Obama says he has regrets surrounding disinformation in 2016 election

[AZProgressive]

Former President Barrack Obama on Thursday said he still holds regrets for failing to see the rampant spread of disinformation within the U.S. while he was president, particularly around the 2016 election.

In a speech at Stanford University on the dangers of disinformation, Obama touched on the 2016 election, which U.S. intelligence has long confirmed Russia meddled in.

The former president said no one in his administration was surprised Russia had spread disinformation across social media platforms in an effort to sway the U.S. election, but he regretted not fully understanding how vulnerable America had become to such content.

“What does still nag at me though was my failure to fully appreciate at the time just how susceptible we had become to lies and conspiracy theories, despite having spent years being a target of disinformation myself,” Obama said, seeming to reference the racist and unfounded conspiracy theory that he was not born in the United States.

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3459415-obama-says-he-has-regrets-surrounding-disinformation-in-2016-election/

[Hekate]

1. Sir, we love you, but we regret it too. ...

I think President Obama was ill-served by some of the people who were supposed to keep him fully informed and suggest decisive action.

[Nevilledog]

4. It's hard to accept how many fucked up people are out there.

Daily I find myself thinking that people can't be this stupid/evil. Every day I'm proven wrong.

[Polly Hennessey]

2. I, too, have regrets that he let many

things pass by. I agree he was ill-served by those around him. My heart wishes he had been able to seek his own counsel instead of other voices.

[Hoyt]

3. No regrets here with Obama. As easy as it is to blame Russian misinformation,

we lost because of Comey, Democrats who got ticked because their favorite didn’t win primary, and influential Democrats who bashed Obama and Clinton right up to the election over trade, etc.

Without that, Russian misinformation wouldn’t have anointed trump. Hope to hell we’ve learned how to respond to misinformation, whatever source.

[AZProgressive]

5. It seems Obama-Trump voters were a bigger factor than sore losers from the primary

A new study reveals the real reason Obama voters switched to Trump

One of the most puzzling elements of the 2016 election, at least for a lot of Americans, was the millions of voters who switched from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to Donald Trump in 2016. Somewhere between 6.7 million and 9.2 million Americans switched this way; given that the 2016 election was decided by 40,000 votes, it’s fair to say that Obama-Trump switchers were one of the key reasons that Hillary Clinton lost.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/16/17980820/trump-obama-2016-race-racism-class-economy-2018-midterm

As far as the sore losers

538

You might be tempted to think that these #NeverHillary voters are leftists who thought Clinton was too much of pro-corporate, warmongering centrist. But relatively few of them were. Less than a fifth of them voted for Stein, for example. Instead, these voters were disproportionately likely to describe themselves as moderate or conservative. Among the 31 percent of self-described conservatives who voted for Sanders in the Democratic primaries, more than half were #NeverHillary voters, for example. A large minority of the independents and Republicans who supported Sanders were #NeverHillary voters as well.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-was-helped-by-the-neverhillary-vote-what-does-that-mean-for-his-chances-now/

As far as Bernie supporters unwilling to support Hillary Clinton, a lot of them shared Russian disinformation especially the hacked DNC files published by Wikileaks. A lot of those same people are still pushing Russian disinformation. Just an observation.

[Skittles]

6. misogyny is a bigger factor than racism

women are over half the population yet there has never been a female president....then when Hillary ran, she was held to impossible standards while Trump was held to no standards at all

[Hoyt]

8. Totally agree. And she was treated badly by plenty in the party. I get GOPers, but not Dems.

[Skittles]

9. yes, she was treated badly by a lot of so-called progressives too

it was sickening seeing how well the repuke campaign to demonize her worked

[Hoyt]

7. Maybe Obama voters switched to trump because of the bashers and disgruntled.

Fact is Clinton lost by less than 100K votes in swing states. If no Democrat had pouted or bashed Obama/Clinton, she would have won.

[AZProgressive]

10. The study explains why they switched

(Snip)

A new study shows that this response isn’t as powerful as it may seem. The study, from three political scientists from around the country, takes a statistical look at a large sample of Obama-Trump switchers. It finds that these voters tended to score highly on measures of racial hostility and xenophobia — and were not especially likely to be suffering economically.

“White voters with racially conservative or anti-immigrant attitudes switched votes to Trump at a higher rate than those with more liberal views on these issues,” the paper’s authors write. “We find little evidence that economic dislocation and marginality were significantly related to vote switching in 2016.”

This new paper fits with a sizeable slate of studies conducted over the past 18 months or so, most of which have come to the same conclusions: There is tremendous evidence that Trump voters were motivated by racial resentment (as well as hostile sexism), and very little evidence that economic stress had anything to do with it.


https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/16/17980820/trump-obama-2016-race-racism-class-economy-2018-midterm

[Hoyt]

12. So why did Susan Sarandon, a couple of Democratic senators, Robert Reich, etc.,

turn on Obama and Clinton?

100,000 Democrats not sitting out, voting in protest, accepting Obama and Clinton are worse than trump, etc., in swing states, would have delivered the Electoral votes for Clinton.

Sorry. I get there are many reasons Clinton lost. But if Democratic voters hadn’t joined the Jackpine Radicals we’d have control of Supreme Court, wouldn’t have endured trump, and worse.

[AZProgressive]

14. I logged off in 2016

I don’t think most voters pay that close attention the battles here at DU. JPR voters are a tiny percentage of the electorate.

I seen stats that over 80% of Sanders voted for Clinton including me. The political arguments that happen here are probably over representative of what is happening in the real world. Probably why Bernie is liked more in real life than he is on here.

[Hoyt]

15. The other 20% gave us trump, it's that simple.

[IngridsLittleAngel]

19. "Because Drumpf will bring the revolution immediately..."

So said Susan Sarandon (who lost me at that moment), six years ago. You know, instead of pushing for change through the system, instead of leadership, hey... Let's just invite a fucking revolution. That sounds like fun!!

The same "revolution" the extreme-right has wanted since 1992, because booooo hooooo... There's a non-Republican in the White House! Which, of course, was followed by booooo hooooo... There's a black man in the White House!

Susan... You were alive to experience Beatlemania. You were there. You couldn't have forgotten... right? Because, it's funny, there's a song that addresses what you wanted. Strangely enough, it even has a simple title... "Revolution"!! It includes lines such as these:

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We'd all love to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

I guess she's proof: Those who remember the 60's weren't alive to experience them.

[Generic Brad]

21. Make no mistake - our post primary division was fueled by Russia

I know we all like to pat ourselves on the back for spotting blatant disinformation, but we were played too from a different angle and didn’t recognize it. A small group of us totally fell for it. And it worked so effectively, we were openly hacked and mocked on election night 2016 by this nation’s enemies.

[Whiskeytide]

22. Well said. It never ceases to both amaze ...

… and discourage me to realize just how susceptible we ALL are to disinformation when it is targeted at our biases.

[Hoyt]

24. Sorry, I'm not blaming it on Russia (although they sux). The folks who were snowed and voted against

Clinton are to blame.

[sprinkleeninow]

11. The name 'comey' gets me

🤬

[Hoyt]

13. I get it. But without rogue party voters, Comey still wouldn't have mattered.

[sprinkleeninow]

18. That is true-other factors in the mix.

But it seemed to me that what he pulled was the kabosh on her possible victory so very close to the GE.

Then he kept attempting to wiggle out of condemnatuon.

[BigmanPigman]

16. I think it was 60% Comey's fault and 40% misinformation

in general and specifically Putin's using our social media to his advantage. Fuck them all!!!

[Hoyt]

17. .05% self-induced Election failure is all it took ultimately. Heck, we might as well

blame the millions that always vote GOPer.

[ck4829]

20. K&R

[Ace Rothstein]

23. As much as I would have preferred he said something, I'm not sure it would have mattered.

The people targeted by the misinformation wouldn't have believed it.