Progressives (Liberals)

Poll: Pete Buttigieg joins the list of presidential frontrunners in Iowa

Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren top the field in a Suffolk/USA Today poll. Buttigieg is third; Bernie Sanders is fourth.

The latest Iowa poll shows a three-way race between former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

The telephone poll, taken last Wednesday through Friday following the October Democratic presidential debate by Suffolk University and USA Today, found Biden in the lead with 18 percent support, Warren second with 17 percent, and Buttigieg third with 13 percent. The polling has a 4.4 percentage point margin of error, with 500 likely Democratic caucus-goers surveyed.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the candidate usually in the third-place spot, was in fourth, with 9 percent support. This is the same level of support he enjoyed in the last Suffolk University/USA Today Iowa poll, taken in June.

Entrepreneur Tom Steyer, at 3 percent, was a distant fifth. After rounding up their results, pollsters found Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard all tied for sixth place with 3 percent (Steyer hit 3 percent without the need for any rounding). These results marked a stark reversal of fortune for Harris, who was second in the June poll.

The results confirm Warren’s status as a frontrunner, and show Biden maintaining strong support. Buttigieg, however, has risen dramatically. A Des Moines Register/CNN poll in September had the mayor in fourth place, with 9 percent support. And the June Suffolk University/USA Today poll found he had 6 percent support.

Facebook: Russian trolls are back. And they're here to meddle with 2020

People linked to the Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-backed troll group indicted by the United States for its alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election, are laying the groundwork to do the same in 2020, new information released by Facebook on Monday suggests.

Profiles originating in Russia had since the beginning of this year been building a network of accounts on Instagram designed to look like groups in swing states, the company said. Instagram is owned by Facebook (FB).

Although the accounts posed as Americans from all sides of the political spectrum, many were united in their opposition to the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden, according to Graphika, a social media investigations company that Facebook asked to analyze the accounts. The Russian trolls who used social media to interfere in the 2016 election employed a similar tactic, going after Hillary Clinton from the right and also trying to spread a perception on the left that Clinton was not liberal enough and that liberals and African Americans especially shouldn’t bother voting for her.

Neither of them come out looking particularly good.

She continued to hammer home this theme in the days after. In an official video released on Sunday, she accuses an unspecified “they” (presumably Democratic elites) of organizing to “destroy” and “discredit” anyone who dissents from their official line. On Monday, she tweeted out a video of a friendly interview she did with Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which she accuses “Hillary Clinton, her proxies, [and] the warmongering establishment” of “conducting this coordinated smear campaign.”

The idea that Clinton is masterminding some kind of coordinated smear campaign in the media, that all of Gabbard’s critics are Clinton “proxies,” is the textbook definition of a conspiracy theory. But it’s hardly the first time Gabbard has embraced outlandish ideas that happen to flatter her worldview.

Russia's success in attacking our democracy is not tied to their ability to recruit Gabbard (or anyone else) to parrot Russian talking points. Rather, their success comes with their ability to influence and manipulate, through amplification, certain messages and candidates that create division. As we saw in 2016, Russia was able to aid Donald Trump by using tailored and manipulated social media campaigns, without even the knowledge or direction of the Trump campaign itself. After all, Russia's goal in 2016 was the delegitimization of our elections; they did not need to coordinate with Trump to make that happen. That's the disturbing parallel with Gabbard: Russia can seek to support her, without her knowledge.

If borne out, Russian support of Gabbard does not mean that she is a Russian-directed operative, or that she has ties with or is in contact with Moscow. As I learned during my operational time working against Russian intelligence, the targeting of U.S. persons for recruitment by a foreign intelligence service does not make that person guilty of a crime. The same holds true if Russia seeks to independently aid the Gabbard campaign. Russia may choose to covertly amplify her message by building what may look like organic and grass roots online support for her. They may take some of her talking points—such as, Assad "is not the enemy of the U.S." or that the U.S. is in "a new nuclear arms race"—and work to increase their reach across social media.

As many longterm TPM Readers know, Elizabeth Warren has a history with this site. Soon after TPM had raised a lot of ruckus over President Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security in late 2004 and early 2005, Warren and her law students approached me about setting a short term blog to advocate against the bankruptcy bill then moving through Congress. That led to the creation of the TPM Bankruptcy Bill Blog, which launched on March 6th 2005. A few months later when we launched TPMCafe we made it a standing proposition as Warren Reports, which ran from 2005 to 2008 when Warren was preparing to enter the Obama administration.

We’re going to be republishing all of Warren’s posts since they are newly relevant as she moves into front runner status in the Democratic presidential nomination.

...As I noted above, we’ll be posting the whole archive in the near future. It should go without saying that TPM does not support any candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries. I’ve written as recently as this week that I think Warren is making a big, perhaps critical mistake firmly tying herself to Medicare for All in advance of a potential general election. But we are institutionally in possession of an illuminating look into Warren’s politics, policy views and personality well before she became a politician let alone a top tier presidential candidate. So we approach the project in that spirit.

Isn't that special.

People should pay more attention to Bernie Sanders on foreign policy

He doesn't get much attention for this, but I continue to be impressed by Bernie Sanders' approach to foreign policy. Here he is last night on PBS. It's a short discussion and doesn't get into much detail but as shorthand for the progressive position, it's just right in my opinion: