A few days ago, in one of my opening pieces on this issue, I highlighted that there will be a concerted effort by Republicans and others to turn Democratic voters against Democratic candidates. Rather than work to send a positive message, Republicans have learned one major message from 2016: the path to winning has less to do with selling the positives of their candidates, and it can hinge on convincing Democratic voters their own candidates are unacceptable.
To that end, the National Republican Campaign Committee has launched “Socialist Showdown” a website that promotes the message that the Democratic Caucus is “too conservative” and it urges readers to endorse primaries against numerous Democratic candidates, hoping to divide the Democratic voting base.
If this was an actual war, there would be no other terminology for this but psy-ops. In campaigns, though, Republicans have decided this strategy is just fine.
Republicans use paid ads inside of Google to urge readers to “Tell Justice Democrats and Socialist Democrats of America to support challengers”.
The message: use email and pressure campaigns to poison the Democratic voter base against elected officials, in hopes that Democratic messaging will have to spend more time talking about each other and battling either primaries or disputes to unify around candidates in general elections.
Addition by division, it seems.
Their pages read as an ode to the greatness of Cortez and a long attack on Pelosi, dividing the caucus into sides and trying to be progressive. Remember: THIS is the actual NRCC paying for this website, financing it.
From now until election day, part of my goal within our community is to take the effort to prevent misinformation, to help writers on this website know when they are being taken advantage of with information that is incomplete, partial, or intended only to divide us.
In many ways, that is going to be difficult. Many do a good job of hiding how they work to influence you, encouraging you not to vote for Trump, but to weaken your support for Democratic candidates.
But when the NRCC makes it this easy, well, it at least offers the opportunity to point out that this isn’t the only time these efforts will be deployed.