[ChicagoDave]

It's hard to measure this in hindsight. Someone would have to do a controlled study.

That said, Given the number of voters that stayed home in 2016 (over 10% in the key states of WI, MI, OH, and PA) and the number of people who voted "against Clinton" suggests it was highly effective.

Cambridge Analytica and similar firms have a data set of how emotions can impact certain kinds of people. They have openly admitted they do this for conservative causes. Their patent company is seeded financially by some of the most conservative people with wealth and now we know they are also supported by conservative British politicians.

This is a massive conspiracy to undermine governments that are supposed to be for and by the people. This is what happens when dark money is allowed unfettered access to elections.

Democracy. Real democracy....dies.

[rock_hard]

I personally think Clinton ran a poor campaign without being able to create and excitement at scale and Trump wasn’t a option for many (including me) so that may also explain the spike in people who stayed home.

[ChicagoDave]

Can you say 100% that your view of Clinton wasn’t impacted by the negative news push by CA?

[CamperBob2]

Democracy. Real democracy....dies.

I disagree -- I think what we saw in 2016 was democracy. We saw the effect of giving stupid people the same amount of political power as everyone else.

It's indisputable that some people are more easily gathered and led than others. We can borrow the term "network effect" to describe how these people come to wield excessive power in a democracy. But these voters don't serve their own interests. They are the players in a competition among billionaires, religious leaders, and state-level actors to see who can raise the biggest army of intellectual zombies and herd them to the polls.

At some point there will have to be a conversation about how sustainable this practice is.