DNC Winter Meeting: Using Social Media and Databases to "Create the Electorate We Want"

Members of the Democratic National Committee held their winter meeting in Washington DC on February 14-16. The DNC consists of the Chairs and Vice Chairs of the 50 states plus 7 other entities, as well as several hundred members based on the population of the states.

The highlights of the meetings were short speeches from Stacy Abrams, who narrowly lost the race for Georgia Governor last year, DC Mayor Muriel Bower and Al Sharpton who has run for several offices in New York state.

Stacy Abrams is clearly being promoted for higher office by the Democratic powers that be. She was tapped to give the Democratic response to the State of the Union address on February 5th and is being featured at events around the country. Before speaking at the DNC on Feb. 15 she spoke at the Brookings Institution. The latter was full long before her appearance. The DNC meeting was not, largely because the DNC didn’t let the general public know that the meeting was open to the general public. (You just had to register as a guest but you couldn’t find that out from the DNC webpage).

Abrams' theme is voter suppression, which she calls the crisis of our time. In fact, voter suppression by other names is normal American politics. Parties have been trying to shape the electorate to their liking since the country was founded. Sometimes this is done through laws and rules and sometimes through practices. Voter registration was introduced in the late 19th Century to limit who could vote. The printed ballot was a de facto literacy test. During the populist/progressive period, this was done to "purify" the electorate by all parties in different states. They gave different reasons, most resonating with morality and righteousness, but the purpose was to win elections.

That is also the Democrats’ purpose (surprise!). At the winter meeting, DNC officials both celebrated the many 2018 Democratic wins and salivated at the thought of demolishing the Republican Party in 2020. They presented various plans to meet every voter and knock on every door, as well as using social media and databases to "create the electorate we want," as the Executive Director of the Democratic Party of Florida, Juan Penalosa, put it. Toward this end, the DNC has purchased cell phone numbers for every registered voter for whom a number is commercially available. This will be shared with the states. Expect a lot of robocalls in the next election.

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DNC Winter Meeting: Using Social Media and Databases to "Create the Electorate We Want"

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