Another astroturfing operation against Bernie Sanders fails miserably

... right before the battle in South Carolina

globinfo freexchange

We are about to lose count of the number and different types of smear campaigns and dirty tricks that the DNC establishment has tried against Bernie Sanders so far. 

As the DNC "barons" and their super-wealthy donors understand now that Sanders' big power lies within a continuously growing, progressive movement behind him, they are trying to deal with it through the practice of astroturfing. In short, they are trying to undermine Bernie's authentic, grassroots movement, with a virtual one.

We witnessed another operation of this type during the latest Democratic debate, right before the next primaries battle in South Carolina. The operation involved an audience of supposedly authentic, ordinary voters, who, quite strangely enough, booed Sanders and cheered the billionaire Bloomberg!

Yet, one more time, progressive independent media (along with Sanders), exposed the new trick immediately.




As the Commondreams reported:

Unusually loud booing and jeering directed disproportionately at Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren during Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate—particularly when the senators criticized billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg—sparked probing questions about the class composition of the audience packed inside the Gaillard Center in Charleston, South Carolina. Journalists and other observers pointed to local reporting from Feb. 6 on the Charleston County Democratic Party's offer of a $1,750 to $3,200 sponsorship package that included tickets to the Charleston debate and other events. "This is something that the average person doesn't usually get to go to," Colleen Condon, chair of the Charleston County Democratic Party, told local television news station WCSC-TV. Citing party officials, the outlet reported that "tickets are handed out to organizers like the Democratic National Committee, CBS, Twitter, and the Black Caucus Institute. Then, they are first given to paid sponsors and handed to campaigns to pass out extras." [...] Asked about the crowd's behavior in an interview following the debate, Sanders said "to get a ticket to the debate, you had to be fairly wealthy." "Most working people that I know don't spend $1,700 to get a ticket to a debate," Sanders said. [...] Charging exorbitant prices for debate tickets is hardly an abnormal practice, as the New York Times reported late Wednesday. But the commonality of the practice did not make it any less contemptible to critics. "I think it speaks to the fundamental, endemic corruption of the Democratic Party establishment that you had to pay—and this is according to reporting, local reporting on the ground—multiple thousands of dollars to get into that room," HillTV's Krystal Ball said in an appearance on CNN Wednesday morning. "I can't think of a better case to be made for Bernie Sanders and his desire to be an existential threat to that established order that you have a party that claims to be the party of the people, party that claims they want to get money out of politics, and yet on something so trivial, they stack the room with their donors," Ball added. "I think that that's disgusting and I think its important. And it's not whining. It's pointing out why Bernie Sanders is so appealing to so many people."

CBS attempted to "measure the success" of this latest operation against Sanders and numbers clearly show that the operation failed miserably. As the RealClearPolitics reported: "Democratic voters who watched Tuesday night's debate said national front-runner Bernie Sanders impressed them the most of any candidate, followed closely by Joe Biden and then Elizabeth Warren.", according to a CBS post-debate instant poll.

Previously, we identified at least one similar astroturfing operation, orchestrated by the establishment apparatus. As Alan Macleod reported for the MintPress News:

                    A shadowy new PAC calling themselves the “Beat Bernie 2020” movement has launched what it calls a “massive grassroots fundraising haul” among citizens concerned that “Bernie Sanders is creating irreparable division on the left that will create significant difficulties for the Party’s eventual nominee.” [...] Beat Bernie 2020 is insisting on keeping its members’ and donors’ identities a secret, due to what they call “a credible fear of threats and backlash from ardent Bernie supporters, a tactic they have become infamous for using ruthlessly on social media, especially Twitter.” [...] The anonymous “grassroots” campaign is strongly reminiscent of the organization Prop Or Not, which claimed to be a grassroots campaign of experts who were concerned about Russian propaganda and fake news but was likely the brainchild of CNN National Security Specialist Michael Weiss, who used it to defame alternative media organizations. 

Recall that, in political science, astroturfing is defined as the process of seeking electoral victory or legislative relief for grievances by helping political actors find and mobilize a sympathetic public, and is designed to create the image of public consensus where there is none. Astroturfing is the use of fake grassroots efforts that primarily focus on influencing public opinion and typically are funded by corporations and governmental entities to form opinions. 

DNC's super-wealthy donors and billionaires like Bloomberg understand now that they can't buy the elections directly. So, they are spending part of their unlimited amount of money to create a virtual grassroots movement. It's like trying to kill Bernie's real grassroots movement by replicating a suitable new weapon.

What they don't understand yet, is that in the real world, their (already broken) system is about to collapse. Even if they throw all the money of the world at it.