NYM's big giant thread about voting GOP because something something corporate $$

[Doimper]

excellent, another "the things I want to happen will happen" poster

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I didn't "disappear" (got a life outside of this forum, after all) and #walkaway was never proven to be Russian lol. I also didn't say that the Democrats were necessarily 'doomed' because of it. They can still win due to high turnout combined with mediocre GOP turnout.

I stand behind every word I said in that post.

As someone who moved from lifelong Dem -> Independent as part of the #DemExit movement, and as someone who will be voting republican straight ticket to combat what has become an unrecognizable Democratic party (between moving hard left on social issues and immigration, campaigning hard on identity politics, pushing the Russian nonsense and now the Kav garbage), people should ignore #WalkAway at their own peril. Midterm fundamentals make it an uphill battle to hold the House, but we have to put up as much of a fight as we can.

(It's interesting how it's always "the Russians" pushing precisely every talking point that is troublesome for the DNC.)

Is it “DemExit” or “WalkAway?”  I’m afraid all these fake concern-troll “movements” by people who were never Democrats to begin with kinda start to blur together after a while.  I can’t keep track of what the kids are calling it these days.  

Btw, technically I’m not ignoring #WalkAway, so much as calling BS on it.  I’m directly calling in a sloppy and rather pathetic attempt by Russia to replicate their 2016 success in manipulating the political process.  It’s about as likely to be a real movement as Chechnya is to overthrow Kadyrov’s puppet regime and #WalkAway from Russia before 3:00 EST today.

[Yank2133]

Only one more month of this nonsense.....

[I Can Now Die Happy]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/17/opinions/russian-bots-2018-midterm-elections-opinion-love/index.html

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The funny thing about this Russian-backed propaganda effort is that eventually it does morph into something that involves real Americans who may have actually divorced themselvse from the Democratic Party over the years (or Republicans/Independents pretending to be Democrats who #WalkedAway just because it's the internet and who cares), and the end result is you get these real people swearing that the #WalkAway movement is real, if for no other reason than that they know it's real because they themselves are real. The fact is, almost every election you get actual Republicans who become actual Democrats, and actual Democrats who become actual Republicans. There is nothing out of the ordinary about this. Political coalitions are constantly shifting. So there is always a #WalkAway movement in some form. The only difference here is that a bunch of people have gotten tricked into supporting a "movement" that was supposed to be out of the norm, but isn't.

The truth is that these people just got played by a foreign power. They'll likely never acknowledge this, though.

"been connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots"

political movements of all kinds are supported by bots on twitter because...it's twitter.

"Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund"

lol, 'Securing Democracy'
lol, 'nonpartisan'


'the illusion that this is a popular movement'
Well, lots of people have left the Left.

'The fact is, almost every election you get actual Republicans who become actual Democrats'

of course, but that rate has accelerated relative to the 2000s and 1990s

'There is nothing out of the ordinary about this. '

True, but that doesn't mean it's not going to have meaningful effects.

'a bunch of people have gotten tricked'

I dunno, I don't think I got tricked by Russians into seeing how awful the Left has become firsthand. '#WalkAway' might be astroturfed in the same fashion that many Twitter hashtags are astroturfed. Also, Russia is where lots of illicit internet activity happens. Many of the biggest pirating sites are Russian. Is there even any proof that the Kremlin itself is doing them? I bet you can also track astroturfing from multiple other countries around the globe.

Also, sorry guys, but even if you get your 'blue wave' or something resembling it, we aren't going to disappear.

[MAINEiac4434]

gr8 b8 m8

[Virginiá]

I dunno, I don't think I got tricked by Russians into seeing how awful the Left has become firsthand. '#WalkAway' might be astroturfed in the same fashion that many Twitter hashtags are astroturfed. Also, Russia is where lots of illicit internet activity happens. Many of the biggest pirating sites are Russian. Is there even any proof that the Kremlin itself is doing them? I bet you can also track astroturfing from multiple other countries around the globe.

Also, sorry guys, but even if you get your 'blue wave' or something resembling it, we aren't going to disappear.

I mean, you kind of just proved my point. I never said you didn't #WalkAway from the party at some point (I dunno if you are sincere or not). I just said you got tricked into thinking it was actually some movement when in reality it happens every single election cycle on both sides.

And yes, they did find out it was the Russians. They knew this long ago. Not only did they track the malware used to Russian-backed groups attacking other countries' elections, other EU countries literally hacked Russian intelligence agencies and caught them ON CAMERA engaged in operations against the US. And America also used sources and the NSA's worldwide intelligence apparatus to corroborate evidence and identify people running these operations. This is old news, news I guess you haven't read.

You should read some of the Snowden documents. The NSA regularly hacks governments engaged in intelligence operations against the US. They've literally hacked into the computers of Chinese military officers who were directing hacking campaigns of US corporations, and watched those people on their webcams. It's completely unsurprising that they could and would do the same to Russia. Not to mention other European countries who do their own hacking.

[I Can Now Die Happy]

I don't view it as some super huge movement, I view it as a convenient way to refer to an important phenomenon that many seem to trivialize.

The myriad of stories about supposed Russian hacking and the Mueller investigation are so Byzantine at this point that I won't bother learning all the nitty-gritty details until I read about it, and every other nitty-gritty detail about the Trump era, after Trump finishes his 2nd term on January 20, 2025.

[Associate Justice PiT]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/17/opinions/russian-bots-2018-midterm-elections-opinion-love/index.html

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The funny thing about this Russian-backed propaganda effort is that eventually it does morph into something that involves real Americans who may have actually divorced themselvse from the Democratic Party over the years (or Republicans/Independents pretending to be Democrats who #WalkedAway just because it's the internet and who cares), and the end result is you get these real people swearing that the #WalkAway movement is real, if for no other reason than that they know it's real because they themselves are real. The fact is, almost every election you get actual Republicans who become actual Democrats, and actual Democrats who become actual Republicans. There is nothing out of the ordinary about this. Political coalitions are constantly shifting. So there is always a #WalkAway movement in some form. The only difference here is that a bunch of people have gotten tricked into supporting a "movement" that was supposed to be out of the norm, but isn't.

The truth is that these people just got played by a foreign power. They'll likely never acknowledge this, though.

     It's true that this sort of stuff happens all the time, but I have been seeing more people leave the left the past couple of years than I ever did in the decade or so I had been politically aware before that. Naturally just anecdotes and we all know that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but it's something that I have been noticing independent of any #WalkAway hashtag.

[Brittain33]

Whatever you are doing here is really odd.

[IceSpear]

Lol at this thread. You guys are so easily trolled.

[Virginiá]

     It's true that this sort of stuff happens all the time, but I have been seeing more people leave the left the past couple of years than I ever did in the decade or so I had been politically aware before that. Naturally just anecdotes and we all know that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but it's something that I have been noticing independent of any #WalkAway hashtag.

I don't doubt it. But there have been an equally large if not bigger number of Republicans dropping their label as well. For instance, tons of anecdotal experiences detailed in many news stories since 2016, there is simply no way Democrats could achieve this kind of gender gap without a ton of former Republicans.

Coalitions are constantly shifting, and the trends at work today have been ongoing for decade(s).