Welcome again to Grand Strategy of Politics. An infrequent series of videos and diaries here about strategies and techniques used by politicians, parties, and movements. This edition I shall be covering the concept of Shadow Campaigns, which in short are efforts that run parallel of an official campaign and that which can bend or break the rules that traditional campaigns must follow, be they legal or social. An effective shadow campaign is able to keep the aura of virtue for the core campaign even if the shadow campaign is up to all sorts of mischief.
I have below the video and the associated script. As one might expect, the video varies a little from the script, but not appreciably. I will warn that I do speak about cultivation of aggressive supporters by campaigns to create autonomous political actors who target perceived enemies, and am not exclusive in such comments towards the Trump base/Republican party. It is important to recognize these strategies in use by those in our own political alignment when they crop up so we can best make informed decisions about how to proceed. I’m more focused on the dynamics of it than placing blame, though to use a real world example one must draw attention to such cases as they presently exist. If you are personally fine with the use of shadow campaigns of any sort, which is your prerogative, then the worst I’m doing here is pulling back the curtain to show that they exist, are effective, and a little about what forms they might appear as to best do the job they exist to do. Plus I tend to be someone who’s of the opinion that no candidate for any office is without sin, even those I like. So you shouldn’t expect me to pull punches when I speak about something that might not be favorable to your favorite.
With that out of the way...
A political campaign of any sort involves people working together for the express purpose of a political goal. That political goal can be to elect a candidate, enact a law, effect other change, or to sway public opinion to make any of these more likely to happen. Sometimes in order to be effective, a campaign needs to maintain a specific level of visible conduct. If you’re trying to elect the nice guy candidate, this means avoiding making negative attacks. If you are trying to get a law passed that’s against corruption, avoiding corruption yourself means people can trust your campaign to practice what it preaches, allowing for the cultivation of a basic of a level of trust with those they seek to convince.
There is also an implied code of conduct in a lot of campaigns that discourages certain types of negative attacks even if the campaign is engaged in negative campaigning. Violating this implied code can turn off even die hard supporters if they are egregious enough. Even for a wild card or maverick campaign, that bucks normal conventions and rules, there are still these limits to contend with.
What more, when we’re talking about the financing of campaigns, there are other limits to contend with. There are contribution limits and restrictions on who can contribute to a candidate’s campaign and normal political action committees. There’s also rules about reporting one’s campaign funding sources very frequently. All of this was put in place to discourage political corruption and the buying of elections.
Of course, with all these limitations in place, both in terms of funding and conduct, a campaign that is eager for victory might find itself wanting to go beyond them. To deploy tactics and resources it couldn’t otherwise access without penalty or via violating the law. And that’s where today’s strategy comes from.
How do you run a clean campaign that doesn’t violate campaign finance laws, but which can also play dirty and/or spend unlimited amounts of money? Easy, run a shadow campaign.
What is a shadow campaign? A shadow campaign is any parallel effort that has been cultivated or manufactured to operate in the interests of the cause or candidate you support but for which the primary visible campaign can claim no responsibility for. Separate in day-to-day operation but common in cause.
There are a number of ways a shadow campaign can be built, operate, and exist. There is not a one size fits all listing of what constitutes a shadow campaign beyond the basics of it existing in parallel to the main one and the ability to operate beyond the limits of the core campaign. But they can be made up of independent grassroots movements, super pacs, having a rich billionaire friend spending lots of money championing your cause without you specifically talking to them during the campaign, or careful organizing of surrogates that push the limits but if they push them too hard, you can easily disavow them and their actions.
That ability for the prime campaign to insist it is separate fully from the potentially bad actors is important. It allows those attached to the prime campaign to avoid having to take responsibility and thus maintain their virtuous aura. Even if say everyone involved in the shadow campaign has worked for the candidate in question previously. Or they’ve been good friends for years. Or the candidate has winked and nodded at the need to do something, while leaving out the specific call for action that would incite specific responses for the shadow campaign, being eager instead to see what their followers come up with as a response to the general call for action.
That last one you may recall is how stochastic terrorism works.
The most common form of shadow campaign in the present era is of course the super pac. Or super political action committee. A super Pac is allowed to take unlimited funds from basically anyone and spend that money however they like. The only requirement is that they have no coordination with more traditional candidate campaigns and the like. That means no sitting down and figuring out where they’re going to spend money to best work together. That doesn’t mean that the prime campaign can’t announce loudly that they are going to be increasing spending in this state or that district. Because they think they can win there if they campaign hard enough. This public announcement can then easily be used by the super pac to engage in extra spending in the same areas running complimentary ads and efforts to that of the prime campaign. So because the prime campaign activities are so public, the coordination still happens right out in the open instead of behind closed doors.
Sounds like they’re skirting the law? Naturally. But its this kind of trickery that lets shadow campaigns persist. What more, if a candidate is running as a Man of the People type person, they can use any spending by a super pac that supports them as a tool to build that image. Condemning loudly this supporting outside spending and wishing so, so hard that they’d close up shop. Because he really doesn’t want their help. For reals guys. In the current primaries, basically all the candidates have some sort of super pac backing them. Yes, including Bernie Sanders.
Now, super pacs are not the only type of shadow campaign. It isn’t even the only type of officially sanctioned organization that can bend the rules to act in such a role. I mean, if you rail against super pacs enough, then having one supporting you looks bad. So why not have a more generic non-profit serve that roll? And if they violate campaign finance laws, you can condemn them when people get around to noticing it.
For example, in the current Democratic presidential primary there is fellow running by the name of Bernie Sanders. Some of you may have heard of him. On August 24, 2016 he converted his previous presidential campaign into the 501c non-profit organization, called Our Revolution. The official goals of the group include things like revitalizing American democracy, empowering progressive leaders, and education on political issues. Sounds fine and above board, right?
Never mind that as a non political action committee nonprofit it can get unlimited donations without being legally required disclosure where the money is coming from to the public. This means any communication about who has donated and how much can be limited to those that are deemed acceptable to anyone outside the organization who might not like say, big dollar donors. Only mention the small donations, and omit the big ones.
This might be coming off as a bit of a hit job on Our Revolution. The problem is however that the existence of this organization as it is is specifically the problem. The ability to operate in this fashion means that it can act as a dark money shadow campaign for Bernie Sanders. And yet… no one’s talking about it. Which kind of means its working. It is operating as intended as it engages in electioneering activities, with the only reporting on the spending of the organization going to the contributing members, not the general public. And that’s money going out, not money coming in.
Now there is one instance where they need to disclose their contributors. It would be when they are advocating for the election or defeat of a particular candidate, while spending more than $250, and only those who contributed more than $200. And they tell the Federal Election Commission. So, if you’re not actively for a particular candidate in a specific way, then you can avoid any reporting at all.
Say if you are instead calling up people to support medicare for all, one of Sanders’ key campaign issues, and then leaving out who they should support to get that. If you’re not advocating for a specific candidate, you’re allowed to do this and skip all that silly disclosure stuff.
But lets say you are advocating for a specific candidate in your efforts. When do you have to report? If I’ve read the law correctly, during an election year, it is quarterly. Meaning, that first report won’t happen until after the first quarter of this year. Which means after March. Any thing from last year? Doesn’t need to get reported. So at the moment we are sitting in a dead zone where a non-profit like this can pull in as much money as they like and then spend as much as they like. And no one will get the reports on where that money is coming from until mid April. You know, after Super Tuesday.
So isn’t it weird how people rail against the shadow campaigns that involve super pacs, but not this particular one? Again, this is an instance where a campaign of a candidate is trying to project a certain aura of behavior and acceptable campaign tactics, but due to having a shadow campaign, has the option to at the same time ignore the typical limitations of campaign finance laws in pursuit of the campaign’s goals. In this case, electing Bernie Sanders.
Now you may be thinking, okay, so maybe there is something skeevy about this group. But surely, they’re not at all working with the Sanders campaign. They’re an independent group, surely he can’t be held responsible for their activities.
Well, let us look at one of the national co-shairs for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, Nina Turner. Turner is one of the more well known surrogates for Sanders. She is a former Ohio state senator who has supported him for some time now. And often shows up in articles involving his surrogate campaigners. She is also the president of Our Revolution.
Fascinating. It seems one of the people running his official campaign also runs an organization that can take dark money and spend it to support his candidacy without having to tell anyone the funding sources until most of the primary is over with. I guess you don’t need to coordinate between people if you run both organizations. Need more phone banks in Iowa? Then you get more phone banks in Iowa. From both the official campaign and the shadow campaign simultaneously. Or from one or the other. Depending on where the money is at. Which some of it it turns out, was in the shadow campaign in the lead up to Iowa.
Again, it is telling that this is never talked about. Never brought up. Especially in leftist circles, of which I frequent several. But all of this should be a big red flag that maybe there is indeed a less friendly shadow campaign working in parallel to the officials Sanders campaign that is not above the board.
Why am I talking about him though in particular? Easy, because I don’t like double standards, which is clearly what is going on here. But also because it is a great example of how to hide a shadow campaign. Instead of going the traditional route and just having a billionaire fund a super pac, or be a billionaire and buy the election for yourself, you set up something much less obvious in order to route the extra funds into your election efforts. When the purpose of hiding the corruption of the core candidate is the point because the candidate is running as a supposedly uncorrupted paragon of virtue, actually hiding the shadow campaign like this is what you gotta do.
It is a great example of a shadow campaign working. And working very well.
But this sort of shadow campaign only really allows an official campaign to get around the financial limits. What about the other limits. Like codes of conduct and dirty campaign practices. I’m not talking just being uncivil. Civility politics after all has some serious baggage attached to it due to the use of it by centrists to try to get people they don’t like to quiet down. I’m talking about engaging in unethical campaign tactics, harassment of political enemies, media manipulation, and, given we now live in a cyberpunk dystopia, manipulation of online narrative.
President Trump has of course been the benefactor of all these things. Hell, he got impeached due to a combination of the first two. But he’s been a massive benefactor of the later due to the use of foreign and domestic disinformation campaigns and having a right wing media alliance on his side. Hint, Fox News is a republican shadow campaign. It just changes allegiances depending on who they have running.
But these are the obvious ones. Yes, including the Russian meddling. But again, it isn’t the only example of these going on.
What did I say before about plausible deniability? If you can build a shadow campaign, one of the things it must be able to do is let the prime campaign avoid responsibility if the shadow campaign violates the rules, official or unofficial as they may be.
Again, let us turn to a recent example of such a denial. Returning to the Sanders campaign, the other day they released a statement condemning harassment of a union in the state of Nevada. This harassment came in the wake of the culinary union making known its displeasure of the policy of medicare for all. As someone who supports actual universal government run health care, I can say that I disagree with this union’s public stance. However, instead of disagreeing with the union and campaigning for what they believe, a group of Sanders supporters decided it was better to organize a targeted harassment campaign against the union’s leadership. Complete with posting of contact information and disinformation to get the faithful riled up and acting against the target.
It is good Sanders condemned such harassment. But isn’t it weird that only his campaign seems to have had to do so? I don’t mean that he’s being subject to an unfair standard on this, because he’s not. But in terms of democratic candidates, only his supporters have engaged in this sort of activity on a massive, predictable scale.
Lets look at a recent example. Recently a Sanders staffer was found to have produced numerous rather insulting tweets. Upon discovery of this and it becoming well known, that staffer was fired. Now this could very well have been an example of one of those bad apples, despite the straight up trollish comments coming from someone who was specifically hired by the Sanders campaign and promoted to be a regional field director, so perhaps one could argue that this was an isolate incident. And if that was it, then that would be the end of the story. But it wasn’t.
The author of the article laying out the revelations of the staffer was quickly doxxed and targeted by a harassment campaign himself. Thousands of text messages to his phone. A fair number being spam signups but also absurd threats and attacks. What more, upon the reporter pointing out this abuse, the response has been a mix of oh, that is rather terrible, and you deserve it.
If this was in fact a single bad apple, an isolated incident, like some of the Sanders defenders try to argue it being, the hostile response to the original article would not have been anywhere near this aggressive. Or existed at all. But instead, someone engaged in the act of speaking out about bad behavior has become a victim themselves.
Meanwhile, the Sanders campaign continues forward as if none of this is going on. That none of this is connected to them. That they are infinitely good and would never condone such behavior. An explicit separation being demanded between the purity of the official campaign and this culture of harassment. Rather convenient, isn’t it?
A shadow campaign need not be made out of an official organization or titled movement. It may very well be an effort contained within a grassroots movement. There are plenty of Sanders supporters who are good people who are working for a better tomorrow. But the silence about harassment, even by those otherwise well meaning supporters is telling of the culture that has been cultivated in his base. To always distrust anyone who is not on board with the campaign. To insist that they are flawed of character and thus worthy of any pain they receive. That if you question Dear Leader and his virtue, that this is a sign that you are part of the secret plot seeking to stop the last hope to save America.
This attitude has been perpetuated from the very top of the Sanders campaign, including from the candidate himself. Having reasonable critiques about the Democratic party, the DNC, and the like are acceptable. Pushing a constant narrative where they are not just to blame for the occasional problem and bad call, but actively working against Sanders at every opportunity specifically and exclusively, that they are responsible for every hick up or bad news cycle, is absurd. But it convinces the faithful to take on a siege mentality. To feel like they’re constantly under attack by an amorphous cabal of faceless evil. And thus anyone who they determine is acting in the interests of this faceless enemy is someone unworthy of even basic respect as a person. They become a target to be destroyed.
And if you can get your core supporters to take on this kind of mentality, and the behavior that goes with it, they will act. They will seek out their perceived enemies and do what they can to harm them. And because it is now a contest between good and evil, and not say a political campaign involving real human beings, all of whom have flaws and strengths, the Sanders campaign gets to have an autonomous attack force that is willing and eager to go after their political enemies at every opportunity using any and all tactics to cause maximum harm for even the slightest slight.
He has cultivated a shadow campaign to operate independently of his campaign for president that will work in the interests of his election, while letting him claim ignorance of their activities. What more… because of that notion that Sanders, and by extension his supporters, can never do wrong, any critique of this behavior is at best denied, even when evidence is observed and documented.
I suspect me pointing out the kind of obvious here might turn some people off. To that though, you know what, I don’t plan on being silenced. Though I suppose there is one good thing I could say about Sanders having multiple shadow campaigns working to support him. They appear to be working. Shadow campaigns often work and can be very effective. And if you are okay with targeted harassment, dark money funded candidates, and denial of these strategies despite the obvious evidence, then that is good news for you and the Sanders campaign.
Now, I didn’t make this video to just slam Sanders of course. Because he’s not alone in these behaviors. Other candidates have well funded dark money organizations supporting them. Tulsi Gabbard has long tried to create her own grassroots shadow campaign that is eager to attack her critics. If she had gotten more traction we’d perhaps be talking about her’s specifically today.
But Sanders is an excellent example of someone pulling off the shadow campaign strategy effectively. So effectively that he may just win the nomination of the Democratic Party.
The main problem however is that when it comes to shadow campaigns, the one he’ll face in the general election is about on par, if not more potent in its reach than his own. For decades now Republicans have cultivated a network of dark money organizations and a grassroots culture that is eager to harass critics while denying the most basic obvious truths of the world due to a cultivated siege mentality that everyone is out to get them and whom ever they happen to be supporting at the moment. It is perhaps a fight fire with fire situation here. But I will say this, the Republicans have been doing this a lot longer than Sanders has. To the point where they don’t need to pretend their shadow campaigns don’t exist, because their base just don’t care at all any more. Corruption in the name of the Republican party has now become a virtue and a sign of their purity as opposed to being something unacceptable.
Perhaps then in the general election the optimal path is a strategy that fights fire with water. Not fire with fire. But that’s going to be hard to do when all you know how to do is fight with fire. That said, Sanders, despite his use of shadow campaigns, has at least kept up the veneer of not using them enough to convince some that he’s a good guy. I’m not convinced that will hold through the general election enough to be workable, but it might.
But as for me, yeah I don’t buy his golly gee I’m the most good person running act for a second.
Well, sorry Bern-ers. I know any of you who have made it this far are probably unhappy with what I had to say.
So, if shadow campaigns are effective, are they good to have? That depends. Not everyone has the moral flexibility to accept such unofficial efforts. Others don’t give a damn about the morals but will fight to pretend they have them. And still others just won’t care, giving the blanket excuse that the Republicans will have them, why shouldn’t we? Of those, possibilities at least two of them are being honest with you about what they’re about. That have it both ways folks though, not a fan, as you may have guessed already. So if a campaign is trying to get my vote, that’s not the way to go. But others are fine with it. And that’s choice. Just be mindful that you are making an informed decision yourself when evaluating these things.
Just because someone else is fooled by a shadow campaign, doesn’t mean you have to be. The pretext of a shadow campaign, that they are separate from the main campaign, is bullshit, its an illusion, its a big lie. But if you’re okay with that, then by all means, endorse someone who uses them and uses them well. If you’re not, maybe time to look elsewhere. Which, unfortunately is a little hard to do.
Because even if the so-called paragon of all things good on the left has this kind of seeming corruption too, maybe we’re just out of luck this election year. Oh dear
