbying their clients to loosen up the law so that they can electioneer in Europe like they do in America. If this Big Brother concept disgusts you, stay vigilant in fighting to protect your right to be forgotten or you could soon end up like the US.
