Cornyn, Paxton, and the Attention Economy

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

At Politico, Adam Wren notes that Democratic Senate candidates are mismatched in the attention economy.

ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE: A similar gap exists on the right, as Cornyn faces a primary challenge from Texas AG Ken Paxton. Senate Republicans would much prefer Cornyn, worrying that Paxton could lose to a Democrat in the general under the right conditions.

But Paxton has adapted to our new, disruptive attention-based political era. He has run to where MAGA eyeballs are. Yes, that means doing hits on Fox News, but it also means going into less-mainstream media appearances, including as a guest on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “We had you really early on this — before it got kicked off,” Bannon told Paxton in a gerrymandering-centric appearance earlier this week, effectively vouching for his MAGA bona fides.

Cornyn has taken a more institutionalist approach. Perhaps his most prominent foray into the redistricting fight came in the form of a sternly worded letter to the FBI asking for their help in tracking down the absconding Texas Dems. To be fair, that move was successful in generating its own earned media and resulted in the FBI approving a request to locate the contingent of quorum-breaking Democrats, though it remains unclear what that means in practicality and the FBI is declining to comment, as POLITICO’s Gigi Ewing writes.

Cornyn is also using tactics that have failed against Paxton in the past, POLITICO’s Andrew Howard sharply observes. In May, Cornyn’s campaign launched a website attacking Paxton titled CrookedKen.com, highlighting a number of Paxton’s flaws. The site’s content is almost identical to a website rolled out by George P. Bush during his primary race against Paxton in May 2022, called KenTheCrook.com. Bush’s political team had a lot of overlap with Cornyn’s, and Paxton won that primary by more than 30 points.

Cornyn declined an interview with Playbook.

“Every campaign I was ever on, including in 1980, our objective was to get in the local paper when we visited it, and get on the local radio station, and get on TV as much as possible,” Dave Carney, the Abbott strategist, told Playbook. “The difference between that — which is the exact same strategy, get as much attention as you can earn — now is: There’s 600,000 … places to get noticed.”

 

Harris Spending and Online Ads

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance. 

Jason Lange at Reuters:

Kamala Harris' election campaign spent nearly three times as much money as her rival Donald Trump did in August, pressing the Democrat's financial advantage ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election, according to financial disclosures filed on Friday.

 The two campaigns are entering the final stretch of an extremely tight presidential contest. Harris, the U.S. Vice President who launched her campaign in July when President Joe Biden ended his own re-election bid and endorsed her, disclosed to the Federal Election Commission spending of $174 million last month. Former Republican President Trump's campaign separately reported outlays of $61 million.

Shane Goldmacher and Nicholas Nehamas at NYT:

Vice President Kamala Harris outspent former President Donald J. Trump by 20 to 1 on Facebook and Instagram in the week surrounding their debate, capitalizing on the moment to plaster battleground states with ads and to hunt for new donors nationwide.

The lopsided spending — $12.2 million to $611,228 on Meta’s platforms, according to company records — was hardly an outlier. Ever since Ms. Harris entered the race, her campaign has overwhelmed the Trump operation with an avalanche of digital advertising, outspending his by tens of millions of dollars and setting off alarm among some Republicans.

Four years ago Mr. Trump, then holding the White House, drastically outspent Democrats online early in the election cycle in hopes of gaining an advantage. Now Mr. Trump, facing a cash shortfall, is making a very different bet that emphasizes the unique appeal of his online brand, the durability of a donor list built over nearly a decade and his belief in the power of television.

The difference was especially stark on screens across the most contested battlegrounds in the week surrounding the debate. In Pennsylvania, Ms. Harris spent $1.3 million on Meta’s platforms, compared with $22,465 by Mr. Trump. In Michigan, she laid out $1.5 million, while he spent only $34,790.

...

Mr. Trump is also being outspent on television — but by smaller margins. Part of that spending emphasis reflects Mr. Trump’s own worldview. Mr. Trump, who starred in the network television show “The Apprentice,” has said privately that he thinks digital spending is a waste and has urged his campaign to spend more on TV, according to a person who has heard him make such remarks and insisted on anonymity to discuss his private comments.

The 78-year-old Trump hasn't gotten the word that Americans are turning away from linear TV. 

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The Fall Campaign Begins

Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.

Ryan Lizza et al. at Politico:

63 DAYS TO GO — Election Day is nine weeks from today. Absentee ballots will start getting mailed out in North Carolina on Friday. Early voting starts in Pennsylvania on Sept. 16. The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is one week from today.

The main polling aggregators all show Harris with a lead:

• RCP: Harris +1.8 points
• 538: Harris +3.2 points
• Nate Silver: Harris +3.5 points
• The Economist: Harris +3.5 points

Eli Stokols and Alex Isenstadt break down the state of the race and give the momentum advantage to Harris, who is leading in the polls, in fundraising, and perhaps most crucially, in measures of enthusiasm.

Gallup last week recorded a 14-point advantage for Democrats when they measured which party’s voters are more enthusiastic about voting. Republicans led by 4 points on that question in March, when Biden was still the nominee.

DAVID PLOUFFE, who ran BARACK OBAMA’s two campaigns for president put his finger on perhaps the single biggest difference between the candidacies of Biden and Harris: “Of course people get motivated about voting against somebody. But when they’re as motivated or more motivated about voting for somebody, there’s magic there.”

Trump remains stuck where he has been for weeks: with no killer attack on Harris that has crystalized, no signs of a rebound in the polls, and public events where he still talks a lot about Biden, who has not been his opponent for more than six weeks.

Harris-Walz memo

August 18, 2024

To: Interested Parties

From: Quentin Fulks and Rob Flaherty, Deputy Campaign Managers for Harris-Walz 2024

Subject: Harris-Walz Cements Advertising Presence Through Election Day With Initial $370M Investment

Today, the Harris-Walz campaign is announcing that it will spend at least $370 million on digital and television advertising between Labor Day and Election Day. This weekend, our campaign is placing $170 million in TV reservations. This investment sits on top of what the campaign believes to be the largest digital reservation in the history of American politics at more than $200 million. All the while, the Trump team has reserved virtually no critical ad placements in the battlegrounds, and has no meaningful long-term plan to communicate to the voters who will decide this election.

In addition to these historic investments on the air, the Harris-Walz campaign is also reaching voters on the ground. Our coordinated campaign now includes more than 1,600 paid staff and more than 280 offices across the battlegrounds. This weekend, heading into the Democratic National Convention, we are mobilizing 2,800 events across our key states in order to reach the voters that will decide this election. More than 10,000 supporters signed up for volunteer shifts this weekend alone. Collectively, these investments into paid media and organizing make clear that the Harris-Walz campaign is taking no voters for granted and planning to communicate relentlessly to battleground voters every single day between now and Election Day.

Vance and the Past

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  And neither is the selection of J.D. Vance as its vice presidential candidate.  (Dem oppo folks are doing well.)

Alexander Nazaryan at The Daily Beast:

J.D. Vance has thoughts and opinions—and being a millennial, many of those thoughts and opinions are recorded online, where they live in perpetuity.

That wouldn’t be a problem, normally, except the 39-year-old junior senator from Ohio is the Republican nominee for vice president. He is also turning out to be a gift to Democratic opposition researchers from Santa Monica to Brooklyn.

On both substance and style, Vance is increasingly looking like a debacle. He could be the first vice presidential nominee since Sarah Palin, John McCain’s disastrous running mate in 2008, to actively harm the ticket.

In a 2021 conversation at Pacifica Christian, a private high school, Vance criticized the Sexual Revolution for “making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear,” going so far as to seemingly suggest that women should remain in abusive marriages for the sake of keeping the family intact.

It’s right there online. Has been this whole time. But only now is it making his GOP colleagues squirm. Republicans on Capitol Hill—where the self-important Vance has lost friends (if he ever made them)—are calling him Trump’s “worst choice” possible. There’s even speculation Trump could dump Vance.

Martin Pengelly at The Guardian:

Questions continued to mount about the political transformation of Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, after the release of emails from a former friend in which Vance called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” and said: “I hate the police.”

The messages between Vance and Sofia Nelson, who sent them to the New York Times, were largely dated between 2014 and 2017. In one, Vance sent Nelson a section of Hillbilly Elegy, his bestseller about his Appalachian boyhood.

“Here’s an excerpt from my book. I send this to you not just to brag, but because I’m sure if you read it you’ll notice reference to ‘an extremely progressive lesbian’,” Vance wrote.

NEW: In 2021 Vance sent out fundraising emails that called Democrats “childless sociopaths” and in a podcast in 2020 said childless Americans, especially in leadership, are “more sociopathic” and make the country “less mentally stable.” https://t.co/SeEcAddnDa

— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) July 30, 2024

JD Vance claims his July 2021 comment to Tucker Carlson that "childless cat ladies" like Kamala Harris “don't really have a direct stake” in the country’s future was taken out of context.

I found him making similar comments in three more Fox interviews. https://t.co/1r8IGmUI4H

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 30, 2024

 

 Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men:

 For nothing is lost, nothing is ever lost. There is always the clue, the canceled check, the smear of lipstick, the footprint in the canna bed, the condom on the park path, the twitch in the old wound, the baby shoes dipped in bronze, the taint in the blood stream. And all times are one time, and all those dead in the past never lived before our definition gives them life, and out of the shadow their eyes implore us.

That is what all of us historical researchers believe.

And we love truth.”

Russian Influence Operations 2024

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.

Russian influence operations have changed. After an abortive coup, Putin killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led earlier efforts.  The Russians are now doing things in-house, and poorly. Julia Ioffe at Puck:

Some of the mistakes are just weird, like the title of one of the Doppelganger sites, “50 States of Lie.” (Fifty states of lie? It just sounds wrong.) Or like the one I discovered on Across the Line, one of the websites in the Doppelganger network. “According to recent polls,” an article on the website proclaimed, “it is refugees who are mostly in favor of Biden’s second term and strongly support him, calling him their ‘daddy.’” (Daddy?!) Others, true to the directives we know were given to the staff of the agencies to imitate average conservative Americans, created posts that sounded more like Yosemite Sam. “I protect my home and my rights here in Texas, not listenin’ to them Washington games,” one such Telegram comment said. “We got bigger things to worry ‘bout, like illegal immigrants messin’ up our land. Don’t mess with Texas!” (The apostrophes are particularly amusing because, if there’s one thing we’ve all noticed on social media, it’s that people are sticklers about punctuation.)

And if that didn’t make you laugh, consider the fact that OpenAI found that these agencies were using ChatGPT to generate comments and posts—and then just threw everything up online, including ChatGPT’s error messages. Here’s an amazing screenshot, also from OpenAI’s report.

A Russian armed with ChatGPT, in other words, is still a Russian.

Doxxing Jurors

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to violent rebellion, coups, and secession.  Trump has accused the Biden Administration of trying to kill him.

 Ryan Reilly at NBC:

The 34 felony guilty verdicts returned Thursday against former President Donald Trump spurred a wave of violent rhetoric aimed at the prosecutors who secured his conviction, the judge who oversaw the case and the ordinary jurors who unanimously agreed there was no reasonable doubt that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee falsified business records related to hush money payments to a porn star to benefit his 2016 campaign.

Advance Democracy, a non-profit that conducts public interest research, said there has been a high volume of social media posts containing violent rhetoric targeting New York Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, including a post with Bragg’s purported home address. The group also found posts of the purported addresses of jurors on a fringe internet message board known for pro-Trump content and harassing and violent posts, although it is unclear if any actual jurors had been correctly identified.

The posts, which have been reviewed by NBC News, appear on many of the same websites used by Trump supporters to organize for violence ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. These forums were hotbeds of threats inspired by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, which he lost, and that the voting system was “rigged” against him. They now feature new threats echoing Trump’s rhetoric and false claims about the hush money trial, including that the judicial system is now “rigged” against him.

“Dox the Jurors. Dox them now,” one user wrote after Trump’s conviction on a website formerly known as “The Donald,” which was popular among participants in the Capitol attack. (That post appears to have been quickly removed by moderators.)...

The threats fit into an ongoing pattern. An NBC News analysis of Trump’s Truth Social posts earlier this year showed that he frequently uses the platform as a megaphone to attack people involved in his legal cases — and some of his supporters have responded. When the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022, a Trump supporter who had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6 sent angry posts about the search and then attacked an FBI field office. When Trump made a social media post last June that included former President Barack Obama’s home address, a Jan. 6 rioter reposted it and then showed up at the residence. When Trump was indicted in Georgia in August, his supporters posted the purported names and addresses of members of the grand jury. Special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing Trump’s federal election interference case in Washington, was the target of an attempted swatting on Christmas Day. So too was U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will oversee that trial, if the Supreme Court allows it to go forward (though that could change if Trump wins in November). When Michael Fanone — the former police officer nearly killed on Jan. 6 by Trump supporters who believed the former president’s lies about the 2020 election — criticized Trump at a press conference outside the hush money trial earlier this week, his mother was swatted. When Trump and conservative media outlets spread false information about the jury instructions in the hush money case this week, threats against Merchan rolled in

.

Trump posts article with photo of himself holding a baseball bat next to a photo of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. pic.twitter.com/B1XRbM5LGJ

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) March 23, 2023

Evolving Media and Congressional Troublemakers

 Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the impact of social media and campaign technology.

Eric Cortellessa at Time reports on  Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL)

To some, she’s a dangerously effective new version of the millennial MAGA politician ready to tear down the institutions of government in pursuit of an ultraconservative revolution. To others, she’s something more, the vanguard of a potentially significant turn in American politics. Luna is less a politician who parlayed her seat in Congress into a huge online following—like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—than the other way around: the first social media influencer to parlay an online audience into a seat in Congress.

...

Part of Charlie Kirk’s job is to live on the internet. The pro-Trump activist and podcast host created Turning Point USA with the goal of creating an army of influencers to combat what he saw as the left-wing tilt on college campuses and in popular culture. One day in 2018, Kirk was struck by an Instagram video of a ferocious Latina immigration hawk. “It was literally a rant on how the news was full of it and they weren’t being transparent about what actually happens at the border,” Luna says. But the clip caught on like wildfire. “I saw that she was a natural talent from Day One,” Kirk says. He thought Luna had the same kind of magnetism he saw in Candace Owens, his first big discovery. “I realized she really had a spark.”

Kirk called Luna to offer her a job heading Turning Point’s Hispanic outreach operation. Luna was intrigued, but there was one problem. She was about to leave for medical school in Grenada. Kirk, a prodigious fundraiser, told her not to worry. He would reimburse her for the costs.

“That’s where I changed paths,” Luna says.

Back in olden times -- a dozen years ago -- it was cable.  John Boehner recalls:

Besides the homegrown “talent” at Fox, with their choice of guests they were making people who used to be fringe characters into powerful media stars. One of the first prototypes out of their laboratory was a woman named Michele Bachmann.

After the GOP takeover in 2010, she demanded a seat on Ways and Means. Boehner politely declined.

Her response to me was calm and matter-of-fact. “Well, then I’ll just have to go talk to Sean Hannity and everybody at Fox,” she said, “and Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and everybody else on the radio, and tell them that this is how John Boehner is treating the people who made it possible for the Republicans to take back the House.”

I wasn’t the one with the power, she was saying. I just thought I was. She had the power now.

She was right, of course.

He assuaged her with a seat on Intelligence. 

 

 

Wray on Russia

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.   The update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  Russia is making a similar effort this year.

House Homeland Security Hearing Chris Wray Testimony Transcript September 17: FBI Director Testifies:

Chairman Thompson: (28:33)

Thank you. Can you tell me if, as of this date, you have information that Russia is trying to influence the election for 2020?

Director Christopher Wray: (28:49)
Yes. I think the intelligence community’s consensus is that Russia continues to try to influence our elections primarily through what we would call malign foreign influence, as opposed to what we saw in 2016, where there was also an effort to target election infrastructure, cyber targeting. We have not seen that second part yet this year, or this cycle, but we certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020 through what I would call more the malign foreign influence side of things. Social media, use of proxies, state media, online journals, et cetera. An effort to both sow divisiveness and discord and, and I think the intelligence community has assessed this publicly, primarily to denigrate vice President Biden in what the Russians see as kind of an anti-Russian establishment. That’s essentially what we’re seeing in 2020.

But Chris, you don’t see any activity from China, even though it is a FAR greater threat than Russia, Russia, Russia. They will both, plus others, be able to interfere in our 2020 Election with our totally vulnerable Unsolicited (Counterfeit?) Ballot Scam. Check it out! https://t.co/mH3vrHWvS8

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 18, 2020

Foreign Interference 2020

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.   The update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  Russia is making a similar effort this year.

Julian E. Barnes at NYT:

Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.

At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.

But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike Mr. Trump, the officials said.

The assessment, included in a statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading carefully, reflecting the political heat generated by previous findings.

Remember this from December? When OANN featured Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach and his anti-Biden conspiracies? Many warned at the time that his motives were suspect. Today, the US government confirmed that he is part of the Kremlin's effort to weaken Biden. OANN is complicit. https://t.co/iV9cxgJdzV

— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) August 7, 2020

Julian E. Barnes at NYT:

Russia continues to use a network of proxy websites to spread pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda in the United States and other parts of the West, according to a State Department report released on Wednesday.

The report is one of the most detailed explanations yet from the Trump administration on how Russia disseminates disinformation, but it largely avoids discussing how Moscow is trying to influence the current campaign. Even as Democrats on Capitol Hill have urged the American government to declassify more information on Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election, President Trump has repeatedly told officials such disclosures are unwelcome.

Most of the report focuses on an ecosystem of websites, many of them fringe or conspiracy minded, that Russia has used or directed to spread propaganda on a variety of topics. Those include an online journal called the Strategic Culture Foundation and other sites, like the Canada-based Global Research. The document builds on information disclosed last week by American officials about Russian intelligence’s control of various propaganda sites.

 Isaac Stanley-Becker at WP:

David Adrian posted passionately about American politics, sharing adulatory memes on Facebook about President Trump and recirculating material from his reelection campaign.

...
Facebook on Thursday said Adrian’s accounts were part of a coordinated network of accounts and pages originating in Romania and posing as conservative Americans supportive of the U.S. president’s reelection. In addition to African American support for Trump, the material focused on members of the president’s inner circle, conservative media and Christianity. It also invoked themes associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose adherents believe Trump is battling a cabal of deep-state saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex.

Facebook, Twitter penalize Trump for posts containing coronavirus misinformation

...
The motive of those behind the deceptive material could not be determined, said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy. It was not clear whether the intent was genuinely to promote Trump, he said, or whether there were financial incentives.

The disclosure came three months before the November election and amid heightened concern about efforts to manipulate public opinion and discredit the vote. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, last month cited intelligence briefings in warning about Russian and Chinese efforts to sow doubt about the American electoral system. Facebook, which regularly reports actions against foreign and domestic influence campaigns using its platform, last fall identified a network of Russian-backed accounts praising Trump and attacking Biden.

Facebook release here. 

Betsy Woodruff Swan at Politico:

Twitter will start labeling the accounts of media outlets affiliated with the governments of countries on the U.N. Security Council, it announced Thursday.

The new labels won’t apply to all media outlets that receive government funding — only “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution,” according to Twitter’s blog post announcing the change.

The labels will go on the accounts for China Daily, Russia Today, Sputnik and other media outlets, a Twitter spokesperson said. But not Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, two media outlets funded by the U.S. government, or NPR and the BBC. The blog post described NPR and the BBC as “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence.”

Dirty Trick in Iowa?

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, has begun.

Tyler Pager and Jennifer Epstein at Bloomberg:

Supporters of President Donald Trump flooded a hotline used by Iowa precinct chairs to report Democratic caucus results after the telephone number was posted online, worsening delays in the statewide tally, a top state Democrat told party leaders on a conference call Wednesday night.

According to two participants on the call, Ken Sagar, a state Democratic central committee member, was among those answering the hotline on caucus night and said people called in and expressed support for Trump. The phone number became public after people posted photos of caucus paperwork that included the hotline number, one of the people on the call said.

The phone call Wednesday night between the Iowa Democratic Party staff and state central committee, the party’s elected governing body, came as the party was still counting results.

Several glitches, including problems with a new phone application that was supposed to quickly send individual caucus results to the state party, plagued Iowa’s troubled caucuses, causing the outcome to be delayed for days. More than 48 hours after caucusing began, the party had reported results from 96% of precincts and the race was too close to call.

 Ben Collins, Maura Barrett and Vaughn Hillyard at NBC:

Users on a politics-focused section of the fringe 4chan message board repeatedly posted the phone number for the Iowa Democratic Party, which was found by a simple Google search, both as screenshots and in plain text, alongside instructions.

"They have to call in the results now. Very long hold times being reported. Phone line being clogged," one user posted at about 11 p.m. ET on Monday, three hours after the caucuses began.

"Uh oh how unfortunate it would be for a bunch of mischief makers to start clogging the lines," responded another anonymous user, sarcastically.

Some users chimed in, posting alleged wait times on hold, imploring others to “clog the lines [and] make the call lads.”

Iron Law of Emulation: Alabama Dems Copy Russia

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss social media, fake news, and Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, Aaron C. Davis and Elizabeth Dwosk at WP:

A secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama used tactics inspired by Russian disinformation teams, including the creation of fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect Democrat Doug Jones in the deeply red state, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

...
What is known about Project Birmingham comes mainly from the 12-page document labeled “Project Birmingham Debrief,” which was obtained by The Post. It is dated Dec. 15, 2017, three days after the Alabama vote.

The document describes the effort as “a digital messaging operation to influence the outcome of the AL senate race” by targeting 650,000 likely voters with messages on social media platforms such as Facebook, while obscuring the fact that the messages were coming from an effort backing Jones. Jones has said he had no knowledge of Project Birmingham and has called for a federal investigation.

The goal of the effort was to “radicalize Democrats, suppress unpersuadable Republicans (“hard Rs”) and faction moderate Republicans by advocating for write-in candidates,” the document states.

The Internet Research Agencies Social Media Tactics

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss social media, fake news, and Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

Craig Timberg and Tony Romm at WP:

Months after President Trump took office, Russia’s disinformation teams trained their sights on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there.

The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram — which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal — claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups.”

Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday

From the Senate Intelligence Committee:

Today, third-party experts released two independent analyses of social media tactics used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) in their attempts to influence U.S. political discourse. The reports are the first comprehensive analyses of their kind conducted by entities other than social media companies themselves, and are based in part on data provided by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

The reports, titled “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency” and “The IRA and Political Polarization in the United States, 2015-2017,” were authored by New Knowledge, and University of Oxford and Graphika, respectively.

...
Background:
The third-party reports released today are based in part on data provided by the Committee under its Technical Advisory Group, whose members serve to provide substantive technical and expert advice on topics of importance to ongoing Committee activity and oversight. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions presented within are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Senate Intelligence Committee or its Membership.

Separate from the Technical Advisory Group, the Committee is conducting an ongoing investigation into the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. As part of its investigation, the Committee has held several open hearings on the use of social media by foreign influence campaigns, including recent hearings with third-party experts in August 2018 and social media company officials in September 2018. The Committee will release its own report on social media with its findings as an installment of its investigation.

To read New Knowledge’s report, “The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency,” click here.

To read University of Oxford and Graphika’s report, “The IRA and Political Polarization in the United States, 2015-2017,” click here.

Cyberattacks

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

Joel Schectman and Christopher Bing at Reuters:

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating a cyber attack on the congressional campaign of a Democratic candidate in California, according to three people close to the campaign.

The hackers successfully infiltrated the election campaign computer of David Min, a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives who was later defeated in the June primary for California’s 45th Congressional district.

Andy Kroll at Rolling Stone:

FBI agents in California and Washington, D.C., have investigated a series of cyberattacks over the past year that targeted a Democratic opponent of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Rohrabacher is a 15-term incumbent who is widely seen as the most pro-Russia and pro-Putin member of Congress and is a staunch supporter of President Trump.

The hacking attempts and the FBI’s involvement are described in dozens of emails and forensic records obtained by Rolling Stone.

The target of these attacks, Dr. Hans Keirstead, a stem-cell scientist and the CEO of a biomedical research company, finished third in California’s nonpartisan “top-two” primary on June 5th, falling 125 votes short of advancing to the general election in one of the narrowest margins of any congressional primary this year. He has since endorsed Harley Rouda, the Democrat who finished in second place and will face Rohrabacher in the November election.

Maya Kosoff at Vanity Fair:

Similar phishing attacks have been reported by the campaign for Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill—according to the Daily Beast, Russian operatives tried and failed to access the McCaskill campaign’s data using a variant of the password-stealing technique employed by “Fancy Bear” hackers who targeted Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta in 2016. (In that instance, hackers sent fake e-mails to targets alerting them that their Microsoft Exchange password had expired, and asking them to enter a new one.) Last month, Microsoft revealed that it had detected and blocked hacking attempts against three different congressional candidates so far in 2018; the hackers, Microsoft V.P. of security and trust Tom Burt, announced at the Aspen Security Forum, had used “a fake Microsoft domain . . . as the landing page for phishing attacks.” Separate attempts at meddling have occurred on social-media sites. A few weeks ago, Facebook announced that it had discovered new, malicious accounts on Facebook and Instagram designed to influence elections by targeting divisive social issues, similar to the effort put forth by the Russia-linked Internet Research Agency in advance of the 2016 election. The operators behind the 17 profiles and 8 Pages, which were set up between March 2017 and May 2018, appeared to be more sophisticated, disguising their identities more effectively than the I.R.A.

On July 13, DNI Dan Coats said at The Hudson Institute:

You only need to go back less than two decades ago to put, I think, the current cyber threat into its proper context. In 2001, our vulnerability was heightened because of the stovepipe approach of our intelligence and law enforcement communities that produced what they called "silos of information." At the time, intelligence and law enforcement communities were identifying alarming activities that suggested that an attack was potentially coming to the United States. It was in the months prior to September 2001 when, according to then CIA Director George Tenet, the system was blinking red. And here we are nearly two decades later, and I'm here to say the warning lights are blinking red again. Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.

Every day, foreign actors — the worst offenders being Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — are penetrating our digital infrastructure and conducting a range of cyber intrusions and attacks against targets in the United States. The targets range from U.S. businesses to the federal government (including our military), to state and local governments, to academic and financial institutions and elements of our critical infrastructure — just to name a few. The attacks come in different forms. Some are tailored to achieve very tactical goals while others are implemented for strategic purpose, including the possibility of a crippling cyberattack against our critical infrastructure.

Trump and Blankenship

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. 

John McCormack at The Weekly Standard:

Republicans are panicking as internal polls show Don Blankenship, a coal baron who spent time in jail for a mining disaster that killed 29 workers, surging into the lead in the West Virginia Senate GOP primary over Attorney General Patrick Morrissey and Congressman Evan Jenkins.

The results of an internal campaign poll conducted for one rival Senate campaign on Saturday and Sunday were: Blankenship 31 percent, Jenkins 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent.

The results of another internal poll conducted Friday and Saturday were: Blankenship 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent, Jenkins 14 percent. Two weeks earlier, the same rival campaign found Blankenship at 14 percent, Morrissey at 29 percent, and Jenkins at 26 percent.

Politico reported Saturday night that internal polling showed Blankenship surging, but the specific numbers are being reported for the first time by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

At the urging of Mitch McConnell -- whom Blankenship called "Cocaine Mitch" -- Trump issued a Tweet:

To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State...No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018

A few things stand out about the tweet. 

• Instead of denouncing Blankenship's racist remarks and his responsibility for 29 deaths, Trump merely referred to his electability.  
• The "Remember Alabama" line makes sense only to political junkies who remember the Roy Moore fiasco -- probably a tiny share of the electorate. 
• A lone tweet is probably not the best way to reach a state with a relatively low rate of Internet usage.

The tweet will probably not affect the outcome.  Trump was just throwing a cyber-bone to the GOP establishment.

Russiagate Figure Controls Mercenaries in Syria

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign

 Ellen Nakashima, Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly at WP:

A Russian oligarch believed to control the Russian mercenaries who attacked U.S. troops and their allies in Syria this month was in close touch with Kremlin and ­Syrian officials in the days and weeks before and after the assault, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

In intercepted communications in late January, the oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, told a senior Syrian official that he had “secured permission” from an unspecified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative that would take place in early February.

Prigozhin made front-page headlines last week when he was indicted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on charges of bankrolling and guiding a long-running Russian scheme to conduct “information warfare” during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

He is known to have close ties to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, forged when he was a restaurateur in St. Petersburg and expanded through what became Prigozhin’s wide-ranging business empire, including extensive contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Among his various enterprises, U.S. intelligence believes that Prigozhin also “almost certainly” controls Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad. The mercenaries, employed by a company called Wagner, comprise ultra­nationalist Russians and military veterans, some of whom also fought in the Ukraine conflict, according to Russian news reports.

Russians Hacked Election Systems in 2016

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign.

Jeff Mulvihill and Jake Pearson report at AP:

The federal government on Friday told election officials in 21 states that hackers targeted their systems before last year’s presidential election.

The notification came roughly a year after U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia. The states that told The Associated Press they had been targeted included some key political battlegrounds, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The AP contacted every state election office to determine which ones had been informed that their election systems had been targeted. The others confirming were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

Being targeted does not mean that sensitive voter data was manipulated or results were changed. A hacker targeting a system without getting inside is similar to a burglar circling a house checking for unlocked doors and windows.

Even so, the widespread nature of the attempts and the yearlong lag time in notification from Homeland Security raised concerns among some election officials and lawmakers.