Trump & Bannon aren't planning to go away after the election. Joshua Green writes in Bloomberg in an article called "Inside the Bunker" about Trump's long term plan to transform his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States (POTUS) in an Alt Right movement, whether Trump gets elected or not. He explains how Trump Staffers like Brad Parscale are using database, direct marketing driven methods to create and maintain, a network of followers that will, hopefully for the Trumpster, outlast the election. This is a less benign effort similar to what the Obama Campaign did in 2008 but with a different set of objectives.
He, Jason Miller, Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon, have long term plans. Their goal is to do like demagogues have done throughout history, create a lynch mob of followers, and rob them blind. They call this "ambitious digital operation" is named "Project Alamo." Their heroes are "Sheriff Joe Arpaio" and "evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.", not the kind of people most of us would pick for role models.
Massive and Open Cheating
If they win this election it will be through massive and open cheating. Much of which started several years ago and involves infiltration, agitation and propaganda methods that ought to shock people but somehow don't. And that they are pretty open about admitting:
"Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it." They admit “We have three major voter suppression operations under way” [bloomberg]
It seems the best way to get away with doing something is to announce one is doing it. And they are doing it using trolls and agit-propaganda:
"They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans." [bloomberg]
And the efforts are negative campaigning,
"Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida." [bloomberg]
The goal?
"to depress Clinton’s vote total."
Long Term plans
They could manage to still win this election, by cheating, but that's not their long term goal.
“Trump is a builder,” says Bannon, in a rare interview. “And what he’s built is the underlying apparatus for a political movement that’s going to propel us to victory on Nov. 8 and dominate Republican politics after that.” [Bloomberg]
Bernie and we Democrats, have talked of building an apparatus for democracy. Bannon and company have something very different in mind. Trump and this crew have carefully corrupted the kinds of messages that appeal to authoritarian and RW mindsets.
"Trump has told his supporters all these things — the election is rigged; Clinton is not a legitimate candidate; and even that “Second Amendment people” might have recourse, if she wins. Unfortunately, yesterday’s Suffolk poll showed that many Trump supporters believe much of his conspiracy-mongering." [Wash Post Article]
Josh writes:
"Most Republican Party officials ardently hope he’ll go away quietly if he loses. But given all that his campaign—and Kushner’s group especially—has been doing behind the scenes, it looks likelier that Trump and his lieutenants will stick around. They may emerge as a new media enterprise, an outsider political movement, or perhaps some combination of the two: an American UK Independence Party (UKIP) that will wage war on the Republican Party—or, rather, intensify the war that Trump and Bannon have already begun." [Bloomberg]
On the contrary:
"Trump won’t come away from the presidential election empty-handed. Although his operation lags previous campaigns in many areas (its ground game, television ad buys, money raised from large donors), it’s excelled at one thing: building an audience. Powered by Project Alamo and data supplied by the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, his team is spending $70 million a month, much of it to cultivate a universe of millions of fervent Trump supporters, many of them reached through Facebook. By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million."
He Quotes Bannon:
“I wouldn’t have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn’t known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine,” says Bannon. “Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power.” [bloomberg]
An Explicitly Fascist Agenda
Josh notes about these voters:
"These voters, whom Cambridge Analytica has categorized as “disenfranchised new Republicans,” are younger, more populist and rural—and also angry, active, and fiercely loyal to Trump. Capturing their loyalty was the campaign’s goal all along." [bloomberg]
This is the description of the kind of people one needs for a fascist movement.
“This is the pipe that makes the connection between Trump and the people,” says Bannon. “He has an apparatus that connects him to an ever-expanding audience of followers.”
And they are building an explicitly fascist group based on anti-globalization, paranoia and nativism, worldwide!
"As it happens, this cross-pollination of right-wing populist media and politics is already occurring overseas—and Trump’s influence on it is unmistakable. In early October, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, Raheem Kassam, a former adviser to Nigel Farage, announced he would run for leader of UKIP. His slogan: “Make UKIP Great Again.”
Worrisome
Further Reading
- Bloomberg Article "Inside the Bunker"
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go
- Washington Post: "Fearful and angry, Trump supporters brace for the worst: A crushing defeat"
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/10/27/fearful-and-angry-trump-supporters-brace-for-the-worst-a-crushing-defeat/?utm_term=.d67f048cbe86
Godwin's law is no longer a joke
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