My Twitter feed is alive with the news that a “senior official” in the Trump campaign has admitted that they are engaged in voter suppression. Let’s go to the tape:
Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs
to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.
Ahem. For those of you new to American elections, allow me to blogsplain. This is called “negative campaigning.” It is designed to make ones opponent look bad, and it has been a feature of every US election since—well, roughly forever. The fact that a “senior official” calls this voter suppression doesn’t mean that it is. It just means that the Trump folks are amateurs who are laughably ignorant about what a “major” operation of any kind actually looks like in a modern presidential campaign.
